The Life of Merlin, Sirnamed Ambrosius. His Prophesies, and Predictions Interpreted; and their truth made good by our English Analls. Being a Chronological History of all the Kings, and memorable passages of this Kingdome, from Brute to the Reigne of our Royall Soveraigne King Charles.

HEYWOOD, Thomas.

$5,500.00

Item Number: 139455

London: Printed by J. Okes for Jasper Emery, 1641.

First edition of “one of Heywood’s most interesting pot-boilers” (Pforzheimer). Octavo, bound in three quarter polished calf over marbled boards, morocco spine label lettered in gilt, all edges gilt, wood-engraved frontispiece portrait of Merlin “generally attributed to [Wenzel] Hollar” (Wither to Prior 448), woodcut initials, headpieces and tailpieces. In very good condition, lacking as usual To the Reader leaf, frontispiece trimmed, small repair to the title page. Uncommon.

Based on older English chroniclers including Speed and Holinshed and offering an exhaustive history of all of the kings of England dating back to the legendary king Brutus, Heywood's Life of Merlin was "much less concerned with the biography than with the political forecasts of the sage. With the benefit of hindsight, Heywood provided an account that he claimed was Merlin's own prophecy, and which accurately foretold the course of English history up to the coronation of King Charles I. At that point, Heywood wisely paused" (Simpson, "Merlin and Hull," Quondam et Futurus 3:1 (1993), 60). Also informed by Geoffrey of Monmouth's Prophetiae Merlini (1134), the book was designed primarily "to attract that growing public which, worried and confused by the shadow of the coming troubles, might hope for guidance in this farrago of prognostications in much the same way that the public seizes upon each new economic forecast of today… It appears to have been the forerunner of a flood of 'Prophesies'" (Pforzheimer 478).