BEN JONSON'S COPY OF A COLLECTION OF CLASSICAL GREEK MOTTOS. Ben Jonson's library was described as being "well-furnish'd" by John Selden in 1614 (MacPherson, p.5) but was decimated by fire in 1623. More than 200 books from his library are nevertheless known to survive. Some of the surviving books were acquired after the fire, but financial necessity had always made Jonson a regular seller as well as buyer. Unusually, Jonson has printed his name in this book so several of the letter forms (such as the e) are different from those of his more common cursive script. Jonson printed his name in other books in a similar way, such as in his copy of J. Pellison's Rudimenta prima latinae grammatices (1531) (Durham University Library SB 0057/1-2). The book contains a small number of annotations (e.g. sigs I2v, Pp1v, AA2v), not in Jonson's hand, and extensive underlining to the metrical proverbs. This book is not listed in David MacPherson, 'Ben Jonson's Library and Marginalia: An Annotated Catalogue', Studies in Philology 71 (1974), pp.1-106.

Sotheby's is grateful to Prof. Henry Woudhuysen for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.