The Golden Epistles
[FENTON, Sir Geoffrey.]
Golden Epistles, conteyning Varietie of Discourse, both morall, philosophicall, and divine, gathered, as well out of the Remaynder of Guevaraes Woorkes, as other Authors, Latine, French and Italian … London, Ralph Newbery, 1577.
[bound after:]
GUEVARA, Antonio de. The familiar Epistles of Sir Anthony of Guevara … Translated out of the Spanish Tongue by Edward Hellowes … and now newly imprinted, corrected and enlarged with other Epistles of the same Author … London, Ralph Newbery, 1577.Two works 4to, ff. [4], 184, [3], without the terminal blank; and pp. [8], 400, [8]; woodcut borders to title-pages, woodcut initials; some light toning, first and last leaves slightly dusty, pale dampstain at the end, but very good copies, in recent limp vellum; contemporary purchase note to title of Guevara, contemporary annotations to the indexes of both works.
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Golden Epistles, conteyning Varietie of Discourse, both morall, philosophicall, and divine, gathered, as well out of the Remaynder of Guevaraes Woorkes, as other Authors, Latine, French and Italian …
Second edition of Fenton’s Golden Epistles, first published 1575. The title echoes Antonio de Guevara’s Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius and the work forms a kind of supplement to Edward Hellowes’s translation of Guevara’s Familiar Epistles (first 1574, with which it is frequently bound) but Fenton here draws on many more authors than Guevara. The result is ‘a moral discourse sorted with philosophie, & some texts of divinitie’ that was widely read in Elizabethan times.
There are letters, essays, and remarks on the seven ages of man (f. 138ʳ), the four desires of women (f. 64ᵛ: ‘to bee gorgiously appareled, to be esteemed fayre, to go whither they list, & that men beleeve what they say’), the difference between the friendship of men and the love of God, the riches of honour and poverty of infamy, how to behave at court, virtue in affliction, patience, and other such themes. One discourse ‘speaketh justly against such persons as delite to be perfumed’, another rebukes ‘a deintie Ladie falne sicke for the death of her little dogge’ (f. 154ᵛ ff.). The collection is dedicated to Anne de Vere (née Cecil), Countess of Oxford, a well-educated woman familiar with the ‘calamaties and traveils of life’ – her husband had recently separated from her with accusations of adultery; Fenton had connections to Anne’s father Lord Burghley.
Sir Geoffrey Fenton is best known for Certaine Tragicall Discourses, 1567, translated from Bandello by way of Belleforest and employed as source-material by Shakespeare. In public life he was a notable administrator of Ireland, where he worked alongside Spenser.
Golden Epistles is bound here with the third (second complete) edition of Guevara’s Familiar Epistles, another popular collection of essays on history, learning, manners and conduct. While bibliographically independent, these two texts were treated as one book in a copyright assignment of 1594 from Ralph to John Newbery, and are ‘often found bound with [each other]’ (STC). The index of the Familiar Epistles has been annotated here with additional entries over three pages (‘an ould man to marry a younger woman: 520’, ‘A wyse man: 155: 191‘, ‘falling forwarde or backwards: 168’). A smaller number of entries augment the index of the Golden Epistles.
Golden Epistles: ESTC S101978 (the variant in which B1ʳ line 22 ends ‘to’); STC 10795. Familiar Epistles: ESTC S103497.