Thomas Adams (afterwards Sir Thomas Adams, Bart., Lord Mayor of London) had in 1632founded a professorship of Arabic and some years later (probably in 1645) the Senate decreed, that having established a press and such other apparatus as should be required, they should devote their attention to the production of books in Arabic, in order that the fruits of the Adams benefaction should be handed down to posterity and diffused throughout the world[54]. There is, however, no record of Arabic printing at Cambridge until a much later date[55].
Buck was a scholar as well as a printer[56]; the edition of Poetae Graeci Minores printed by him in 1635, which has a title-page engraved by William Marshall, was described, though with some exaggeration, as "the most elegant book of the Cantabrigian press delivered to the public"; Mede's Clavis Apocalyptica (second edition, 1632) is also notable for its fine Hebrew type.
Apart from the typographical interest of the work of Thomas Buck and his partners, there are some famous names amongst the authors whose works they printed. Those of Giles and Phineas Fletcher, the two brothers who "head the line of poets who were divines of the English church," are prominent in the list. The former's Christ's Victorie was reprinted in 1632 and 1640 and under the name of Phineas (who, like his brother, had contributed to Sorrowes Joy in 1603) we find Locustae, vel pietas jesuitica (1627), the poem which is said to have contributed to the inspiration of Paradise Lost; and, in 1633, Sylva Poetica, The Purple Island, and Elisa or An Elegie Upon the Unripe Decease of Sir Antonie Irby.
A more famous work of the period is that of George Herbert, Public Orator from 1619 to 1627, during which time, according to Walton, he managed the office "with as becoming and grave a gaiety, as any had ever before or since his time; for he had acquired great learning, and was blessed with a high fancy, a civil and sharp wit, and with a natural elegance, both in his behaviour, his tongue, and his pen." From his deathbed he sent a manuscript to "his dear brother Ferrar," describing it as "a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed betwixt God and my soul, before I could subject mine to the will of Jesus my Master; in whose service I have now found perfect freedom."
This was the manuscript of The Temple, published in 1633, and reprinted many times in the following ten years.
Another of the 'sacred poets' whose works were printed at Cambridge at this time is Richard Crashaw (Epigrammatum Sacrorum Liber, 1634).
John Donne is represented by a volume of Six Sermons upon severall occasions, preached before the King, and elsewhere, posthumously published in 1634; and Thomas Fuller, that loyal son and historian of the university, by The Historie of the Holie Warre (1639).
