Information
LEUSDEN'S HEBREW & LATIN PSALMS, DEDICATED TO INCREASE MATHER
[BIBLE - PSALMBOOK - HEBREW & LATIN]. LEUSDEN, Johannes, ed. Sefer tehilim = Liber Psalmorum.
Utrecht, Willem vande Water, 1688. 12mo. The Psalms in Hebrew with a Latin translation on the facing pages. With a woodcut vignette (a putto in tree branches) on the title-page, 2 woodcut headpieces (plus 1 repeat) and 2 woodcut decorative initials (2 series). Dedicated to Increase MATHER. French tanned hairsheepskin(?) (ca. 1700), gold-tooled spine and board edges, red morocco spine label, marbled endpapers, red sprinkled edges.
| Orders and Information | € 500 |
Leusden's second and final edition the Hebrew Psalms, with his Latin translation on the facing pages. He dedicates it to the American Puritan minister in Boston and acting president of Harvard College, Increase Mather (1639-1723), with explicit reference to the conversion of American Indians. The dedication is followed by his five-page note to the reader, dated 1 April 1688. Following the Psalms themselves is a five-page "Catalogus" of references to passages in Joseph Athias's Hebrew Bible, which Leusden had also edited.
Leusden presumably knew that Mather had been chosen as the Plymouth Colony's representative in England, where he arrived on 6 May 1688. Perhaps in part for this reason, the book was issued not only by Willem vande Water and Balthasar Lobé in Utrecht, where Leusden (1624-1699) was professor of Hebrew and Oriental Languages, but also by Samuel Smith in London (three simultaneous issues of a single edition, each with the imprint of one of the three publishers). In 1666 Leusden had edited Athias's Hebrew Psalms with Santes Pagninus's Latin translation.
In good condition, with a tear repaired in the leaf with the dedication, with no loss of text, marginal water stains in a few leaves, occasionally reaching the text, and some wrinkles in the title-page. The binding shows surface scuffs on the boards and chips at the head and foot of the spine, but is structurally good and the tooling on the spine remains clear. Leusden's carefully edited Hebrew and Latin Psalms, dedicated to Increase Mather.
