BLACKWELL S RARE BOOKS GREEK AND LATIN … · A scarce and attractive near-miniature edition of Anacreon, similar to the Foulis edition of 1751, ... known as the ‘Organon’. The

1

BLACKWELL’S RARE BOOKS

GREEK ANDLATIN CLASSICS VII

2

1. Aelianus Tacticus. The Tactiks of Aelian; or Art of Embattailing an Army after ye Grecian manner Englished & illustrated wth figures throughout: & notes vpon ye Chapters of ye ordinary motions of ye Phalange by I.B. The exercise military of ye English by ye order of that great generall Maurice of Nassau Prince of Orange &c Gouernor & Generall of ye vnited Prouinces is added. [Printed at Eliot’s Court Press] for Laurence Lisle, 1616, engraved title-page and 50 plates, of which 41 are folding, short tear in 1 plate neatly repaired, minor dust-soiling at either end, pp. [i, title-page], [iv], 159, [9, the last leaf blank,], folio, mid- to late-twentieth-century mottled calf, short split at foot of upper joint, good (ESTC S106791; Cockle 88) £3,000

First edition in English, translated by John Bingham. ‘Probably written in AD 106, Aelianus’ Taktike theoria (Tactical Theory), based on the art of warfare as practiced by the Hellenistic successors of Alexander the Great, was an instruction manual on arming, organizing, deploying, and maneuvering an army in the field. Consulting previous authorities on the subject, Aelianus dealt with a force composed mainly of armoured infantry of the Greek hoplite type, with auxiliary light infantry and cavalry screens. His influence is evident in the military writings of the Byzantine emperor Leo VI (886-912); an Arab translation of the Taktike theoria was made about 1350. Aelianus’ detailed treatise became a valuable source of knowledge for European military writers of the 16th century, when infantry once again began to supersede cavalry as the decisive arm of the battlefield. It was while reading Aelianus’ account of Roman drill in 1594 that Maurice of Nassau realized that the same practices that had worked for javelins could work for muskets, producing a continuous fire by ranks’ (Ency. Brit). Bingham served under Maurice of Nassau. ‘The translation is clear and adequate, and Bingham’s notes are intelligent’ (Lathrop p. 255).

2. Aeschines & Demosthenes. Mutuae Accusationes, de ementita Legatione, &

de Corona, ac contra Timarchum Quinque numero, cum earum argumentis, ipsorum oratorum vita, et Aeschinis Epistola ad Athenienses, ac Indice copioso, nuper a bene docto viro traductae. Venice: apud Hieronymum Scotum, 1545, some worming in gutter of endpapers, just touching a letter on the first and last leaf of text but going no further, two large library stamps to title-page (one repeated on E1), one leaf with a short tear in lower margin touching two lines of text with no loss, ff. 223, [1, blank], 8vo, eighteenth-century Italian vellum, yellow lettering piece, marbled edges, spine soiled, library label at foot, deaccession stamp to paper label on front pastedown, good (CNCE 16736; Adams D293; USTC 826501) £1,500

A scarce printing (outside Italy) of Latin translations of the surviving works of the Greek orators Aeschines and Demosthenes. COPAC locates only two copies, in Oxford and Manchester; Worldcat adds two more in Europe (BnF and Munich) plus a scattering around the USA. EDIT16 records suggest that this is the first Latin edition of the orators printed in Italy; unusually, the original Greek texts had been printed first.

3

GREEK AND LATIN CLASSICS

3. Aeschylus. TRAGODIAI EPTA. Glasgow: in aedibus Academicis, excudebat Andreas Foulis, 1795, ONE OF 52 COPIES, engraved title page and 30 engraved plates by Flaxman bound in, a number folded to fit, several shaved within platemark (one just inside border of image), offsetting from plates, a bit of spotting, pp. [iv], xii, [2], 357, [1], folio, contemporary russia, boards bordered with a decorative gilt roll, spine gilt in compartments, edges gilt, marbled endpapers, a little bit rubbed and scratched, front joint cracking but strong, slight sunning to top and bottom of boards, good (ESTC T87011 & T160786; Gaskell 699) £6,000

One of the rarest and most elegant productions of the Foulis Press, with records suggesting fewer than 65 copies of this edition of Aeschylus printed, 52 on small paper and 11 or 12 on large. ‘Small’ copies like this one measure around 38cm tall, taller than even the large-paper copies of the Foulis Press masterpiece, the 1756-8 Homer. ESTC notes that ‘some large paper copies have drawings by John Flaxman’, while Gaskell says that both issues ‘sometimes have a set of plates by Flaxman’, and Murray’s details of publication suggest that the book retailed in three formats: small paper (3 guineas), large paper (10 guineas), and large paper with the plates (£20). In any case, only a minority of recorded copies (though both large and small) have the plates, and this copy demonstrates that in order to fit the plates in a small paper copy some folding and trimming was necessary.

This edition has textual importance as well: it represents the first substantial publication of Richard Porson’s work on the text of Aeschylus. Porson was invited by the syndics of the Cambridge University Press to produce a new edition Aeschylus in 1783, but their requirements that Porson print the corrupt text of Stanley’s edition (by then over a century old) with his own notes, and their refusal of permission to collate the Laurentian manuscript in Florence led to him declining the edition. Porson nonetheless continued to collect material, and somehow - stories vary but usually include foul play - a portion of his notes fell into the hands of the Foulis press. Porson may have lent his notes to a friend in Scotland, or he may have begun a contract with a printer who then published without his final approval, or this may all be speculation on the basis that his name appears nowhere within. Additionally, a two-volume octavo edition with Porson’s emendations (and again omitting his name) was also printed by the Foulis Press in either 1794 or 1796, but held back from publication until 1806, when it was issued by a London bookseller with cancel title-pages.

4


4. Aesop. Aesopi Phrigis et aliorum Fabulae. Quorum nomina sequens pagella indicabit. Elegantissimis Iconibus in gratiam Studiosae iuventutis illustratae. Venice: Apud Prodoctos, 1686, oval woodcut vignette (showing a pendulum clock and sundial) to title-page, many more oval woodcuts in text, these showing light colouring-in with red crayon or chalk, the fables numbered in an old hand, one leaf with a thin area torn from fore-margin with loss to one letter each in about 10 words, another leaf with a horizontal closed tear (through two woodcuts with no loss), a little other staining and evidence of cheap printing, pp. 286, [14, the last leaf blank], 12mo, contemporary limp vellum, spine lettered in ink, ruckled, old repair to lower quarter of spine, some wear to edges, label removed, remains of red wax to front flyleaf and rear pastedown, rear flyleaf removed, ownership inscriptions of Hieronimus Bonanomus (1686) and Canavero Giuseppe (with the date 1686, but much later), sound £1,200

A rare edition of Aesop’s fables with woodcut illustrations, not found in COPAC or Worldcat, and with ICCU locating just one copy, in Faenza. Worldcat does list two other records of the same format, pagination, and publisher, one dated 1693 (Oxford only), and the other, apparently dated 1573, in the Philadelphia Museum of Art; there is also a record for a 1681 printing with the same title and publisher but entirely different pagination, in Hamilton College.

5. Anacreon. Odai, kai ta Sapphous, kai Erinnas leipsana. Edinburgh: Apud

Hamilton, Balfour, & Neill, 1754, part of prelims bound after second title-page, some foxing and soiling around the edges, pp. [iv], 72, 8, 76, 24mo, contemporary sprinkled calf, rebacked preserving original backstrip, endpapers renewed, good (ESTC T200306) £400

A scarce and attractive near-miniature edition of Anacreon, similar to the Foulis edition of 1751, but with a Latin translation following the Greek text. ESTC locates 5 copies in the UK (NLS, Paxton House, Manchester, Leeds, and Winchester College), plus the Newberry Library and Stanford. Another issue, containing only half the volume (i.e. without the Latin translation), is also recorded in three of those plus 2 other locations (BL and Mills College).

6. Anacreon. Odai. Glasgow: In aedibus academicis, Ex Typis Jacobi Mundell,

excudebant J. et J. Scrymgeour, 1801, some foxing and browning, pp. 106, 12mo, contemporary sprinkled calf, boards bordered with a gilt roll, neatly rebacked preserving most of original backstrip, new red morocco label, other compartments with central lyre tools, hinges relined, inscription scratched out from front endpaper, good £350

5


Mundell took over as printer to Glasgow University following the 1795 ouster of Andrew Foulis, who was losing money hand over fist. He continued the reputation for typographical elegance, for several years at least, before dying in 1800. There was then a period of uncertainty before the brothers Scrymgeour officially took over in 1802, reflected in the imprint of this volume. The Greek text appears above a prose Latin translation in the footnotes.

