The Funeral Obsequies of Sir All-in-New-Fashions

Summary

This engraving is in the collection of prints bequeathed to the Bodleian Library by the antiquary, Francis Douce. The press-mark is Douce Prints, Portfolio 138, no. 89. No other copy is known, and it is shown here, in reduced facsimile, for the first time. The original measures some 11 ⅞ × 8 ⅜ inches. Of the printseller, Thomas Geele, little is known. His name appears in the imprint of the 1630 reprint of Baziliwlogia, a series of engravings of English monarchs. In the first issue the imprint reads: “Printed for H: Holland, and are to be sold by Comp: Holland ouer against th’exchange 1618”: in 1630 this becomes “Are to be sould by Thomas Geele at the dagger in Lumbard street 1630”. His name is not found on the title of the reprints of 1628, 1638, and 1662. For information about another set of prints published by Geele I am indebted to Professor W. A. Jackson. He issued c. 1626 and from the same address a set of twelve plates illustrating the Months, with verses signed on the last plate “A[braham]. H[olland].” (Abraham Holland, who died in 1626, Henry Holland, and possibly Compton Holland were sons of Philemon Holland of Coventry, the “translator-general in his age”.) The only copy traced is in the Huth (now Harvard) copy of Nicholas Breton’s Fantasticks (1626). There they are bound up at the appropriate places, but as they are found only in this copy and as they illustrate Breton’s text only in the most general way, the probability is that they were not made for the book.