The Psalmes of David

£3,200 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

STC 2735 (+ in UK; Duke, Folger [x 2, inc. one ex Harmsworth], Harvard, Huntington, Illinois, Kansas, NYPL, Wisconsin-Madison in USA). Title slightly grubby, very lightly browned and dust-soiled throughout; top line of the verso of the second leaf closely shaved, just touching a few letters; a few headlines just shaved. Dedicated to Princess Elizabeth, exiled “Winter Queen” of Bohemia and Princess Palatine of the Rhine, daughter of King James I, who lived in exile at a palace near Arnhem (her husband Frederick was to die in November the same year). Wither’s second work, Epithalamia: or nuptiall poems (1612) on her marriage had been dedicated to her: “when my over-forward Muse first fluttered out of her neast, Shee obtained the preservation of her endangered Libertie, by your gratious favour: and perhaps, escaped also, thereby, that Pinioninge, which would have marred her flieng forth, for ever after”. In the dedication to the Psalms, Wither explains that his translation was written at the request of King James and finished shortly before his death (“I was commanded to perfect a Translation of the Psalmes, which he understood I had begunn; by his encouragement, I finished the same about the tyme of his Translation to a better Kingdome”) in 1625 as a companion to his “Hymnes and Songs of the Church”, 1623 (with which it is “sometimes bound” - STC 25908). Wither was obviously pleased with his translation - “It is, in my owne esteeme, the best Iewel, that I have: and, if it were

• Year: 1632

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