7. Aristotle. [Organon. Translated into Latin by Joachim Perion.] Paris, [mostly]

1551, criblé initials, some staining and foxing, frequent subtantial marginal and interlinear manuscript annotations in an early hand, old inscription ‘Dalaret’ to first title-page (probably circa 1780), 4to, contemporary calf, boards bordered in blind with gilt corner-pieces and gilt central Mars and Lucretia tools, front board further lettered ‘A. BUXUS’ in gilt, spine divided by raised bands, small gilt flower tools in compartments, old repairs to head and tail of spine, leather stained and scratched, some old notes and inscriptions to endpapers, modern booklabel to front pastedown, good £6,000

A sammelband - in an attractive contemporary binding - of early and rare editions of Joachim Perion’s Latin translations of individual works by Aristotle, comprising the six works on Logic that make up the Organon, plus Porphyrius’s ‘Isagoge’, or ‘introduction’ (translated by Perion as ‘Institutiones’). The number of similar titles and variant imprints makes it impossible to say with certainty that these are unrecorded full stop, but the printings found here are almost entirely unlisted in Worldcat (as detailed below); there was also a 1551 edition of Perion’s Aristotle in various parts published by Roigny, but with different titles, and a 1551 Vascosanus edition, in octavo. Perion translated most of Aristotle’s works, and others not present here appeared under some of the same imprints (Worldcat does record in Columbia and Yale in a 1551 printing of the Nichomachean Ethics ‘apud viduam Mauricii a Porta’), but this volume forms the complete writings on logic, known as the ‘Organon’. The contents are, in order:

1. Porphyrii Institutiones ad Chrysaorium, Aristotelis Categoriae, Eiusdem de Interpretatione Liber. Ioachimo Perionio Benedictino Cormoeriaceno interprete... Quarta editio. Paris: Apud Thomam Richardum, 1551, ff. 18, 11, [10], 22. The ‘De Interpretatione’ has its own title-page dated 1551 but with imprint ‘Ex officina Viduae Mauricii a Porta’; the Categoriae does not have such a title-page present and so one may be lacking. We have not been able to trace any closely matching copy in Worldcat (or anywhere else) to compare against, although Yale holds a copy of the De Interpretatione dated 1551 with the imprint ‘Apud Thomam Richardum’ (also annotated - see Rosenthal, Printed Books with Manuscript Annotations, 34). Porphyrius’s work introduces concepts which are essential to the Catgories, and often served as a prologue to the Aristotelian corpus on logic as a whole, as here.

2. Aristotelis priorum Analyticorum libri II. Ioachimo Perionio Benedictino Cormoeriaceno interprete. Eiusdem Perionii observationes in eosdem Analyticos

6


libros. Paris: Ex officina Viduae Mauricii a Porta, 1551, ff. 59, [1, blank]. No copy located in Worldcat.

3. Aristotelis Posteriorum Analyticorum Libri II. Ioachimo Perionio Benedictino Cormoeriaceno interprete. Eiusdem Perionii observationes in eadem Posteriora Analytica. Paris: Ex officina Viduae Mauricii a Porta, 1551, ff. 40. No copy located in Worldcat.

4. Aristotelis Topicorum libri octo, Ioachimo Perionio Benedictino Cormoeriaceno interprete. Eiusdem Ioach. Perionii comentationes, in quibus Topica Ciceronis cum his Aristotelis coniungit, ut omnes quid Cicero in suis ab Aristotelie mutuatus sit intelligant... Editio secunda. Paris: Apud Ioannem Lodoicum Tiletanum, 1543, ff. [iv], 70, xxviii. Worldcat contains a record of this title but apparently without imprint (though recording a colophon, as here, also giving the name of the printer), in Lyon only; the record does not mention the ‘Editio secunda’ and so this may be a different printing.

5. Aristotelis de Reprehensionibus fallacibus et captiosis liber, Ioachimo Perionio Benedictino Cormoeriaceno interprete. Paris: Ex officina Viduae Mauricii a Porta, 1551, ff. 26, [7]. There may be a copy in Cambridge (described only as a Paris 1551 quarto); nothing else similar recorded in Worldcat.

The inscription of Dalaret to the title-page may be in the same hand as two calculations, one in the corner of the title-page and one on the facing binder’s blank, determining the number of years that have passed between 1551 and 1780 and 1781. The annotations in the text are in an earlier - certainly sixteenth-century - hand, which may belong to A. du Bouys (Latinised as A. Buxus, but whose further identity remains obscure).

The annotations appear in every work, almost always in Aristotle’s text rather than Perion’s notes, and the hand is somewhat small and cramped, but the annotator is certainly closely engaged with the text: annotations are on most pages, and a number of printed words and passages are struck through; and at least some of the interlinear notes may be corrections to the translation, providing alternative Latin words with different shades of meaning (e.g. swapping ‘adversas’ for ‘oppositas’, ‘supremas’ for ‘extremas’, ‘cognoscuntur’ for ‘sciuntur’).

Perion’s translations were not unpopular or insignificant; Charles Schmitt wrote that they represent ‘the high water mark of a humanistic approach to translating Aristotle’ (Aristotle and the Renaissance, 1983, p. 73). But they were at the time also controversial, because his goal was to transfer Aristotle’s works into good, polished, Ciceronian Latin, rather than to reproduce the sense. The contemporary annotator of this copy may provide further insight into the development of humanist philosophy, and methods of translation, in the mid-sixteenth century.

7


8. Aulus Gellius. Noctes Atticae, seu Vigiliae Atticae. Quas nunc primum a magno mendorum numero magnus veterum exemplarium numerus repurgavit. Henrici Stephani noctes aliquot Parisinae, Atticis A. Gellii Noctibus seu Vigiliis invigilatae. Paris: cum privilegio Caesaris, et Gallorum Regis, 1585, paper toned, some spotting, a few leaves with a light marginal dampmark, one leaf with a closed tear vertically through top 9 lines of text (no loss), the leaves either side with shorter tears in blank margin, cipher stamp to title-page with motto ‘hoc est signum meu[m]’, blank leaf C1 (in second series) discarded (as often), pp. [vi], 23, [3], 587, [77], 16, [iv], 31, [5], 35-205, [3, blank], 8vo, early seventeenth-century French brown morocco, boards with central gilt arms (fess between three roses) and border of French fillets, joints, headcap and corners sometime repaired and the new leather of the front joint now a bit worn (but the joint itself still strong), spine divided by raised bands, second compartment gilt lettered direct, the rest with central gilt monogram ‘FMTNS’ (or some combination of those letters), good (Adams G366; Schreiber 212; Renouard 150.2) £1,200

An important edition (for its preface) and unusual in being by Henri Estienne, but not printed by him: following the publication of the Thesaurus (1572) and Plato (1578), two enormous and expensive projects, Estienne ran so low on money that for two years, 1584 and 1585, he printed nothing at all. ‘Estienne spent these two years in Paris, where he had this edition of Gellius... printed at an unidentified press... the longest and most interesting preface.. is addressed to his son Paul. This famous preface is the most important autobiographical document Henri Estienne has left to us, and gives us our only glimpse into his father’s household... Estienne tells his son of his eagerness to have his editions of Gellius and Macrobius printed in time for the Frankfurt Fair, because such a long time has passed since anything came off his presses that several members of the German intelligentsia are mourning his death’ (Schreiber).

9. Caesar. Commentaria Caesaris prius a

Iocundo impressioni datae... Florence: ex officina Philippi de Giunta, 1514, 5 full-page woodcuts and 2 double-page woodcut maps included in pagination, manuscript marginal numbers added to first few pages, some light spotting, one or two small marginal tears, ownership inscription of M. Joh. Jacobus Maierus to title-page, a later manuscript Latin quotation to recto of final leaf (blank apart from device on verso), ff. [xvi], 285, [1], 8vo, seventeenth-century walnut-brown calf, boards bordered with a blind decorative roll inside a triple gilt fillet, endpapers renewed early twentieth-century, recently rebacked in expertly sympathetic fashion, fore-edge lettered in ink (with date ‘1541’), very good (Pettas, Florence, 59; CNCE 8148) £2,500

The first Giunti edition of Caesar, copied from the 1513 first Aldine edition - the beginning of a string of copy-cat, but nonetheless often significant, editions (including

8


the 1544 Estienne Caesar). The text is essentially a reprint, in italic type inspired by the Aldine octavo classics, and the woodcuts are straight copies, with the exception of the map of Spain, newly produced for this edition. When in 1519 the Aldine press produced a second edition of Caesar, it contained a copy of the Guinti’s map of Spain, and thus the map which first appears here came to be part of the standard ‘kit’ for later copy-cat editions.

The editor, Giovanni Giocondo, was a man very much of the Renaissance, being an architect, a teacher, and a Franciscan priest as well as a scholar: he designed the Palazzo del Consiglio in Verona and the Pont Notre-Dame in Paris (the latter much rebuilt, though Giocondo’s version was among the longest-lasting); he edited Vitruvius and Cato the Elder; among his students was the young J.C. Scaliger. His architectural experience - which also included part of the protection of Venice’s lagoons - contributes much to his treatment of fortifications here.

10. Callimachus. Hymni, epigrammata et fragmenta: eiusdem poematium de Coma

Berenices a Catulio versum. Paris: Excudebat Sebastianus Mabre-Cramoisy, 1675, FIRST DACIER EDITION, gently washed and pressed at time of rebinding, the browned title-page then also expertly mounted on an old binder’s blank, two sets of Macclesfield blindstamps to first three leaves, pp. [xx], 262, [58], 4to, nineteenth-century green pebbled morocco by Hatton of Manchester, spine faded, front joint rubbed, Macclesfield arms in gilt to front board, a.e.g., marbled endpapers, bookplate, good (Dibdin I 368) £500

The first publication of Anne Le Fèvre Dacier (1654-1720), daughter of the scholar Tanneguy Le Fèvre and wife of the scholar André Dacier (a former pupil of her father’s), and a herself a scholar of talent equal to those relations. Anne moved to Paris following the death of her father in 1672, taking with her notes which she had been accumulating on the text of Callimachus. Her initial success in being published owed something both to her family connections and her own innate talent - at the same time she was offered work by the editor of the Delphin editions, who had known her father - but this edition, together with her translation of Anacreon in 1681, established her as an academic in her own right and her reputation only grew thereafter.

