“SIR HUDIBRAS, HIS PASSING WORTH, THE MANNER HOW HE SALLY’D FORTH; HIS ARMS AND EQUIPAGE ARE SHOWN, HIS HORSE’S VIRTUES AND HIS OWN”

BUTLER, Samuel. Hudibras, a Poem… With Notes, Selected from Grey and Other Authors: to which Are Prefixed, a Life of the Author, and a Preliminary Discourse on the Civil War. London: Thomas M'Lean (W. Lewis), 1819. Two volumes. Octavo, early 20th-century three-quarter red calf, raised bands, elaborately gilt-decorated spines, tan morocco spine labels, marbled endpapers, top edges gilt, uncut. $950.

Later edition of this bitingly humorous 17th-century poem on the English Civil War, with 12 striking hand-colored aquatints by John Heaviside Clark.

Butler's satiric poem on the English Civil War was written in Chaucerian couplets and published in three parts between 1663 and 1678. "The poem is of considerable length, extending to more than 10,000 verses, yet Hazlitt hardly exaggerates when he says that 'half the lines are got by heart'; indeed a diligent student of later English literature has read great part of Hudibras though he may never have opened its pages" (Britannica). Voltaire, who translated a condensed version of the poem into French, noted that "there is one English Poem, the title whereof is Hudibras; it is Don Quixote; it is our Satyre Menippee blended together: I never met with so much wit in one single book as this." Artist John Heaviside Clark (nicknamed "Waterloo Clark" for the sketches he made on the field of battle) also produced illustrations for M'Lean's editions of Don Quixote and Gil Blas, and together with Hudibras, the three works were frequently sold as a set. Tooley 141. Prideaux, 14. Armorial bookplate of Herbert Rivington Pyne.

An extremely good copy, with only light scattered foxing, minor rubbing to extremities of binding.