Reverse calf leather folio binding with blind embossed borders to the boards. A scarce copy.

The works of Du Bartas including his divine weeks along with other translations by Sylvester of works by Henry Smith; Guy du Faur, seigneur de Pibrac; Odet de La Noue, seigneur de Téligny; Girolamo Fracastoro; George Goodwin; and Pierre Matthieu. Also contains most of Sylvester’s original works.

The work is illustrated with engraved portrait of the translator, illustrated title page  (signed R. Elstracke Sculpsit)  and numerous engraved head and tail pieces and illuminated initials.

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544–July 1590) was a French poet.

He was a Huguenot, and served under Henry IV of France. He is known as an epic poet. La Sepmaine; ou, Creation du monde (1578) was a hugely influential hexameral work, relating the creation of the world and the history of man. It was translated into many languages, including English, and formed the basis for Milton's Paradise Lost. It was followed quickly by La Seconde Sepmaine (1584) which Du Bartas did not manage to finish before falling fatally ill.

James VI of Scotland was particularly impressed by Du Bartas after receiving a volume of his poetry in 1579.  James regarded Du Bartas very highly and encouraged other poets to translate his works, following his accession to the English throne. Thomas Winter quotes from James' Basilikon Doron where he touches on Du Bartas, in the dedicatory epistle of his translation of du Bartas's Third Dayes Creation (1604). Joshua Sylvester, another English poet around the court of King James, also translated Essay of the Second Week (1598) and The Divine Weeks of the World's Birth (1604).

Joshua Sylvester (1563- 28 September 1618) was an English poet.

He translated into English heroic couplets the scriptural epic of Guillaume du Bartas. His Essay of the Second Week was published in 1598; and in 1604 The Divine Weeks of the World's Birth. The ornate style of the original offered no difficulty to Sylvester, who was himself a disciple of the Euphuists and added many adornments of his own invention. The Sepmaines of Du Bartas appealed most to his English and German co-religionists, and the translation was immensely popular.

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