11. Catullus. The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus. Now first completely

Englished into Verse and Prose, the Metrical Part by Capt. Sir Richard F. Burton, K.C.M.G., F.R.G.S., etc., etc., etc., and the Prose Portion, Introduction, and Notes Explanatory by Leonard C. Smithers. Printed for the Translators, 1894, FIRST EDITION, 145/1,000 COPIES (of an edition of 1,054 copies), engraved frontispiece, publisher’s notice tipped to front endpaper, tissue-guard foxed and slightly offset onto title-page, pp. xxiii, [i], 313, [1], 8vo, original quarter vellum, spine lettered in gilt, corners and fore-edges a bit worn, endpapers browned, very good £150

12. Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius. Nova editio. Iosephus Scaliger Iul. Caesaris F.

recensuit. Eiusdem in eosdem Castigationum Liber. Lutetiae [i.e. Paris]: Apud Mamertum Patissonium, in officina Rob. Stephani, 1577, FIRST SCALIGER EDITION, final blank discarded, toned and foxed, pp. [xvi], 174 (recte 274), [2, blank], 252, [xiv], 8vo, early nineteenth-century French green roan, boards bordered with a gilt roll, spine divided by a gilt leaf roll, red morocco lettering piece, somewhat rubbed, very good (Schreiber 248; Renouard 179.1) £800

9


‘First Scaliger edition of the three great Roman elegiac poets; the second part consists of Scaliger’s extensive (250 pages) and valuable Castigationes’ (Schreiber). In the production of this edition, ‘Scaliger transformed the art of criticism. He showed that a critical edition could not rest on a genealogical examination of the extant manuscripts alone. Rather, it had to rest on a reconstructed history of the textual tradition; and where the oldest manuscripts were no longer extant, errors in the surviving ones and even literary evidence had to be called into play. He had thus arrived at the fundamental insight of nineteenth-century German critics like Jacob Bernays and and Karl Lachmann, who made Scaliger’s method the accepted one’ (Grafton, Joseph Scaliger, 1983, vol. 1, p.176).

13. Catullus, Tibullus, & Propertius. Opera. Birmingham: Typis Johannis

Baskerville, 1772, some light spotting, pp. [ii], 200, 221-372, 4to, slightly later straight-grained red morocco, boards bordered with a double gilt fillet, spine with raised bands between gilt fillets, second compartment gilt-lettered direct, marbled endpapers, edges gilt, bookplate removed from front pastedown, spine a bit rubbed and darkened, slight wear to corners, good (ESTC T6260; Gaskell 44) £350

One of Baskerville’s series of grand and elegantly printed Latin classics in quarto.

14. (Classical Scholarship.) TURNÈBE (Adrien) Adversariorum Tomi III. Auctorum loci, qui in his fine certa nota appellabantur, suis locis inserti, auctoribusq; suis adscripti sunt. Additi indices tres copiosissimi. Basel: Per Thomam Guarinum, 1581, some browning and spotting throughout, old paper repairs to blank upper corners of first 10 leaves, dampmarking and blooming to upper corner in second and third sections, expanding in the index with a little bit of wear to top margin at end, old ownership inscription on title cancelled, occasional underlining, pp. [viii], cols. 398, pp. [5], cols. 416-910, pp. [6], cols. 923-1200, pp. [96], folio, eighteenth-century Italian vellum boards, one section of spine dyed yellow and lettered in gilt, just slightly marked, twentieth-century inscription to rear flyleaf, sound (Adams T1146) £500

The first collected edition of Adrien Turnèbe’s (or Turnebus, 1512-1565) valuable collection of miscellaneous observations, interpretations, and readings on classical literature (first published in three volumes between 1564 and 1573). ‘The work for which Turnèbe remains best known, and the work to which other critics and scholars continually refer, is his Adversaria. This vast compendium of readings from a huge range of classical texts has elicited various responses: for some it is erudite, inspiring and encyclopaedic, for others it is disordered, sprawling, and shambolic: additionally, there can be little doubt that the success of Turnèbe’s work started an editorial vogue in France’ (Lewis, Adrien Turnèbe, p. 197).

His son, also Adrien, prepared this collected edition for publication, and it was reprinted several times over the subsequent two decades. Among Turnèbe’s most important notes are the readings from a lost and ancient manuscript of Plautus (the Codex Turnebi), the earliest known representative of an important family of Plautine manuscripts. There is no overall organisation (‘adversaria’ were intended to be notes

10


jotted down at random or while reading), but three full indices, of Latin, Greek, and proper names, allow the work to be used for consultation.

15. (Classical Scholarship.) URQUHART (D.H.) Commentaries on Classical Learning.

T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1803, FIRST EDITION, title-page slightly spotted, a few thumbmarks but otherwise quite clean and fresh, pp. xii, 539, [3], 8vo, contemproary diced russia, boards bordered with a gilt fillet, spine lettered in gilt and with decorative gilt lozenge-shaped tools, extremities the merest touch rubbed, a little surface damage to foot of front board, ownership inscription of Eldon, i.e. John Scott, 1st Earl of Eldon (1751-1838), and his armorial booklabel, very good £150

A very nice copy. The Revered David Henry Urquhart also translated Anacreon, but here his ‘only purpose was to enforce an important truth, the utility of a liberal education to individuals and society... in his first chapter, he forms an estimate of the utility of classical literature to the various professions and orders of society, after which introduction the remainder of his work is occupied by an arranged description of the principal writers of Greece and Rome’ (Annual Review for 1803, v. 2 p. 641).

16. Demosthenes. Selectae Demosthenis Orationes: Quarum Titulos versa indicabit

Pagina. In usum studiosorum hoc modo separatim excusae. Typis J. Redmayne, 1672, a few orations with facing pages of Latin translation, large but faint dampmark appearing intermittently, a scattering of pinprick wormholes in foremargin of a few leaves, occasional underlining or marginal marks in pencil and red crayon, pp. [ii], 202, 12mo, original sheep, boards bordered in blind with cornerpieces also in blind, pastedowns from a printed work in Italian, somewhat scuffed, a small patch of wear to edge of rear board, front flyleaf partly torn away, shelfmark in pink to foot of spine, good (ESTC R27855) £250

A tidy little copy of a pocket edition of selected orations of Demosthenes in Greek for students, popular enough to be reprinted the following decade.

17. Epictetus. Enchiridion. Parma: In aedibus Palatinis,

typis Bodonianis, 1793, two pages with light offsetting from ribbon bookmark, pp. [iv], 85, [5], 97, [1], 8vo, contemporary Italian sheep, strikingly marbled in shades of brown and green, boards bordered with a triple gilt fillet, gilt flower cornerpieces, spine divided by raised bands, red morocco lettering pieces in second and third compartments, the rest with central and corner gilt tools, marbled endpapers, edges gilt, the merest touch of rubbing to extremities, modern booklabel to front pastedown, near fine (Brooks 490; Dibdin I 518) £1,200

A striking binding, marbled in a very bold shade of green. The edition is ‘printed in the usual beautiful style of the works from Bodoni’s press... The Italian translation is considered accurate and elegant’ (Dibdin). There were two Bodoni editions of this year, this small-format printing and a larger setting in quarto (of which only 100 copies were reportedly produced, one of them on silk).

11


18. Epictetus [et al]. Thesaurus Philosophiae Moralis. In quo continentur Epicteti Phil. Stoici Enchyridion. Aurea Pythagorae Carmina, nec non & Symbola. Cebetis Thebani Tabulae. Theophrasti Lesbii Characteres omnia e Graeco in Latinum translata. Ad excellentissimum Franciscum Mariam Lumellinum. Geneva: Typis Benedicti Guaschi, 1653, first few leaves slightly spotted, pp. [10], 5-225, [5, blank], 24mo, later mottled sheep, spine divided by gilt fillets with small gilt tools in centre of compartments, marbled pastedowns, edges red, a touch of wear to spine, very good £500

A rare small-format printing of selections of post-Socratic Greek philosophy in Latin translation. The Enchiridion of Epictetus and the Tabula of Cebes are regularly found together; this compilation adds Theophrastus’s Characters and Pythagorean sayings to make a collection of practical-minded philosophical guides. Italy, Germany, and Switzerland hold 5 copies between them, as listed in Worldcat (Lugano, Rovereto, Siena, Trento, and Wolfenbüttel), but we have not been able to trace any in the USA or UK.

