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- 66 VENUS AND ADONIS
26
SIXTH EDITION, 1602. No. X. Bodleian copy, 1602.
Prisoners—and therefore To bid the wind a Base, is by using the Language of yt sport To take the wind Prisoner.³
The Bodleian copy of 1602 (8°. M 9, Art B S) bears the autograph signature of Robert Burton. It has been in the Library since 1640, when it was forwarded in conformity with the clause of Burton’s will: ‘If I have any books the University Library hath not, let them take them.’¹ This copy was the first edition of the poem to pass the portals of the Bodleian Library. That Burton was well acquainted with *Venus and Adonis* is clear from a mnemonic quotation of four lines in his *Anatomy of Melancholy* (1621).² Burton’s copy is now bound up with five other tracts, only one of which was his property. The *Venus* comes second in the volume. Some of the leaves are uncut.³ The measurements are $ \frac{9}{16}'' \times \frac{3}{8}'' $.
No. XI.
Macclesfield copy, 1602.
The third surviving copy of the 1602 edition is in the library of the Earl of Macclesfield at Shirburn Castle, Oxfordshire. It has, like the Bodleian copy, the ‘colon’ title-page. It is a perfect copy in admirable preservation, and has been strongly bound in recent years by Hatton of Manchester. It was probably acquired by the first Earl of Macclesfield, the Lord Chancellor, in the early part of the eighteenth century. The measurements are $ \frac{5}{3}'' \times \frac{3}{8}'' $. There
¹ Macray’s *Annals of the Bodleian*, 1890, p. 90.
² Burton quotes the four lines from memory (ed. Shilleto, vol. iii, p. 79) thus:—‘When *Venus* ran to meet her rose-cheeked *Adonis*, as an elegant Poet of ours sets her out,
> The bushes in the way
> Some catch her [by the] neck, some kiss her face,
> Some twine about her legs to make her stay,
> And all did covet her for to embrace.’
> (ll. 871-4.)
Burton’s allusion to Shakespeare as ‘an elegant Poet of ours’ is curious. He only seems to quote Shakespeare in two other places in his *Anatomy*, once from *Lucrece*, ll. 615-6 (vol. i, p. 91), and once from *Romeo and Juliet* (vol. iii, p. 216). Burton makes several other references to the story of Venus and Adonis, but only as it figures in classical authors.
³ The opening tract, *The Devill of Masson, from the French* (Oxford, 1658), is not of much interest. But the third tract, *Laneham’s Letter*, concerning the Kenilworth Entertainment of 1575, bears, like *Venus and Adonis*, the autograph signature of ‘Robtus Burton’.
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