Mantuan, Baptista. Adolescentia. London, 1576.
This collection of ten Latin pastoral poems by Mantuan was commonly taught in the grammar schools of early modern England. Like all English editions, this copy includes the paraphrase commentary of Jodocus Badius. In contrast to the edition of Virgil's collected works, it illustrates how grammar school editions often broke down poems into sections followed by a running commentary on vocabulary, grammar, and literary allusions. In this copy, a reader has underlined passages to be copied into his commonplace book. The gloomy judgment on erotic love "we have all been crazy once" --(semel insauimus omnes)--is commonly marked in copies of Mantuan's eclogues, eventually becoming, in James Boswell's words, one of those sayings "which everyone repeats, but nobody knows where to find."
Folger Call No. STC 19777, Copy 4. Pages 8v and 9r.
