Scribleriana Transferred: Manuscripts and Rare Books, 2018 to Early 2019

• The University of Illinois bought at Bonhams New York's sale on March 9, 2018 an unpublished autograph manuscript of Isaac Newton called "Opus Galli Anonymi," 8 pp. recto and verso on two bifolia, 4to ($275,000, acquired with funds from Jim and Lionelle Elsesser). In it, Newton translated into Latin a French work on making the philosopher's stone. Bonhams describes the MS as "closely written in ink with numerous deletions and supralinear emendations, approximately 45 lines per page" (illustrated at Bonhams' website). Bonhams in Pasadena on February 11, 2018 listed another Newton autograph MS, this with quotations in Latin and Greek for his writings on prophecy, 26 lines on a slip 152 x 70 mm. (illustrated at its website). Bonhams notes that the first side's quotation from Procopius's Historia Arcana on the Vandals' invasion into Africa later appeared in Newton's MS "Tuba Quarta," and the other side's quotation from Eunapius in Life of the Philosophers and Sophists appears in an unpublished MS on the history of the church as well as in Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel.

• Early in 2019 J. & S. Wilbraham listed a complete copy of the first edition of Æsop's Fables. With Instructive Morals and Reflections. … Adapted to All Capacities … [with] Life of Æsop (Printed [by Samuel Richardson] for J. Osborn, 1740 [advertised November 1739]), ESTC T164572, 12mo: xxxiv, [2], 194, with engraved titlepage (with large vignette of animals to right of tree and person); "in contemporary ruled calf" with raised bands with cracked joints and flaws including absence of front free endpaper and repair to one joint (c. $6000). More recently the copy has been relisted by Blackwell's, as bound in "contemporary dark sheep," for c. $9560. ESTC calls for twenty-four plates illustrating the fables, the number noted by Blackwell's, but Wilbraham noted twenty-five, presumably including the engraved titlepage. The work was edited by Samuel Richardson, his first published book, appearing shortly before Pamela. ESTC records the edition for only four libraries—the next two editions are rarer (1749) and equally rare (1753).

• Quaritch corrects a misattribution in its listing for the sole edition of The North-Country Wedding, and the Fire, Two Poems in Blank Verse (Dublin: Printed by A. Rhames, for J. Hyde, 1722), 4to: 16pp., disbound (c. $1640). ESTC T189066 lists this rarity as by Nicholas Brown (1651/2–1722). But Quaritch—as had Andrew Carpenter in Verse in English from Eighteenth-Century Ireland, where part of the first is reprinted (1998)—notes that it was written by Brown's son while at Trinity College: "it is the only published work by the Fermanagh-born poet and clergyman Nicholas Brown (1699–1734)." Quartich notes both pieces are burlesques reprinted in Matthew Concanen's Miscellaneous Poems by Several Hands (1724). "The North-Country Wedding" treats a wedding in the region of counties Tyrone and Fermanagh, and "The Fire" presents a poet in an urban garret trying to fix his roof.

• A. R. Heath describes and illustrates a one-sided engraved broadside by Henry Carey entitled "A Ballad by Mr. Carey" with his poem beginning "Tho Cruel you seem to my Pain," in three eight-line stanzas; with four lines of musical notation at the top and three "For the Flute" below lyrics to second and third verses (colophon: "Sold only by D. Wright next Door to the Sun Tavern near Holbourn bars London," n.d.), with Heath conjecturing "c. 1720" (c. $193). Presumably Wright was an engraver, for the only other publication by "D. Wright" in ESTC is the undated sole publication of John Francis Davis, The Musical Companion, engraved throughout except for the dedication ("for D. Wright & D. Wright junr., & ye Author, & Thomas Wright"), ESTC T187048, 21 leaves folio. And the Sun Tavern near or in "Holbourn" brings up no ESTC record to help date Wright's activities. Heath calls it without evidence "the first publication of this Ballad with music written and composed by the poet." The poem appears first not in the 1720 2nd edition of Carey's Poems on Several Occasions but...