19. (Greek Epic Poetry.) POETAE GRAECI VETERES Carminis heroici scriptores, qui

extant, omnes. Apposita est e regione, Latina interpretatio. Notae item & variae lectiones margini adscriptae, cura & recensione Iac. Lectii V. Cl. Geneva: Sumptibus Caldorianae Societatis, 1606, title page in red and black, first three leaves creased vertically, dampmark in lower corner, some light browning and spotting elsewhere, title slightly dusty and the paper softened, showing two ownership stamps, a small inscription, and page-numbers added to listing of contents, pp. [xxiv], 739, [1], 624, [46], folio, contemporary acid-speckled calf, spine with six raised bands, second compartment gilt-lettered direct, the remainder with gilt decoration and cornerpieces, boards bordered with a double gilt fillet, central gilt stamp of a French bishop’s arms, the leather flaked, worn at extremities, joints cracking a bit but strong, sound (Schreiber 289) £500

‘The most complete one-volume corpus published to date of classical, Alexandrian, and Byzantine Greek epic poetry... Although the colophon clearly attributes the printing of the volume to Pierre de la Rovière, this may have been executed at the Estienne press, or at least, with the Estienne typographic material’ (Schreiber). The editor was Jacques Lect (1560-1611), a Swiss humanist and protegé of Beza, who served as a member of the Council of Geneva as well as profesor of law there (though he was asked to resign in 1596 due to lack of funds for his salary). The edition expands upon the collection published by Estienne in 1566 by adding authors (including Apollonius Rhodius and Oppian) and providing a facing Latin translation for all the texts.

20. (Greek History.) [LOCKMAN (John)] The History of Greece. By way of question

and answer. In three parts... for the use of schools. Printed for R. Dodsley in Pall-Mall, 1743, FIRST EDITION, advertisement leaf discarded, a little minor spotting, pp. [vi], 219, [1], 12mo, later marbled calf, spine gilt, joints and corners expertly renewed, new green morocco lettering piece, good (ESTC T110838) £700

12


The rare first edition of this popular schoolbook, which saw several editions in the eighteenth century. Lockman (1698-1771) was something of a hack, but a successful one - producing a translation of Bayle’s Dictionnaire, among many other translations from the French. ‘Equally successful and more popular compilations by Lockman were his histories of England and of Rome in the form of question and answer, with parallel text in French and English, which were used as school books until long after their author’s death: the copyright of his History of England was worth over £100 in 1787 and its twenty-fifth edition appeared in 1811’ (ODNB). ESTC locates copies at the BL, Bryn Mawr, and Chicago only. (For Lockman’s history of Rome, see item 77.)

21. (Greek History.) [LOCKMAN (John)] The History of Greece. By way of question

and answer. In three parts... for the use of schools. Printed for C. Hitch and L. Hawes [etc.], 1761, lightly browned and spotted, pp. [viii], 219, [1], 8vo, contemporary mottled calf, quite rubbed, a bit of wear to head of spine, red morocco lettering piece partly defective, sound (ESTC T127673) £150

The third surviving edition of this popular school-book. The first appeared in 1743 and the second in 1750 - according to ESTC, a reissue of the sheets of the first with new title-page and advertisement leaf. This edition appears at first to be another reissue but on closer examination has in fact been completely reset. There was also a Dublin printing in 1765, but given that none have edition statements it’s impossible to know how many editions might have been printed and failed to survive, in the nature of schoolbooks like this. ESTC records copies of this one in the BL, Toronto Public, Illinois, and Melbourne only.

22. (Greek History.) The New History of the Trojan Wars, and Troy’s Destruction. In

four books... to which is added, The Siege of Troy, a Tragi-Comedi, as it has been often acted with great applause. Paisley, Printed and Sold by Alex Weir, [1774,] somewhat toned, pp. 135, [1], 24, 12mo, contemporary decorated boards backed with sheep, the spine very rubbed, extremities worn, front flyleaf lost, sound (Not in ESTC) £750

A very rare provincial printing of a popular version of the story of Troy. London editions under this title go back at least as far as 1705 (without the second part) or 1723 (in this particular arrangement). This Paisley printing is unrecorded by ESTC, while Worldcat locates just a copy at the University of Glasgow (but it is not findable in their OPAC). Alexander Weir was active as a bookseller and printer in Paisley between 1759 and 1780.

‘The Siege of Troy’ has its own title-page, which gives the date (the primary title-page has none). This ‘tragi-comedy’, by the playwright and self-promotor Elkanah Settle (1648-1724), was an adaptation of his tragic opera ‘The Virgin Prophetess’ and was first recorded being performed at the Bartholomew Fair in 1707.

13


23. (Greek Language.) ROBERTI (Antonius) Clavis Homerica. Sive lexicon vocabulorum omnium, quae continentur in Homeri Iliade et potissima parte Odysseaeae. Impensis J. Walthoe, J. Knapton, R. Knaplock, J. & B. Sprint, [etc.], 1727, advertisement leaf discarded, ownership inscriptions of Chalres and Edward Hendrick to title-page, along with an ink blot causing a small hole in blank area, a short wormtrack in blank gutter of last 5 leaves, just some minor soiling otherwise, pp. [ii], 340, [64], 36, 8vo, contemporary Cambridge-style panelled calf, a bit rubbed, a touch of wear to extremities, some old scratches, good (ESTC T67151) £200

A pleasant copy of a scarce printing of this perennial student’s reference. ESTC locates 15 copies in 7 locations in the UK and 4 in the USA, plus Berlin. Little is known about the compiler, Antonius Roberti, (his dates are ‘active 17th cent.’), but the work proved enduring, being reprinted in the UK throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

24. (Greek Language.) Verborum Anomalorum in Graeca Lingua Investigatio. In

usum Scholae Regiae Salopiensis. [Shrewsbury:] Prostant velanes apud Josh. Eddowes, 1774, a little minor spotting, pp. v, [i], 41, [1], 8vo, original quarter sheep with marbled boards, rather rubbed and worn, joints cracked but cords holding, ownership inscription of Richard Price, August 31st 1786, to endpaper and title-page, with his bookplate to pastedown, sound (ESTC T114017) £550

A rare and unsophisticated survival of a Greek textbook for the use of Shrewsbury School, the majority of the content being a catalogue of irregular verbs. Joshua Eddowes (1724-1811) was printer and bookseller in Shrewsbury, from 1788 in conjunction with his son William; they also printed a number of significant Welsh publications. This schooltext, naturally rare from heavy use, is located by ESTC in just two copies, in the BL and the Taylorian.

25. (Greek Language.) Eklekta. In usum scholae regiae

Westmonasteriensis. Sumptibus Gulielmi Ginger, ad Insignia Collegii Westmonasteriensis juxta Scholam Regiam, 1781, SOLE EDITION, second leaf of ads bound following title-page instead of at end, a little minor spotting, pp. [iv], 162, [2], 8vo, original linen, a bit marked and rubbed, ownership inscription of William Hughes, alumnus of Felsted School, to front flyleaf (his name repeated with the date 1784 at the rear), very good (ESTC N31508) £600

A rare schoolbook, containing a selection of excerpts from Greek literature. It was produced for the use of students at Westminster School, although this example found its way to the hands of a graduate of Felsted School some 40 miles away (as the crow flies). The original linen binding, often used for students’ texts like this, is unusually and pleasantly well-preserved. ESTC locates only one copy, at the University of Illinois, and Worldcat and COPAC add no more.

14


26. (Greek Language.) CAMDEN (William) Institutio Graecae Grammatices compendiaria. In usum regiae scholae Westmonasteriensis. Exeuderunt S. Buckley, et T. Longman, 1790, title-page within elaborate woodcut border, the final leaf engraved on both sides, some spotting, pp. viii, 196, 8vo, original linen, covered at an early date with a ‘dustjacket’ of rough paper, its flaps folded over the pastedowns and stitched together rather crudely with green thread, the outer surface of the paper now worn, inscription to front panel ‘Jehoshaphat Jones’s Book, Bought at Mr North’s Brecon, May 4th 1802’, this inscription repeated in various forms on the endpapers, (ESTC N8812, 10 copies) £300

A relatively late edition of this classic school Greek grammar, which had been printed for the use of Westminster School since at least 1595, but an interesting copy, demonstrating not only the often-scarce original linen bindings typically used on grammar books of this sort and period, but a home-made, near-contemporary paper covering evidently applied by a (Welsh?) student to protect his book.

27. (Greek Language.) HODGKIN (John) Calligraphia Graeca et Poecilographia

Graeca. Exaravit Johannes Hodgkin, sculpsit H. Ashby. [Two parts bound together.] [n. pr.], 1794- 1807, engraved title-page, dedication, and 17 other engraved plates depicting Greek alphabets, the plates toned and somewhat spotted, letterpress more heavily spotted, ownership inscription of Thomas Jessop to title-page, pp. [8], folio, contemporary quarter red roan, marbled boards, spine lettered vertically in gilt, front binder’s blank with hand-lettered ‘half-title’ reading ‘Poikilographia Ellenika’ in the Greek alphabet, followed by reference to discussion of the work in the Classical Journal, rubbed, some light wear to extremities, ownership stamp of Grace Richardson to endpaper, good (ESTC T112174) £800

The title-page, dedication, first five plates, and two prefatory letters (on letterpress) were printed in 1794; thirteen years later Hodgkin and Ashby produced another prefatory letter and a list of subscribers (on letterpress) plus 12 more plates and published the whole. ‘Hodgkin has left a remarkable record of his skill in handwriting in his Calligraphia Græca (1794), dedicated to Hodgkin’s friend Thomas Young, at whose suggestion it was composed. Young also furnished the gnomic sentences from various authors, which Hodgkin wrote in beautiful Greek characters, and his friend Henry Ashby engraved. A translation by Young of Lear’s curse into Greek iambics, undertaken ‘rogatu viri omnium disertissimi Edmundi Burke’, was also added. The work was not published until 1807, when it appeared together with Pœcilographia Græca,

15


in which nineteen Greek alphabets of various periods are figured, and some seven hundred contractions used in Greek manuscripts are given. Some of the latter were brought to Hodgkin’s notice by the Greek scholar Richard Porson, with whom he had a slight acquaintance’ (ODNB).

