SELECT PROVERBS, Italian, Spanish, French, English, Scotish, British, &c. chiefly moral. The foreign languages done into English.

[MAPLETOFT, John.]

Edité par London printed by J.H. for Philip Monckton at the Star in St. Paul's Church-yard, 1707

A propos de cet article

8vo, pp. [xiv], 126, [2] advertisements; contemporary sheep, spine crumbling but not repaired, and sewing intact. First and only edition: the same sheets were reissued in 1710 with a new titlepage as A select collection of proverbs, but that 'edition' is otherwise exactly the same. John Mapletoft (1631-1721) was brought up at in the community at Little Gidding and then attended Westminster School, where he was a contemporary and friend of John Locke. He followed the twin professions of medicine and the cloth, becoming a vicar of two London parishes, and being involved with the London hospitals. He corresponded with Locke regularly in later life, as they had common medical interests. Mapletoft also played a prominent part in the SPCK and of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. His preface to this collection shows something of the early 18th century reaction to the licentiousness of the Restoration (or perhaps just the crustiness of an old-fashioned cleric in his mid-seventies), in his criticism of the London stage: 'I mention this out of a just Indignation, and to the eternal Shame of our wretched Poetasters, the modern Scriblers to the English Stage; who, either to get Bread by so vile and mean a Trade, or to gain the Applause of the empty and gay Things, and loose Debauchees of a degenerate Age, and withall to Patronize their own lewd and scandalous Lives, have taken as much pains to varnish and set off Profaneness, and all kinds of brutish Sensuality and Wickedness, and to ridicule true Wisdom and Virtue, and even common Honesty, as those much wiser and better Men, the Heathen Poets, did to discredit Vice and Folly.'. Mapletoft's intention here is clearly to teach better morality, hoping that the book will instruct 'younger, and more unexperienced persons, for whose Instruction and Improvement things of this nature are chiefly design'd'.

N° de réf. du vendeur 25701

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: SELECT PROVERBS, Italian, Spanish, French, English, Scotish, British, &c. chiefly moral. The foreign languages done into English.
• Éditeur: London printed by J.H. for Philip Monckton at the Star in St. Paul's Church-yard
• Date de parution: 1707
• Reliure: Couverture rigide
• Catalogues du vendeur:
  • Education