Gay’s Schoolmaster – an Association Copy
LUCK, Robert.
A Miscellany of new Poems, on several Occasions … Containing also, The Loves of Hero and Leander, translated from the Greek of Musæus. To which are added, Poemata quaedam Latina … London, Edward Cave for the Author, and Subscribers, 1736.
8vo, pp. vi, [12], 192, [2], 46, with a six-page list of subscribers and a separate leaf of ‘Subscribers from Cambridge’ (a singleton, c1 c c2 is sometimes a fly- or half-title, but there is only a stub here); slightly shaken, marginal wormtrack at end, touching catchwords, a few spots and stains; else a very good copy in contemporary panelled calf, endcap chipped, vertical split through spine at head; errata corrected in manuscript (including some not listed in the printed errata on c1); shelf mark? ‘E E / C’ to front endpaper.
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A Miscellany of new Poems, on several Occasions … Containing also, The Loves of Hero and Leander, translated from the Greek of Musæus. To which are added, Poemata quaedam Latina …
First edition, first issue, without the quotations on the title-page or the added leaf of Oxford subscribers. Pope subscribed for two copies (there are complimentary verses ‘On Mr. Pope’s Translation of Homer’).
Though without distinctive marks of provenance, this is an association copy, having come by descent from John Davie, Esq. (1711–1761), to whom Luck addressed his poems ‘To John D. Esq; at Trin. Coll. Oxon. an Epistle. 1731’, a ’Second Epistle to John D. Esq’ (pp. 33–37), and ‘Orlides … A Poem on the Birth-Day of J. D. Esq; 29th of Nov. A.D. 1732’ (pp. 42–55). This last piece is a long key-poem in parallel Latin and English, describing the food and guests at Davie’s twenty-first birthday celebrations. Davie, of Buckland Brewer, a few miles southeast of Barnstaple, must have been a recent pupil of Luck’s, and subscribed for four copies.
Robert Luck (1674–1749), ‘an humble servant of the Muses for almost half a Century’, was schoolmaster of the free grammar school at Barnstaple, Devon. Among his more prominent pupils was John Gay: ‘Gay … soon came under the influence of the vainglorious but charismatic Robert Luck … Luck fired his enthusiasm for drama which [Gay’s uncle] Hanmer, and those who ran the town, thoroughly deplored; the borough accounts show 20s. “paid to players to rid the town of them” (North Devon Athenaeum, 3792, no. 229/5) but Luck encouraged the boys at the school to read and imagine acting in the plays of Terence and Plautus. Among Gay’s schoolfellows at Barnstaple were Aaron Hill and William Fortescue, both of whom played a part in his later life’ (ODNB, sub Gay). Luck took the liberty of including a ‘Translation of the 15th Ode of Hor[ace’s] Epod[es] done by [a former pupil, “now a Great”] when Young under my Care’ – here the author is identified in manuscript as Fortescue. In ‘The Female Phaeton’ on the facing page, John Gay also makes appearance – ‘O Queensberry! cou’d happy Gay / This Off’ring to thee bring, / ’Tis his [i.e. Luck’s], my Lord, (he’d smiling say) / Who taught your Gay to sing’.
ESTC T121676; Foxon, p. 434.