The Strife of Love in a Dream, being the Elizabethan version of the first book of the Hypnerotomachia

INTRODUCTION.



EIGHT or nine years ago I chanced to go into the shop of Mr. Toovey, in Piccadilly, and began turning over the cheaper and less considered of his books. Among them I found " Hypnerotomachia. The strife of Loue in a Dreame. At London, Printed for Simon Waterson, and are to be sold at his shop, in S. Paules Churchyard, at Cheape-gate, 1592." This is the usual title, my specimen, as will be seen, varied slightly. The Bodleian copy also contains this (the 2nd) title. The book was a small thin quarto, not in good condition. It contained no name of author or translator, and the initials, R. D., of the dedication (the most interesting part of the work), tell us nothing. Mr. Douce conjectures that they may stand for Robert Dallyngton, the translator of " The Mirrour of Mirth, etc., from the French of Bonaventure des Periers," London, 1583, 4to. The woodcuts were excessively debased reminiscences of those famous examples in the Aldine edition of 1499. The little book seemed an oddity, and I purchased it from Mr. Toovey for the sum of twenty shillings. I was then but an ignorant collector of the Cheap and the Odd in books,



and Mr. Toovey's own attention had been given to more beautiful things than this shabby quarto. I took it home, read it, wrote a little article on it in the 6/. James s Gazette, and found out that the volume was imperfect. Having exhausted my interest in it, I carried it back to Mr. Toovey, pointed out the absence of the last five pages, and returned it, in exchange for " Les Memoires de la Reyne Marguerite, a Paris, chez Claude Barbin, dans la Grand' Salle du Pallais, au Signe de la Croix. M.D.C.LXI," in yellow morocco. I never made a worse bargain. The Hypnerotomachia, imperfect as my copy was, is among the very rarest of books, and therefore among the most desirable. This particular copy, by the way, was "printed for lohn Busbie, and to be sold at his Schoppe, at the west doore of Paules." Meanwhile M. Claude Popelin had long been lying in wait for the English version of Francesco Colonna's book. He was engaged on his excellent version of the original, to which this preface owes a boundless debt for information. 1 The English version was not to be found in the British Museum, nor in the Bibliotheque Nationale, nor in the libraries of Berlin, Amsterdam, the Hague, Leyden, Utrecht, Vienna, or Munich, nor have I heard of it even in America. In short this despised and rejected tract is among the extreme rarities of the world. And I had swopped it for La Reyne Marguerite in a new edition ! One man's loss is another's gain, and M. Popelin, hunting the sale rooms in London, bought my castaway copy " a un de ces prix qu'on n'avoue pas a sa menagere." M. Popelin deserved to get it for his learned edition, and I deserved to lose it for my carelessness. I am only sorry...