664B Flatman, Thomas. (1637-1688) Poems and songs. By Thomas Flatman. The third edition with additions and amendments. Me quoque Vatem Dicunt Pastores, sed non Ego credulus illis. Virgil.

London: Printed for Benjamin Tooke, at the Ship
in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1682

$1,200

Octavo, 7.1 x 4.6 in. Third edition, with sixteen new poems appearing for the first time. A8, a-b8, B-K8, L7, M8. (This copy is complete, collating just as the Grolier copy, with the signature L7.) The engraved portrait frontispiece of Flatman which appears for the first time in this edition is present in this copy. It is bound in modern quarter brown calfskin, with marbled paper boards. Although the decorated paper on the boards is not entirely in keeping with the period, the spine is very neatly and tastefully done, and looks quite well on the shelf. The contents are occasionally lightly browned and spotted, with no extraordinary defects.

“Having settled in London Flatman devoted his talents to painting and poetry. As a miniature-painter he was, and is, greatly esteemed; but his poetry, which was received with applause by his contemporaries, has been unduly depreciated by later critics. Granger declares that ‘one of his heads is worth a ream of his Pindarics.’ But his other poems are better. ‘A Thought of Death’ (which Pope imitated in ‘The Dying Christian to his Soul’) and ‘Death: A Song,’ are singularly impressive; the ‘Hymn for the Morning’ and ‘Another for the Evening’ are choice examples of devotional verse; and some of the lighter poems, notably the paraphrases of select odes of Horace, are elegant. Flatman’s Poems and Songs were first collected in 1674, and reached a fourth edition in 1686. Prefixed are commendatory verses by Walter Pope (only in the first edition), Charles Cotton, Richard Newcourt, and others. In the third and fourth editions [one finds] a portrait of the author, engraved by R. White, and a dedicatory epistle to the Duke of Ormonde, who is said to have been so pleased with the ode on the death of his son, (published in 1680), that he sent the poet a diamond ring. The edition of 1686 is the most complete. Some of the poems were in the first instance published separately, or had appeared in other collections. […] Among his Poems and Songs he included his commendatory verses before [the following works:] Faithorne’s Art of Graveing, 1662; Poems by Mrs. Katherine Philips, the Matchless Orinda, 1667; Creech’s translation of Lucretius; and Izaak Walton’s edition of Chalkhill’s Thealma and Clearchus, 1683; also some satirical verses contributed to Naps upon Parnassus, 1658.” (DNB)

Wing F-1153; TC I, 466; Grolier, W-P 358.