LEIGH, Edward.

£2,750 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The Gentlemans Guide, in three Discourses. A re-issue, with cancel title-page, of the edition published in 1671 under the title Three Diatribes or discourses, of travel, of money, and of measuring distance betwixt place and place, continuously paginated, but each part with its own printed title dated 1671. In his note "To the Candid Reader", the former Member of Parliament Edward Leigh refers to earlier travellers who had written accounts, with mention of several Arabist scholars including Golius, Erpenius, and Pocock. His survey of coinage includes the observation that gold and silver are not necessarily of interest to all:"Mony, commonly, is the mean for all commodities, and answereth to all... Yet the Spaniards coming into the West-Indies, had many commodities of the country which they needed, brought unto them by the inhabitants; to whom, when they offered them money, goodly pieces of gold coyn, the Indians taking the mony, would put it into their mouths, and spit it out to the Spaniards again, signifying, that they could not eat it, or make use of it; and therefore would not part with their commodities for mony, unless they had such other commodities as would serve their use." (p. 36).

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