Original, 4-1/8 x 6-3/8 inches.

An example of title-page, typography, and spelling a hundred
years after the introduction of printing into England. The
Old English, Gothic, or Black-letter type was being superseded
by the modern "Roman;" and on this title page both forms were
used.

A Hundreth sundrie Flowres bounde vp in one small Poesie.

Gathered partely (by translation) in the fyne outlandish
Gardins of Euripides, Ouid, Petrarke, Ariosto, and others:
and partly by inuention, out of our owne fruitefull Orchardes
in Englande:

Yelding sundrie sweet fauours of Tragical, Comical, and
Morall Discourses, bothe pleasaunt and profitable to the well
smellyng noses of learned Readers.

=Meritum petere, graue.=

AT LONDON, Imprinted for Richarde Smith.]

POETS, PHILOSOPHERS, AND ARTISTS MADE BY ACCIDENT

From 'Curiosities of Literature'

Accident has frequently occasioned the most eminent geniuses to
display their powers. It was at Rome, says Gibbon, on the fifteenth of
October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while
the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter,
that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first
started to my mind.

Father Malebranche, having completed his studies in philosophy and
theology without any other intention than devoting himself to some
religious order, little expected the celebrity his works acquired for
him. Loitering in an idle hour in the shop of a bookseller, and
turning over a parcel of books, 'L'Homme de Descartes' fell into his
hands. Having dipt into some parts, he read with such delight that the
palpitations of his heart compelled him to lay the volume down. It was
this circumstance that produced those profound contemplations which
made him the Plato of his age.

Cowley became a poet by accident. In his mother's apartment he found,
when very young, Spenser's 'Fairy Queen,' and by a continual study of
poetry he became so enchanted of the Muse that he grew irrecoverably a
poet.

Dr. Johnson informs us that Sir Joshua Reynolds had the first fondness
of his art excited by the perusal of Richardson's Treatise.

Vaucanson displayed an uncommon genius for mechanics. His taste was
first determined by an accident: when young, he frequently attended
his mother to the residence of her confessor; and while she wept with
repentance, he wept with weariness! In