Roger Gaskell Rare Books

	§ BURNET, Gilbert (1643–1715). Some letters. Containing, an account of what seemed most remarkable in Switzerland, Italy &c. Written by G. Brunet, D.D. to T.H.R.B. Rotterdam: printed by Abraham Archer, 1686. Collation: 8vo: A–T⁸ V², 154 leaves, pp. 307 [1] (last page blank). Woodcut device on title, errata on p. 307. Condition: 174 x 113mm. Insignificant dustsoling to title. Binding: Contemporary English unlettered blind-tooled calf, double filet borders to sides and spine compartments, acorn tools in corners of sides and a roll-tool close to the joints, gilt board edges, red sprinkled leaf-edges. A little rubbed. Provenance: Contemporary annotation and underlinging; nineteenth-century bookplate of the Earl of Lonsdale. References: Wing B5915; ESTC B5915; Fulton Boyle 345. Price: £400 One of three editions printed in this year. There was another Rotterdam setting in the same year and, another edition printed at Amsterdam. The Rotterdam editions are distinguished in ESTC on several points, the first of which is that in the present edition A3r line 20 ends ‘cere-‘ but ‘ceremo-‘ in ESTC r223614 (which is much rarer). ¶ Burnet’s popular letters are addressed to ‘T.H.R.B.’, that is The Honourable Robert Boyle, while a political exile in Europe. Burnet had met Boyle when he first came to England from his native Scotland in 1663 and Boyle gave him financial support while he compiled his History of the Reformation of the Church of England. After Burnet’s return to England, when he became Bishop of Salisbury, he and Boyle became close friends and Burnet delivered the funeral oration for Boyle, considered a classic of the form, and planned a biography of Boyle, though he never completed it. Michael Hunter has suggested that the idea for the Boyle Lecture Sermons may have been due to Burnet (Robert Boyle by Himself and His Friends, London 1994, p. xxiv–v). There is a long list of errata on the last page with the excuse of ‘The Author’s distance from the press and the Printers ignorance of the English tongue’. This is omitted from the Amsterdam edition, which has every appearance of being a piracy, and in which the errata are not corrected. ‘Upon the accession of James, Burnet, having no employment, and being refused admittance at court, obtained leave to go abroad. Avoiding Holland, on account of the number of exiles living there, and the consequent danger of being compromised by association with them, he went, upon promise of protection to Paris. There he lived in close intercourse with Lord Montague, in a house of his own, until August 1685, when Monmouth’s rebellion and the consequent troubles were over. He then, in company with a French protestant officer, Stouppe, made a journey into Italy. At Rome he was treated with distinction by Innocent XI and by Cardinals Howard and D’Estrées. He soon, however, received a hint to leave, and returned through the south of France and Switzerland. In France he was a witness of the outburst of cruelty which followed the revocation of the edict of Nantes. It is significant of the tone of Burnet’s mind that while at Geneva he successfully employed his influence to induce the Genevan church to release their clergy from compulsory subscription to the consensus; that he stayed in close communion with Lutherans at Strasburg and Frankfort, and with Calvinists at Heidelberg. He published in 1687 [sic] an able account of his travels, in a series of letters to Robert Boyle, directed naturally in the first place to the exposure, as he says, of popery and tyranny. He now, in order to be nearer England, came to Utrecht, where he found an invitation from the Prince and Princess of Orange to reside at the Hague.’ (Osmund Airy in DNB).
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