Swan Rare Books and Prints

(incorporating Adnax Publications)

Architecture

Part of the title page for John James' translation of Claude Perrault's work on the Five Orders of Columns.

Fine art

Detail from one of Wenceslaus Hollar's engravings of Windsor Castle.

Philip Ayres (1638-1712)

Emblemata Amatoria

Ayres was born in Cottingham and educated at Westminster School and St John's College, Oxford. He became tutor in the family of Montagu Garrard Drake, of Agmondesham, Bucks, living in the family until his death. 

The Heart, Loves Butt

Ten thousand times I've felt the cruell smart
Of thy drawn Bow, as often more I court,
Till in thy Quiver not one single Dart,
Be left for thee to prosecute thy Sport.

 'The Emblemata Amatoria is a very pretty and a very quaint book, though its attraction is only partially poetic, and still more partially English-poetic. It is engraved throughout, text and plates, these latter being forty-four in number, and each faced with a set of four copies of verses, Latin, English, Italian, and French, the impartiality being kept up by the imprint, at head and foot of the double page-opening, of Emblemata Amatoria, Emblems of Love, Emblèmes d'Amour, and Emblemi d'Amore. These verses, though always on the same subject, are very far from exact translations of each other, and it is quite possible that Ayres may have taken more or fewer of them from preceding writers.' George Saintsbury, Minor Poets of the Caroline Period. (1906)

Primitive, but powerful, perhaps befitting the amorous deity.

Love keeps all things in order.

How does this vast machine with order move,
In comely Dance to th' Musick of the Spheres!
Did not wise nature cement all with Love,
The glorious frame mould drop about our eares.

A must for all those in love, or about to fall in love.