Memorials and Letters Relating to the History of Britain in the Reign of James the First. Embellished from the Originals

Glasgow: Printed by Robert and Andrew Foulis..., 1762. FIRST FOULIS EDITION. Small 8vo, 160 x 93 mms., pp. [xviii], 151 [152 errata], later 18th century polished calf, gilt borders on covers, gilt spine; lacks label, upper and lower joints very slightly cracked, but a good copy. The Monthly Review noticed the work in 1763 (Volume 27): "We have always considered James as the most beastly Monarch that ever disgraced the throne of this kingdoms; and this Collection affords a new and most remarkable instance of the most shocking depravity of his taste and manners.... As to the rest of the original letters, &c contained in this small volume, most of them certainly deserve the notice of the public. There are several written by the celebrated Bacon, and other eminent personages of those days; but it will exercise the reader's patience or sensibility, to bear with the continued repetition of such preposterous, fulsome, and slavish flattery as he will meet with in almost every Memorial, Letter, &c addressed to the British Solomon.-- In truth the English do not seem to have been the same kind of people in James's time as both their forefathers and their posterity were, nor to have been animated with the smallest spark of that glorious spirit of freedom they have since so nobly manifested on those GREAT OCCASIONS, which it is hoped that neither British Subject nor British Kings will ever forget." Gaskell 405. See also the letter from Robert Foulis to James Boswell, dated 8 Mah 1767, pages 397 - 398 in Gaskell.