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132d Fuller, Thomas. (1606-1661) The Historie of the Holy Warre; by
Thomas Fuller, B.D. Prebendarie of Sarum, late of Sidney Colledge in
Cambridge.
[bound with] The Holy State [and The Profane State] by Thomas Fuller, B.D.
Prebendarie of Sarum. The fourth edition.
[Cambridge]: Printed by Thomas Buck, one of the
Printers to the Universitie: And are to be sold by Philemon Stephens,
at the signe of the gilded-Lion in Pauls Chruchyard, 1651
London: Printed by John Redmayne for John Williams, and are to be sold at the
Sign of the Crown in St. Pauls Churchyard, 1663
$2,800 Folio, 7.4 x 11 in. Fourth editions of both
works. I: ¶4, A-Z4,
Aa-Dd4, Ee6, Ff-Mm4, Nn6, Oo-Pp4, Qq6. II: A3, B-Z6, Aa-Pp6, Qq8. The
Holy Warre contains its engraved frontispiece and folding map of the
Holy Land. The Profane State has its own title page. In the Holy State
text there are twenty engraved protraits, which are all done by Marshall.
The subjects are Monica, mother of St. Augustine; Paula, mother of
St. Eustochium; Hidegard of Bingen; Paracelsus; William Whitaker; Julius
Scaliger; William Perkins; Sir Francis Drake; William Camden; Cardinal
Wolsey; William Cecil, Lord Burleigh; Saint Augustine; Nicholas Ridley;
Lady Jane Grey; Queen Elizabeth; Gustavus Adolphus; Edward the Black
Prince; Joan, Queen of Naples; Joan of Arc; and the Duke of Alva. All
of these portraits are printed in with the text. This copy is bound
in contemporary calf that has been rebacked. The edges are somewhat
worn. Leaf ¶3 is partially detached. There is a wormhole through
the lower margin of five leaves starting with ¶3. Some minor repairs
have been done to the fold-out map. The leaves are in good condition
with only very minor browning.
“The English character had begun with a wide extension of the Theophrastian
range and method, and our survey may end with a work which unites character,
aphorism, injunction, essay, and biography in what is essentially a comprehensive
conduct-book, Fuller’s The Holy State (1642). The first, second, and fourth
books deal in the main with family relationships, occupations, and the governing
class respectively, and the fifth with ‘the profane state’ from the
harlot and witch to the traitor and tyrant. The formal division between sheep
and goats had precedents in Hall and in Breton’s The Good and the Bad (1616),
but Fuller’s entire and practical didacticism sets him apart from the normal
Theophrastian tradition and compels abandonment of the Theophrastian pattern.
The essays or ‘General Rules’ of his third section, in themselves
a book of conduct and courtesy, consist of strings of maxims elaborated in comment
and anecdote, and the same method is used in the characters, so that dramatic
realism and satirical analysis give way to good counsel. The addition of numerous
separate exempla is prompted by Fuller’s interest in biography and by the
instinct of a popularizer. Altogether The Holy State answers the plea made in
the Advancement of Learning for studies of ‘the proper duty, virtue, challenge,
and right, of every several vocation, profession, and place,’ and much
of its inspiration comes from Bacon, the thinker and essayist who had translated
abstract philosophy into terms of modern utility, and from William Perkins, the
theologian who had taught family and social duties and ministered to the individual
conscience. And, of course, Fuller is never far from the Bible. […][The
Holy State] is of great interest as a literary and social document.” (Bush)
See the description above for detailed information on the History of the Holy
Warre.
Wing F-2439; Wing F-2444; Wing F-2446.
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