ESTC locates copies in 10 locations in Britain, and just the Boston Athenaeum, NYPL, Yale, and Tennessee outside.

28. (Greek Language.) TATE (James) and James Moor. Tracts on the Cases,

Prepositions, and Syntax of the Greek Language. Richmond [Yorkshire]: 1830, title-page inscribed ‘From the author’ (i.e. James Tate), two corrections to the text in the same hand, pp. [iv], xvi, 18, [2], 8vo, disbound £350

A presentation copy of a scarce pamphlet reprinting three papers on Greek prepositions and their use with the oblique cases of nouns, together with a prefatory letter, mostly by James Tate (1771-1843). The first paper, ‘Origin of the Cases’, is reprinted from the British Critic (April 1826) while the second is the text of a talk given by James Moor (1712-1779) at Glasgow in 1764 (Moor was professor of Greek there, and the talk was printed two years later by the Foulis Press), and the third is Tate’s response to Moor, reprinted from the Classical Journal of June 1811.

Tate was master of the grammar school in Richmond, Yorkshire, from 1796 to 1833 (until he was appointed canon of St Paul’s), during which time it became one of the country’s best sources for a classical education. The Richmond students who went on to dominate Cambridge (thirteen received fellowships at Trinity) were called ‘Tate’s invincibles’.

COPAC and Worldcat between them locate 6 copies, at the V&A, BL, Durham, York, NLS, and Yale.

29. Herodian. Historiarum libri octo Graece. Ex recensione Frid. Aug. Wolfii. Textui

subiecta ets argumentorum et annorum notatio et praemissia notitia litteraria. Halle: In libraria Orphanotrophei, 1792, FIRST WOLF EDITION, poor-quality paper browned and a bit spotted, pp. lxxxvi, 292, [2], 8vo, untrimmed in contemporary quarter red straight-grained morocco by Thouvenin, signed ‘R.P. Thouvenin’ at the foot of the spine, red paste-paper boards, spine divided by five raised bands, the second and fourth compartments gilt-lettered direct, the rest with central gilt stamps of harp-shapes formed with a scallop and beasts’ heads tools, marbled endpapers with two additional binders’ blanks (one paper, one vellum), board edges a little worn, leather slightly darkened and rubbed, very good £200

The first edition of the text of the historian Herodian edited by Friedrich August Wolf (1759-1824). Wolf published relatively little (his Prolegomena ad Homerum being the most famous work) while teaching at Halle, and even less after being forced to leave Halle for Berlin by Napoleon’s invading army, but he marked a turning point in classical criticism, dividing the purely philological study from the historical.

The use of vellum binder’s blanks was characteristic of bindings done for the great bibliographer Antoine-Augustin Renouard, though not unique to him.

30. Herodotus. Historia. Ex editione Jacobi Gronovii; tomis novem. [Nine volumes.]

Glasgow: In aedibus Academicis, excudebant Robertus et Andreas Foulis, 1761,

16


FIRST FOULIS EDITION, issue on less-fine paper but with all blanks present and correct (Gaskell says it ‘usually lacks all initial blanks’), pp. [iv], 471, [1]; [ii], 397, [1]; [ii], 349, [1]; [ii], 359, [1]; [ii], 247, [1]; [ii], 259, [1]; [ii], 451, [1]; [ii], 269, [1]; [ii], 301, [1], 8vo, contemporary calf, spines gilt, red and green morocco lettering pieces (about half of them renewed with consummate skill), joints and extremities worn, some leather cracking but all boards firmly held, front endpapers of vol. i renewed, bookplate of G. de Visme in all vols. except the first, good (Gaskell 395; ESTC T146940; Dibdin II 23) £1,500

The Foulis edition of Herodotus, in nine small octavo volumes, which was part of a group of editions designed ‘to render the reading of the Greek Historians more convenient for Gentlemen in active life’. Dibdin calls it ‘a beautiful and accurate performance’ and it received much praise for the fineness and readability of the text (in marked contrast to other ‘pocket’ editions which used illegibly small type), as well as the usual Foulis accuracy.

31. Hesiod. Opera et Dies. Theogonia. Scutum Herculis. Omnia vero cum multis

optimisque expositionibus. [colophon:] Venice: in aedibus Batholomaei Zanetti, 1537, FIRST EDITION WITH SCHOLIA, first text leaf printed in red and black, several woodcuts within text (including one full-page), margins of early leaves dusty and with one or two small tidy repairs, occasional dampstaining to lower margin (particularly at end), gathering [omicron] bound out of order and inside gathering [xi] (the result: [xi]1-2, [omicron]3-8, [omicron]1-2, [xi]3-8), occasional old underlining and notes in red crayon, ff. [iv], CLXXXVIII, 4to, seventeenth-century English calf, boards ruled in gilt and blind with a central decorative gilt lozenge, rebacked preserving old backstrip, a little marked and chipped, gift bookplate of James Yorke, Bishop of Ely, to the see of Ely, good (Adams H470) £3,000

The first edition of Hesiod to print scholia along with the text, in this case the Byzantine commentaries of Tzetzes and Moscholulus. It has long been recognised as one of the most important editions of Hesiod ever produced, of particular accuracy, comprehensiveness, beauty, and influence. ‘This is a truly valuable, if not indispensable, volume in a library of any classical pretension’ (Dibdin). The editor, Vettore Trincavelli, was a physician by trade but also edited early editions of several Greek authors.

It has been conjectured that the full-page woodcut contains the first illustration or mention in Europe of the pedal tilt-hammer as used in milling (see Bennett & Elton, ‘History of Corn Milling’, I.93), although whether it accurately represents anything from the time of Hesiod is of course impossible to prove.

This copy was in the collection of James Yorke (1730-1808), Bishop of Ely, who left his library to Ely Cathedral (as indicated by the bookplate); their shelfmark also appears on the front pastdown. The library of Ely Cathedral was largely dispersed in 1972.

17


32. Hesiod. EPGA KAI HMEPAI di Esiodo traduzione presentata a S.E. ser Giovanni Donado Veneto, Senatore, Capitanio e Vice-Podestà di Padova da Paolo Brazuolo Milizia di Pietro. Padua: per li Conzatti, 1765, woodcut textual diagrams and tables, a touch of light foxing in places, corner of a few leaves lightly dampmarked, a few small tidy repairs to surface abrasions from stamp removal, pp. ccxxix, [5], 4to., contemporary vellum, boards decorated in blind with a large central lozenge and fillet border, spine divided by blind fillets, second compartment stained orange and lettered & bordered in gilt, the remainder with central blind flower tools, red star-design buntpapier pastedowns, slightly soiled, a touch of insect damage to joints, armorial bookplates, good £500

The first edition entirely in Italian of Hesiod’s ‘Works and Days’, translated by Paolo Brazolo Milizia, a member of the Academy of Padua who translated several Greek works into Italian. A contemporary review recommended this edition for those ‘who have the good taste to read Hesiod transated from Greek into Italian, and to see it analysed and illustrated with the finest observations’ (Novelle Letterarie, 1767). In addition to the substantial introduction and analysis there are 23 pages containing tables and unusual diagrams to explicate the structure of the poem. We have been able to trace only three copies in Worldcat: the BNF, British Library, and the National Library of Denmark; there is also a copy in the National Library of Scotland.

33. Homer. Ilias [and] Odyssea. Batrachomyomachia. Hymni xxxii. Eorundem

multiplex lectio. Venice: [in officina Lucaeantonii Iuntae], 1537, woodcut device with initials ‘LA’ on title-pages, some light spotting, title-page and last page dusty in each vol., second gathering in the third section either misbound or misnumbered (but all there), ff. 276; 250, [2], 56, 8vo, late eighteenth-century red morocco, boards bordered with a gilt fillet, spine divided by dotted gilt rules, second and third compartments gilt-lettered direct, the rest with small central flower tools, marbled endpapers, edges red, just a little rubbed, spines slightly sunned, very good (CNCE 22954, 22957; Adams H749; Renouard, Aldine, p. xxix.120) £5,000

The Chatsworth copy of this significant printing of Homer, published in Venice by Lucantonio Giunta. It follows the 1519 Giunta edition, published by Lucantonio’s brother Filippo, but improves on it considerably, thanks to the services of the same editor, Antonio Francini. Francini edited a number of classical titles for Filippo Giunta, but left Florence after 1527 for political reasons. While away he did some work for Lucantonio in Venice, among other duties updating his own work for this edition. In describing the 1519 Homer, Pettas calls it ‘a work [Francini] would considerably improve when he re-edited for Lucantonio in Venice’ (p. 35).

18


Renouard describes this edition as ‘importante’ and says ‘Édition trés rare, et dont la réputation est grande... ’Elle est, à la vérité, bien supérieure à la très médiocre édition Juntine, donnée à Florence en 1519’. Brunet agrees that it is a ‘belle édition, rare et fort recherchée’ (III col. 270), while Hoffman calls it ‘eine schöne, seltene u. geschätze Ausg.’ (II.315). In the history of Greek printings of Homer it is not only important, beautiful, and rare, but also early: following the 1488-9 editio princeps, there were Aldine editions in 1504, 1517, and 1524, plus the 1519 Giunta, and a just few editions elsewhere in Europe (Strasbourg, primarily) in the 1520s and 1530s. Far more common were printings of the Latin translation by Valla.

