Author: REYNARD THE FOX
Title: The Crafty Courtier: Or the fable of Reinard the Fox: Newly done into English Verse, from the Antient Latin Iambics of Hartm. Schopperus, And by him Dedicated to Maximilian then Emperor of Germany.
Description: London: Printed for John Nutt, near Stationrs-Hall, 1706 8vo, 188 x 117 mms., pp. [viii], 311 [312 adverts], including half-title, contemporary calf, panelled in blind; joints slightly cracked, no label, but a good to very good copy with a clean text, and the armorial bookplate of "Sr. Robert Eden, Bart" on the front paste-down end-paper. The army officer and colonial governor Sir Robert Eden (1741 - 1784) was Governor of Maryland, and ODNB records that he did not have an easy time, "when the crisis in relations between colonists and crown came to a head during his governorship. Although he retained the good will of his Maryland subjects, he was unable to reconcile the colonists to continued parliamentary rule despite his best efforts to act as a buffer between the two sides. Eden succeeded in remaining in Maryland as nominal governor until June 1776, but his effective authority had ended two years earlier when the first extra-legal Maryland convention assembled in June 1774. 'He [had] survived without being able to prevail' (Land, 309). Finally, in May 1776, Maryland's sixth convention resolved 'that the Publick quiet and safety … require that [Eden] leave the Province and that he is at full liberty to depart peaceably with all his effects' (Beirne, 173). On 26 June he sailed for England on HMS Fowey, his wife and children having departed earlier." The earliest version of this famous story seems to have been written in the middle of the 13th century. The versifier here is unknown, but he or she used the Latin of Harman Schopper, first published in 1567. The opening lines unmistakely derive from Virgil: Nor Arms I sing, nor of Adventurous Deeds, Nor Shepherds playing on their Oaten Reeds, But civil Fury, and invidious Strife, With the false Pleasures of a Courtiers Life. To whom ye Muses, will my Theme belong....

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