21. Joannes Secundus, Opera (Leiden, 1651).

The Dutch scholar Joannes Secundus (1511–36) wrote love poems in Latin. In 1775, John Nott admitted that copies of Secundus’s poems were ‘extremely scarce’ and that his writings were not well known, ‘yet no Author has been more esteemed by the few who have read him; as well for the purity and elegance of his Language, as for the singular beauty of his Thoughts’.

A disproportionate number of the books taken from the Library were, like this book, printed in small formats. They had the benefit of being easier to steal than larger books.

This copy was purchased in April 1936 to replace one missing from Marsh’s Library since before 1828.