Contemporary calf. On the covers a border of 4 gold and blind tooled lines. Central a lozenge gold tooled arabesque plate. New spine with 6 raised bands, decorated with blind and gold tooled lines.


First edition of this well-known English emblem book, probably England's most important contribution to emblem literature. Found with various booksellers’ names in the imprint.

The literary genre of emblematics did not flourish in England as it did on the continent. Praz attributes this fact to the, at the time, still rudimentary stage of the English art of woodcutting and engraving, as there certainly was, or is, no lack of English taste for emblems and devices.

Wither was commissioned to compose the English text for the fine plates by Crispyn de Passe, which were first published in Rollenhagen’s Nucleus Emblematum, 1611-1613, which had been procured with difficulty from The Netherlands. As Wither writes in his Foreword: ‘they had been brought to view many yeares agoe, but that the Copper Prints (which are now gotten) could not be procured out of Holland, upon any reasonable Conditions’. George Wither wrote the new accompanying verses in English. De Passe's prints appear in their original order, but Rollenhagen's epigrams were cut off from the plate and replaced with Wither's long-winded and extremely moralistic English poems.

The idea of a moral lottery Wither derived from David’s Veredicus Christianus. Here it is transformed into a fortune- or character-telling game of chance, which the poet devised as a "moral pastime". By spinning the two pointers the player is directed to one of the four books and then to one of the 56 chances which in turn relate to the 50 plates, numbers 51-56 being blanks. Some of the chances are labelled M or W and relate exclusively to men or women; if you land on the wrong one for your sex then you take the next chance. He explains that the pointers "would determine which emblem fell to the player's lot; by it the reader was directed not only to the page where a picture and thirty lines of moral instruction were to be found, but also to another place where the special application of his emblem to everyday life was set out in a short, easily remembered stanza."

The inserted pointers in the lottery table are made of later vellum, but on the page before the lottery game there is a “printing error” which exactly depicts those pointers: one is in the centre decorated with a sundial for the first game table and the other shaped as a steering wheel of a boat for the second game with the wind directions.

George Wither (1588-1667) was scorned by the literary elite. According to Aubrey, when Wither was captured by Royalists in the Civil War, his life was spared by the King at the request of the poet Sir John Denham: “for that whilest G.W. lived he (Denham) should not be the worst poet in England.”

- Provenance: 1) Written in brown ink on the dedication page and the title page: “Ed: Canby”. 2) in pencil on lower paste down the LTD

- Literature: Veldman, Crispijn de Passe and his Progeny p.196-197; Brunet V, 1466-67 (‘Ce volume est rare’); Daly-Simcox 374; Franken, Crispyn de Passe 1344; Rosemary Freeman, English Emblem Books 140-47; Graesse VI (2) 466; Grolier Club, From Wither to Prior 1038; Praz 538; STC 25900c.

- Condition: Skillfully rebacked, later endpapers; At the end some pages repaired, one with slight loss of some text; Pointers on lottery table later vellum, but on the page before the lottery game there is a “printing error” which exactly depicts those pointers: one in the centre decorated with a sundial for the first game and the other shaped as a steering wheel of a boat for the second game with the wind directions; Some mould stains in lower corners; Despite its defects a very good copy of a rare book never found in perfect condition, with quite ample margins.