Hesperides: or, The Works Both Humane & Divine of Robert Herrick Esq.

London: Printed for John Williams, and Francis Eglesfield.., 1648. RIVIÈRE & SON. Heperides: or, the Works both Humane & Divine. London: Printed for John Williams and Francis Eglesfield, 1648.

First edition. Octavo (170 x 109 mm). [8], 398, [2], 79, [1, blank] pp. Engraved frontispiece (inserted) by William Marshall depicting a bust of Herrick on a pedestal with an eight-line Latin inscription beneath (with the small rosebuds and foliage in the background bearing a minute amount of pale contemporary coloring), dedication to the Prince of Wales, errata leaf, and the section title page for His Noble Numbers.

Contemporary English blind ruled sheep, smooth spine divided by double blind rules. Light wear to corners and joints, flap repair to upper spine with a little loss, small section of upper joint cracked. Text block shaved a little close at top margin, tiny worm hole to title and dedication leaf affecting just one letter, small piece torn from bottom margin of Bb2 & 3, faint traces of dampstaining to upper portion of preliminary leaves, some (erasable) pencil marginalia. Early owner's pen signature (Jackson Clare Court, Drury Lane) to front paste down. Bookplates of John Bowle and Canon Charles Herbert Mayo. Purchased by Abel E. Berland (with his booklabel) from the Seven gables Bookshop in New York on March 21, 1974. Exhibited at the Grolier Club-"This powerful rime", no. 18, 1975. Housed in a quarter morocco clamshell case with gilt spine lettering. Despite the stutters mentioned. a relatively tall and entirely unwashed and unpressed copy in a contemporary English binding. An unheard of rarity .

An excellent unpressed copy of a book almost never found in its original binding. Herrick, the son of Cheapside goldsmith, earned his B.A. and M.A. degrees at Cambridge. During a residence in London, he became one of the group of poets and playwrites in Ben Johnson's circle, whom he lamented as "the rare arch-poet Johnson". To the 1640 edition of Shakespeare's Poems he contributed the anonymous verses "His Mistris Shade." Two years after taking holy orders in 1627, Herrick was granted the post of Dean Prior, in Devonshire, which he initially found isolating and boring. . Most of his large poetic output probably dates from this period of rural retirement. Copies of Herrick's Hesperides in contemporary binding are notoriously rare: of the ten first edition copies offered at auction since 1975, only one, the Westmorland-Drinkwater-Terry- Houghton copy, and this copy, the Abel Berland copy, was in a contemporary binding (Christies, 1979).

Grolier, 100 English, 29. Grolier, Langland to Wither, 441. Pforzheimer 468. Wing 1597. Wing H1596.

HBS 66810.

$45,000.