Ad 1: Second issue of the first edition of Jacob Cats's first published work and one of his most important emblem books. The work comprises 51 emblems, each offering three different interpretations, relating respectively to love, morals and religion. In the first issue the emblems themselves are repeated in each of the three parts, but in the present second issue they appear only in the first part and are replaced by newly printed texts in the second and third. The work also contains an extensive theoretical discussion of the emblem as a literary genre. Cats's emblem books became highly influential and contributed greatly to his enormous popularity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Ad 2: First edition of this emblem book, published in the same year as the Silenus Alcibiadis and closely related to it. Several variant issues are known. The present copy belongs to the issue with the "Wapen-schilt" inserted after the title-page and the dedication to the "Eerbare Maeghden" printed on a separate bifolium and inserted between ff. *1 and *2 on different paper.
Ad 3: Apparently unrecorded issue of the first edition of Cats's Self-Stryt, with quire 4* extended from two to four leaves. The two additional leaves contain the Veld-teycken, with a half-page engraving of a recumbent ermine beneath a crown, surrounded by mud, and the motto "Net of Niet" on a banderole. This Veld-teycken is otherwise first known from the second edition of 1621. Self-Stryt is a didactic poem in dialogue form, based on the biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife (Genesis 39), representing the internal struggle between lust ("Vlees") and virtue or spirit ("Gheest"), a central theme in Cats's moral writings.
With the bookplate of the author Jos van der Steen mounted on the front pastedown. The vellum is somewhat soiled and stained. Some marginal staining and soiling, a few small tears not affecting the text, the double-page plate of the "Kinder-spelen" in ad 1 and the extra plate of Galathee in ad 2 are cropped and mounted on a blank leaf. Otherwise in good condition. Ad 1: Cats Catalogus (STCN), no.170 and pp. 32-38; Landwehr, Emblem books Low Countries (1970), no. 81, no. 104; Id, Emblem and Fable books Low Countries (1988), no. 106; Museum Catsianum, no. 27; Praz, p. 300; cf. Verhuld voor t menselijk oog. Embleemboeken uit de Kon. Bibliotheek (Exhib. Catalogue, 1996), pp. 7-8, 19, 39-40; Ad 2: Cats Catalogus (STCN), no.104 and pp. 32-38; Landwehr, French emblem books, no. 146; Landwehr, Emblem books in the Low Countries (1970), no. 102; Id., Emblem and Fable books (1988), no. 132; Museum Catsianum, nos. 55; Praz, p. 300-301;.Ad 3: Cats Catalogus (STCN), no.144, 146; Museum Catsianum, no. 72; STCN 830295496 (without the 2 leave extension); USTC 1026321 (without the 2 leave extension); cf. Engraved title: Hollstein, XXVI, 11; R. Schenkeveld-van der Dussen, Cats Self-stryt een Arminiaanse tekst?, in: Tijdschr. voor Ned. taal- en letterkunde, 136 (2020), pp. 105-126.