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EURIPIDES.
Τραγωδιαι οκτωκαίδεκα … Tragœdiæ octodecim, Hecuba, Orestes, Phœnissæ, Medea, Hippolytus, Alcestis, Andromache, Supplices, Iphigenia in Aulide, Iphigenia in Tauris, Rhesus, Troades, Bacchæ, Cyclops, Heraclide, Helena, Ion, Heracles furens.
Basel, apud Ioan. Hervagium ,1537.
4to, two parts in one volume, pp. [896], with the full complement of blanks (α7–8, Ii6–7, and 2Zz5–8); wormhole touching the odd letter, a few marginal holes towards the end, else a fine copy in contemporary blind-tooled Swiss or German pigskin over wooden boards, clasps wanting; a couple of early marginalia and some underlining in red in Orestes; ownership inscription dated Oxford 1631, the name scored through, purchase note of the antiquary and collector Cox Macro (1683–1767) while at Christ’s College Cambridge (1702), with two subsequent inscriptions by him; armorial bookplate of Charles Barclay (1780–1855).
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Τραγωδιαι οκτωκαίδεκα … Tragœdiæ octodecim, Hecuba, Orestes, Phœnissæ, Medea, Hippolytus, Alcestis, Andromache, Supplices, Iphigenia in Aulide, Iphigenia in Tauris, Rhesus, Troades, Bacchæ, Cyclops, Heraclide, Helena, Ion, Heracles furens.
Second edition of the complete extant tragedies of Euripides, following the Aldine editio princeps of 1503.
This copy, which was in England by 1631, was then purchased by Cox Macro during the brief period he was at Christ’s Cambridge, after his transfer from Jesus and before he moved to Leiden in 1703 to study under Boerhaave. Norfolk born and bred, Macro later moved back there to Little Haugh Hall, where ‘he devoted himself to a broad range of studies and to the collection of ‘antiquities’: coins, medals, paintings, books, and manuscripts. His collection of manuscripts was exceptionally fine and included the great register of Bury Abbey during the abbacy of William Curteys; a ledger book of Glastonbury Abbey; a cartulary of the religious house at Blackborough in Norfolk; a vellum manuscript of the works of Gower; and the original manuscript of Spenser’s “View of the state of Ireland”’ (Oxford DNB), as well as the famous Macro MS 5 (now at the Folger), containing the earliest complete examples of English morality plays.
Two inscriptions on Macro’s copy of Euripides chart its history after its purchase at an unidentified auction in 1702: on the title is a gift inscription from Macro to his old school at Bury St Edmunds, also dated 1702; and on the front fly-leaf the additional inscription: ‘This book I gave formerly to the school library, but finding there another Euripides of the same Edition, I (wth the consent of the Master &c) took it away again, & gave some other Books in its room’. Most of the school’s early books are now at Cambridge; Macro’s books and manuscripts passed to his heir John Patteson, who sold them to a Norwich bookseller Richard Beatniffe, and thence in a private transaction by Christie’s in 1821 to Dawson Turner, on the understanding that Hudson Gurney would immediately buy a portion – Gurney’s mother and wife were both Barclays and it seems likely that this volume passed to Charles Barclay direct.
VD16 E 4213; Adams E 1031; STC 289; Brunet II, 1096.