34. Homer. The Iliads of Homer prince of poets. Never before in any languag truely

translated. With a coment uppon some of his chiefe places; donne according to the Greeke by Geo: Chapman. Printed [by Richard Field] for Nathaniel Butter, [1611,] FIRST COMPLETE EDITION IN ENGLISH, title-page engraved (with some expert repair work around the outer edges, and the inner edge just disappearing into the gutter), initial blank discarded but final blank present, variant additional leaves of sonnets bound in prelims instead of at end, some dustsoiling and marks, pp. [xxviii], 341, [11], [with:] Homer. Homer’s Odysses. Translated according to ye Greeke. By Geo: Chapman. Imprinted at London by Rich: Field, for Nathaniell Butter, [1615,] FIRST COMPLETE EDITION IN ENGLISH, title-page engraved (with some expert repair work around the edges), initial and final blanks discarded, leaf Y2 slightly shorter and probably supplied, a little marginal worming in second half expertly repaired (occasionally touching a letter with no significant loss), pp. [x], 376, [2], [with:]Homer. The Crowne of all Homers Worckes Batrachomyomachia or the Battaile of Frogs and Mise. His Hymn’s - and - Epigrams translated according to ye originall by George Chapman. Printed by Iohn Bill, his Maiesties Printer, [1624,] FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH, title-page engraved (and in the earlier state with ‘Worckes’ instead of ‘Workes’), initial blank discarded, pp. [x], 143, 148-179, [1], 201-207, [5], folio, the three volumes washed and pressed in uniform nineteenth-century red morocco by Riviere, boards with central lozenge shape made of wreaths and flowers and containing a circular frame, blocked in gilt, spines elabroately gilt in compartments, apart from the second and third which are lettered in gilt direct, marbled endpapers, edges gilt, turn-ins also elaborately gilt, armorial bookplate of Thomas Gaisford, leather booklabel of ‘Terry’ and small booklabel of J.O. Edwards to front pastedowns, modern bookplate to flyleaf, very good (ESTC S119234, S118235, S119240; Pforzheimer 169, 170, 165; Palmer p. 56-8) £40,000

19


The first complete editions of Chapman’s translations of each of the major works attributed to Homer, in a uniform set finely bound, probably for Thomas Gaisford, Dean of Christ Church. Parts of the Iliad had been published before, but the whole work first appeared around 1611 (ESTC adds question marks to all the dates) in this form; the Odyssey similarly saw publication of the first half around 1614 before the version here appeared, containing a reissue of the sheets plus the newly-printed second half; the Batrachomyomachia and Hymns are a simpler matter, with this being their first appearance (of around 1624) full stop. The Iliad contains the unsigned bifolium with sonnets to Viscounts Cranborne and Rochester and Sir Edward Philips, which Pforzheimer describes as ‘a great rarity, only about six copies having it can be traced’.

The bindings are signed ‘Bound by Riviere’ and were probably produced somewhere around 1840-1850, which matches with the ownership of Thomas Gaisford (1779-1855), classical scholar and dean of Christ Church, Oxford. In the fashion of the time the leaves have been washed and pressed, and repairs performed with consumate skill. Later owners include an unidentified ‘Terry’ and noted collector of English verse J.O. Edwards.

35. Homer. The Odyssey of Homer. Translated by Alexander Pope. In two volumes.

Printed for John Bell, 1774, some light spotting, later ownership inscription of Thomas Hutchinson of St John’s College to title-pages (possibly the vicar of Kimbolton and nephew of William Wordsworth), pp. [iv], 263, [1]; [iv], 236, 8vo, contemporary sprinkled sheep, rubbed and worn, red and green morocco lettering pieces to vol. i (lost from vol. ii), joints cracking, sound (ESTC N69885) £400

A rare printing of Pope’s Odyssey, with just two copies recorded in ESTC, at UPenn and Yale. An Iliad appeared separately in the same year (ESTC T154261) and is slightly less rare. The publisher, John Bell, is credited with driving the end of the long ‘s’ in typography, helped by the popularity of his large series (109 volumes of the Poets of Great Britain from 1777 to 1782, and 21 volumes of British Theatre from 1776 to 1778), but this slightly earlier work retains a more traditional style, long ‘s’ and all.

36. Homer. Ilias, Graece et Latine. Annotationes in usum serenissimi principis

Gulielmi Augusti, Ducis de Cumberland, &c. Regio Jussu scripsit atque edidit Samuel Clarke, S.T.P. Editio undecima. Impensis J. F. & C. Rivington [et al.], 1790, 2 folding engraved maps, a little minor spotting, ownership inscriptions pp. [viii], 510; 510, [16], 8vo, contemporary biscuit calf, boards bordered with a gilt fillet, spines divided by raised bands between gilt fillets, green morocco lettering pieces, extremities rubbed, slight wear to foot of vol. i spine, good (ESTC N8366) £100

20


A pleasant copy of a later edition of the Iliad as edited by the philosopher Samuel Clarke (1675-1729), a project which had been left incomplete at his death and was finished by his son. The Iliad was first published in 1729-32 as a quarto, which Dibdin said ‘has long been the most popular edition of Homer, and will always be admired by the critic and student....’. ESTC locates only two copies in the UK (Eton and the NT), with 14 more outside.

37. Homer. Ilias kai Odysseia. [Four volumes.] Oxonia: ex Ergasteriou

Typographikou Akademias, 1800, 5 engraved plates (two portrait busts of Homer, a portrait each of Thomas and Lord Grenville, and a plate depicting a column), plates spotted, some light offsetting to text, pp. viii, 396; [vi], 421, [3, blank]; [vi], 328; [vi], 314, [2], 82, 4to, contemporary red morocco, boards with central gilt stamp of the arms of the Earl of Cawdor, spines lettered in gilt, red morocco doublures with a border of fourteen gilt fillets, edges gilt on the rough, spines sunned, a touch of rubbing to extremities, doublures offset onto endpapers and outermost leaves of each vol., very good (ESTC T90247, listing no LP copies outside the UK; Dibdin II 61-2) £12,000

One of the rare and spectacular large-paper copies of the Grenville Homer, an edition which rivals the Foulis edition in its scale and bibliophilic attractions. Only 25 copies were printed, and a number of these were used as presentation copies - including this one. The editors, William Wyndham, Lord Grenville, and his brother Thomas Grenville, have inscribed an initial blank ‘From the Two Old Brothers ... To their excellent Friend John Frederick Earl of Cawdor, 1829’ (in Thomas’s hand). Tipped in are two letters, one from Lord Grenville and one from Thomas, presenting the book to Lord Cawdor for his library at Stackpole Court.

At the time of presentation Lord Grenville was retired from politics (he had been foreign secretary when the book was published, resigning with Pitt’s government before ending up as Prime Minister himself in 1806), while his elder brother Thomas was also relaxing, having since 1818 ‘lived in the company of his friends and his books, and devoted himself to the formation of his splendid library’ (ODNB), which was

21


left to the British Museum after his death in 1846. Lord Cawdor was Lord Lieutenant of Carmarthenshire at this time.

‘This is the most critical edition of Homer which the university of Oxford has published... the work is printed in a handsome Greek type, with very few contractions; and the Large Paper copies are enriched with three very beautiful engravings, two of the busts of Homer and the third an elegant pillar with escutcheons of the Grenville arms’ (Dibdin). This copy also has portraits of Thomas and Lord Grenville. The final section of the fourth volume contains 82 pages of readings provided by Richard Porson from a collation of the Harleian manuscript; in the small-paper copies this section is different setting of type, filling 88 pages.

‘At the mention of the large paper Grenville Homer, where is the classical Bibliomaniac who does not sigh at his inability, or want of opportunity, to possess it? -- and, in proportion, rejoice extravagantly on its possession?’ (Dibdin, Library Companion, p. 617).

38. Homer. Ilias cum brevi annotatione curante C.G. Heyne. [Two vols.] [With:]

Odyssea cum scholiis veteribus. Accedunt Batrachomyomachia, Hymni, Fragmenta. [Two vols.] [And:] C. G. Heynii Excursus in Homerum. Accedunt Godofredi Hermanni Dissertationes de legibus quibusdam subtilioribus sermonis Homerici. [Together 5 vols.] Oxford: e typographeo Clarendoniano, 1821-1827, LARGE PAPER COPIES (252mm tall), some spotting and foxing, pp. x, 569, [1], 58; 516; xx, 483, [1]; [ii], 406, 16, [40]; v, [i], 335, [1], large 8vo, uniformly bound in later vellum over wooden boards, spines lettered in black and red, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt and others untrimmed, vellum soiled, front boards with gift inscription to initial blank in vol. i, very good £250

Heyne’s Iliad was first printed in 1802 and is here reprinted for the Oxford student market, along with the Odyssey and minor poems, all accompanied by Greek scholia as well as the Latin notes. Also included is the first printing of Heyne’s posthumous ‘Excursus’, reportedly gathered and edited by Thomas Gaisford (1779-1855), Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford and later dean of Christ Church, although his name appears nowhere in it.

