Virgil | The xiii bukes of Eneados... translatet out of Latyne verses into Scottish metir, London, 1553, first edition of the first Scots translation of the Aeneid

Virgil—Gavin Douglas (translator)

The xiii bukes of Eneados of the famose poete Virgill translatet out of Latyne verses into Scottish metir, bi the Reuerend Father in God, Mayster Gawin Douglas Bishop of Dunkel. London: [William Copland], 1553

8vo (200 x 140mm), gothic type, title-page with woodcut border [McKerrow & Ferguson 49], seventeenth-century paneled calf, lettered "Charleton" in later gilt on upper cover, possibly lacking final blank (though Pforzheimer proposes that it was used to print the 9th leaf in gathering X, present in this copy), C1-6 stained and some other leaves lightly stained, light dampstaining from u1 to end of textblock, extremities rubbed

A RARE COPY OF ONE OF THE FIRST GREAT CLASSICS OF SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

This translation of Virgil's Aeneid by Gavin Douglas (c.1476-1522), the bishop of Dunkeld, is the first into Scots English, and the first into any vernacular British tongue, predating by some years the earliest English translation. Earlier vulgar Vergilian versions, such as Chaucer's Legends of Dido and Caxton's Eneydos, were more like free adaptations of Vergil's text. "In the early 1500s no major classical work had been translated into English, and Douglas's Eneados was a pioneering work... Douglas shared the values of the humanists: an antipathy to scholasticism, respect for classical authors, and a zeal for education. He wished to communicate to his countrymen a knowledge of the Aeneid, and also to enrich his native ‘Scottis’ tongue with something of the ‘fouth’, or copiousness, of Latin" (ODNB).

PROVENANCE:

Seventeenth-century ink monogram "J.M.L." to title-page and verso of final leaf (the same monogram appears on a first edition of Newton's Principia, also with Scottish provenance); John Thomson of Charleton (1710-1787): ink ownership inscription on title-page (dated 1760), and engraved bookplate (dated 1786); thence by descent to his grandson, J. Anstruther-Thomson (1776-1833): ink ownership inscription on preliminary leaf; pen-trial on verso of title with name "Talmash Ceall of Dysart"

LITERATURE:

STC 24797; Grolier, Langland to Wither 61; Pforzheimer 1027