All of the volumes in this set are on larger and thicker paper than ordinary copies and must be one of a relatively small number of copies thus. The first volume of the Iliad is dated 1822 (as is Heyne’s Excursus), the second 1821; both volumes of the Odyssey are 1827.

39. Homer. The Odyssey of Homer. Translated by Alexander

Pope, Esq. Printed for C. and J. Rivington [and 16 other firms], 1823, additional engraved title-page and frontispiece, pp. 426, [2], 12mo, untrimmed in original printed boards, front board replicating the title-page and rear board listing the series of ‘British Classics’, backstrip with ‘Price 4s. Bds’ at foot, rubbed, some wear to extremities, ownership inscription of H. Murray dated 1844 to front pastedown, good £150

Scarce in the original boards.

22


40. Homer. Ilias [and] Odysseia. Gulielmus Pickering, 1831, engraved frontispiece in vol. i (dampmarked, as often), a bit of minor spotting elsewhere, pp. [ii], 351, [1]; [ii], 272, 32mo, contemporary stiff vellum, boards bordered with a gilt fillet, red morocco lettering pieces, marbled endpapers, labels a bit chipped, some cracking to hinges and boards splayed outward slightly, good £100

The last of the Diamond Classics to be printed, in the smallest Greek type (4.5pt) ever produced - of surprising legibility.

41. Horace. Cum Commentariis & Enarrationibus commentatoris veteris, et

Iacobi Cruquii Messenii... accedunt, Iani Dousae Nordovicis in eundem commentariolus. [Antwerp:] Ex officina Plantiniana Raphelengii, 1611, paper toned, some spotting, gift inscription dated 1643 (to Ludovicus Chimaer from G. van Alphen) and ownership inscription dated 1669 on verso of title-page, pp. [xvi], 695, [17], 4to, contemporary vellum, board fore-edges overlapping, spine lettered in ink, soiled and a bit ruckled, hinges cracking but sound, rear flyleaf removed, armorial bookplate of Rich. Palmer, Esq., good (Dibdin II 96) £500

The final Plantin edition of Horace edited by the Flemish scholar Jacob Cruucke (ante 1520-1584), expanded by Jan Dousa the elder (1545-1604). The first Cruucke edition was 1578, and it was several times reprinted before the end of the century, with Dousa’s notes first being added in 1597. Cruucke’s work has particular value (as recognised by Bentley, among others) because he first detected certain errors in the antique commentaries, and also was able to collate several manuscripts in Ghent which represented an older textual tradition but were destroyed in the 1560s.

‘“Cruquius”, says Dr. Harwood, “is deservedly esteemed one of the best commentators on Horace. Consult the notes in these editions on any of the difficult passages in Horace, and you will have your doubts satisfactorily solved.”... Of the above editions, the Antwerp one of 1611 is the most valuable and rare: but it is a sorrily printed book’ (Dibdin).

42. Horace. Ad nuperam Richardi Bentleii editionem accurate expressus. Notas

addidit Thomas Bentleius, A.B. Collegii S. Trinitatis apud Cantabrigienses Alumnus. Cambridge: Typis Academicis. Impensis Cornelii Crownfield, 1713, a bit of light browning, some marginal annotations (see below), pp. [xvi], 275, [1], 8vo, contemporary black morocco, boards panelled in gilt and blind, spine divided by raised bands, a flower head tool in gilt to each compartment, marbled endpapers, bound with half a dozen additional binder’s blanks at front and rear (the last at the front excised), these filled closely with manuscript notes, joints and edges rubbed, small crack to foot of rear joint, bookplate of William Michael Collett, ownership inscription to half-title of Woodthorpe Scholefield Collett (struck through), another of C.S. Collett, Grammar School, Ipswich, to binder’s blank, very good (ESTC T46156) £900

Thomas Bentley (1690-1742) was the nephew of the great scholar Richard Bentley. ‘In 1713 he published a small edition of Horace, which was in fact an annotated edition of a text by his uncle Richard, dedicated to Lord Harley, son of the earl of Oxford. Alexander Pope, in an offensive note to the edition of 1735, referred to this dedication, and declared that a couplet in the Dunciad (2.205–6), typically understood to refer to the uncle, actually applied to Thomas. “Bentley his mouth with classic flatt’ry opes /

23


And the puff’d orator bursts out in tropes”’ (ODNB).

In that context is is perhaps more significant that an early reader of this copy has been comparing it against Pope, writing his name against two of the Sermones and four Epistles. But these are likely to be the notes of a schoolboy: the Epistola ad Augustum is also divided into four sections by the same hand in a way that suggests a programme of reading, and the other notes are mostly recordings of the supposed date of composition (in years AUC) and the poet’s age at that time. The additional annotated endpapers are similarly indicative of use in study, and comprise several sections, giving a valuable picture of educational methods: 1. the family history of the Roman emperors; 2. a transcription of selections from the Odes and Carmen Saeculare according to the ‘chronological’ order suggested by Noel-Etienne Sanadon in his 1728 French translation; 3. notes on the organisation of the Roman military and Latin terms for relations and ages; 4. a list of events and significant births, dated three ways (AUC, years from Horace’s birth, and Horace’s age); and 5. notes on Roman reckoning and money.

The former owners are a little bit tricky to place. Woodthorpe Scholefield Collett must be the Rev. of that name (1826-1913), a fellow of Clare College and registered Lunatic at Harpenden Hall near St Albans, but it has not been possible to connect him definitively to William Michael Collett or the numerous Colletts in Ipswich.

43. Horace. Quinti Horatii Flacci Opera. [2 volumes.] Aeneis tabulis incidit Iohannes

Pine. 1733-37, second impression (with mistake on p.108 corrected), each page entirely engraved, some light spotting and toning, pp. [xxxii], 176, [2], [177]-264, [2]; [xxiv], 48, [2], [49]-94, [2], [95]-152, [2], [153]-172, [2], [173]-191, [15], 8vo, nineteenth-century blue dark blue roan, boards bordered in gilt and blind, spines with raised bands, compartments panelled in gilt and lettered direct, yellow chalked endpapers, edges gilt, spines sunned and rubbed, a touch of wear to extremities, good (ESTC T46226; Dibdin II 108; Moss II 23-4; Schweiger II 408; Brunet III 320; Ray p. 3; Riedel A162; Mills 506; Neuhaus p. 102) £400

A tour-de-force of English engraving by the best engraver of the time, printed entirely without type. John Pine (1690-1756) was a contemporary and friend of Hogarth (who painted his portrait), and while he never had the wider talent or success that Hogarth did, he was the better engraver. He also well understood the value of pre-publication subscriptions, and ‘the subscription list printed at the beginning of the book must be one of the most illustrious of its kind, naming the great and the good from every corner of Europe, including the kings of England, Spain, and Portugal’ (ODNB). (See item 96 for Pine’s Virgil.)

24


44. Horace. Epistolae ad Pisones, et Augustum: With an English commentary and notes. To which are added two dissertations... In two volumes. The second edition, corrected and enlarged. [Two vols.] Printed for W. Thurlbourne, 1753, a few pencil corrections in the text, stamps of the Jesuit library at Milltown Park to title-pages, pp. [vi], xvi, 280, [2]; xv, [i], 231, [25], 8vo, contemporary mid-brown calf, labels lost from spines, a little rubbing to extremities, short cracks and a spot of insect damage to heads of joints, good (ESTC T46145) £150

One of 750 copies of the second edition (the first was 1749; a 1751 edition contained only the Epistola ad Augustum). Richard Hurd (1720-1808) was a young priest moving in literary circles at the time of his classical work, and later rose to be bishop of Worcester. ‘How many editions, translations, and imitations of Horace could the London public be expected to buy in any year? Hurd was the exception to such gloomy predictions, for his editions received critical acclaim and sold relatively well’ (Eddy, ‘Richard Hurd’s Editions of Horace’, Studies in Bibliography, vol. 48, p. 165).

45. Horace. The Works of Horace, translated literally into English prose; for the use

of those who are desirous of acquiring or recovering a competent knowledge of the Latin language. By C. Smart, A.M. Edinburgh: Printed for J. Dickson, Exchange, and James Duncan, Glasgow, 1777, somewhat spotted and soiled, pp. [ii], 333, [1]; iv, [ii], 423, [1], 18mo, contemporary sheep, rubbed and worn, lettering pieces lost, joints cracking, spine of vol. cracking and one compartment partly defective, front flyleaves excised, the remaining endpapers with various scribbles and inscriptions in ink and pencil (including, most obviously, Andrew Brown of Egypt Park in Paisley, dated 1842), sound (ESTC T224747) £200

A rare Scottish printing of Smart’s translation, recorded in ESTC in the BL only. A variant, published by W. Gordon, W. Creech, and C. Elliot (but with J. Dickson’s imprint in vol. ii), is slightly more common, with ESTC listing NLS only in the UK, plus William and Mary, McMaster, York University (Ontario) and Canterbury (New Zealand).

46. Horace. Carmina. Curavit Ieremias Iacobus Oberlinus Philosophiae Prof.

Strasbourg: Typis et sumtu Rollandi et Jacobi. Nunc prostant apud Georgium Treuttel, 1788, a few leaves somewhat mottled and lightly browned, occasional spotting elsewhere, half-title a bit soiled, pp. vii, [i], 380, 4to, contemporary red straight-grained morocco, boards bordered with a decorative gilt roll, spine divided by double gilt fillets, circular gilt tools to compartments, marbled endpapers, front joint repaired, hinges relined with morocco, old scratches and marks to boards, good (Mills 804; Reidel Horatiana A239; Dibdin II 114; Moss II 31) £450

A ‘splendid and correct’ edition of Horace by Jeremie Jacques Oberlin (1735-1806), elder brother of the educationalist for whom Oberlin College in Ohio is named. ‘In the compilation of this edition, Oberlin collated four Strasburgh MSS. which are supposed to be very ancient, the various readings of which are inserted at the end of the volume’ (Moss).

47. Horace. Opera, cum scholiis veteribus castigavit, et notis illustravit Gulielmus

Baxterus. Varias lectiones et observationes addidit Jo. Matthias Gesnerus; quibus et suas adspersit Jo. Carolus Zeunius. Editio nova, priore emendatior. Glasgow:

25


In Aedibus Academicis, Excudebat Jacobus Mundell, 1796, some light foxing, Jesuit library stamp of Milltown Park to title-page, ownership inscription of C.J. Tindal, Trinity College, 1838, to initial blank, pp. xxx, [2, blank], 575, [1], 8vo, contemporary straight-grained red morocco, boards bordered with a single gilt fillet, spine divided by a single gilt fillet, gilt crest in top compartment, title lettered direct in second and place and date at foot, spine a bit darkened, a few tiny marks here and there, marbled endpapers, a.e.g. with a thin roll of gauffering near the front and back, hinge cracking a little at title-page and headband partly loose, label removed from front pastedown, good (ESTC T46147; Riedel A251; Mills 850) £500

An attractively printed and somewhat scarce edition, in a binding reminiscent of Roger Payne’s most restrained work - although unlikely to be actually by him, given the date. We have not been able to identify the gilt crest at the top of the spine. The same setting of type was also imposed in a quarto format.

48. Horace. Opera, cum scholiis veteribus castigavit, et notis illustravit, Gulielmus

Baxterus; varias lectiones et observationes addidit Jo. Matthias Gesnerus; quibus et suas adspersit Jo. Carolus Zeunius... editio nova, prioribus emendatior. Edinburgh: Ex Prelo Academico... apud Mundell, Doig, et Stevenson, 1806, pp. xxx, 575, [1], 4to, contemporary red straight-grained morocco, boards bordered in gilt and blind enclosing a further frame combining a rectangle and lozenge shape, spine lettered in gilt and also decorated in gilt and blind, marbled endpapers, edges gilt and minimally gauffered, a bit rubbed at joints and extremities, a few small marks, bookplates and ownership inscription of Chandos Leigh, very good £550

Gesner’s Horace was often reprinted, though rarely as elegantly as this edition from the Edinburgh academic press. Copies were imposed in both octavo and quarto, with the copies in this larger format often being described as on ‘large paper’. Chandos Leigh (1791-1850), whose signature adorns the title-page and whose bookplate is upside down on the rear pastedown (while his family plate mirrors it at the front), was a contemporary of Byron’s and a minor poet in his own right, though it was his family connections that led to his being made Lord Leigh of Stoneleigh in 1839.

26


49. (Horace.) CUNNINGHAM (Alexander) Animadversiones, in Richardi Bentleii notas et emendationes ad Q. Horatium Flaccum. Apud Fratres Vaillant, et N. Prevost, 1721, title-page printed in red and black, a touch of faint browning to margins, pp. [vi], 693, [3], 8vo, contemporary sprinkled calf, spine with five raised bands, red morocco lettering piece, the other compartments with a central gilt decoration of star and acorn tools, all edges sprinkled red, old paper shelfmark labels at head and tail of spine, Macclesfield bookplate and embossment, joints rubbed, head of spine slightly worn, good (ESTC T21209) £120

Cunningham (c.1655-1730), a Scottish jurist resident in the Low Countries, disagreed with Bentley’s rash but brilliant approach to Horace’s text and instead ‘formulated rules for editing ancient texts, reflecting his work on the Corpus juris civilis, and stressing the significance of the study of manuscripts and early editions’ (ODNB). Cunningham had the advantage of leisure time and a substantial private library and the result was a conservative text of Horace printed at the Hague and, in the same year, this collection of notes on Bentley’s edition. The book is ‘one continued objurgation, delivered in dry and bitter terms, unvaried by the least humour or playfulness’ (Monk), but is also scrupulous and fair, accepting Bentley’s readings in many places.

50. Juvenal. Satirarum libri V. Sulpiciae Satira. Nova editio. Cura Nicolai Rigaltii.

Paris: Ex officina Rob. Stephani, 1616, browned and spotted, pp. [xl], 126, [2], [bound with:]Persius. [Satirae.] Paris: Ex typographia Rob. Stephani, 1614, browned and spotted, pp. 23, [1], 12mo, eighteenth-century French red morocco, boards bordered with a triple gilt fillet, spine divided by a double gilt fillet with central flower tools, blue endpapers, leather darkened around the edges, a touch of wear to corners and spine ends, circular bookplate of the ‘Hypte. de Montcalm’, good (Renouard 202.1 & 202.9) £250

The first edition of Juvenal edited by the French Jesuit scholar Nicholas Rigault (1577-1654), bound, as often, with the Persius published by Robert Estienne III two years previously. Rigault, who supplies an important preface, joined the scholarly debate over Roman verse satire after Casaubon and Heinsius had already weighed in with their editions of Persius and Horace respectively. ‘Younger and less famous, [Rigault] was no less quick-witted. He deserves a place in the history of satiric theory, for he is the first to accept fully the implications of, and then put to use, Casaubon’s etymology of satire. He clears the way for another set of critera by which the form could be judged’ (Carnochan, Lemuel Gulliver’s Mirror for Man’, p. 24).

‘It is believed that Robert III, the son of Robert II and Denyse Barbé, was never himself a printer, but that he merely lent the use of his famous name to various printers active at the sign of the Olive Tree’ (Schreiber).

51. Juvenal. The Satires of Juvenal Translated: with explanatory and classical

notes, relating to the laws and customs of the Greeks and Romans. Printed for J. Nicholson, in Cambridge, 1777, some light soiling and toning, frequent underlining and marginal notes in an early hand (see below), pp. xvi, 416, 8vo, later mottled calf, rebacked preserving original endpapers, spine gilt (somewhat crudely), armorial bookplate of Thomas Hesketh and shelfmark label of the Easton Neston library, good (ESTC T123506) £400

27


A later edition of Thomas Sheridan’s Juvenal, first published in 1739. Sheridan (1687-1738), an Irish schoolmaster, also translated Sophocles and Tasso, but satire suited him well - he was a contemporary and friend of Swift, with whom he regularly crossed puns. An early owner of this copy was evidently unaware of Sheridan’s authorship, and has added ‘By Dunstan’ to the title-page, possibly thinking of Samuel Dunster, who translated Horace’s satires.

The same owner has been through the text adding summaries at the beginning of each satire, as well as frequent underlining, occasional corrections in the text (both Latin and English), and notes on the meaning and context of some of the Latin words and phrases, including parallels to contemporary culture: Venetian blinds, exercise equipment, royal levées, and the living conditions of highlanders are all mentioned, while Shakespeare and Congreve are quoted along with Ovid, Virgil, Plautus, and Sallust. Several times the annotator makes mention of the West Indies Colonies and practices there (including a long paragraph on facial cosmetics appended to a line in Satire II). The style is knowing and arch: next to the line in Satire III ‘Res hodie minor est...’ (‘The evil grows worse every day, and tomorrow will file off something from the little that is left’, in this translation) the annotator has added ‘an admirable picture of England in 1779’.

52. Juvenal & Persius. Satyrae, ad optimorum exemplarium fidem recensitae.

Dublin: ex officina Georgii Grierson, 1728, engraved frontispiece, title-page in red and black, a touch of faint spotting, pp. [ii], xiv, [6], 120 [i.e. 132], 12mo, contemporary calf, spine with four raised bands, red morocco lettering piece, a bit marked, tiny chips to tail of spine, very good (ESTC T92132) £120

One of the series of ‘Grierson’s Classics’, published by George Grierson at Dublin and edited by his wife Constantia (née Crawley), an associate of Dean Swift (he described her as ‘a very good Greek and Latin Scholar’) and Thomas Sheridan. Constantia was a remarkable figure, who was born of ‘poor, illiterate country people’, was studying obstetrics at age 18, and then began editing classical texts for Grierson in 1724 before marrying him in 1726. In 1730 the couple petitioned Parliament and earned a patent as king’s printer in Ireland.

53. Juvenal & Persius. Satyrae. Birmingham: Typis Johannis Baskerville, 1761, cancel

leaves E2, K4, V4, Z3, and gatherings Ee-Gg printed on poorer quality paper and dampmarked in upper margin and lower forecorner, just a little minor spotting elsewhere, pp. 240, 4to, nineteenth-century half black calf, marbled boards and endpapers, spine with raised bands, lettered direct in gilt, extremities rubbed, a little wear, good (ESTC T92123; Gaskell 15) £250

Baskerville’s first classical quarto after his Virgil, and still a decade in advance of the series he produced in 1772-3. Gaskell notes that the poorer paper of the cancellantia and final gatherings is ‘now stained badly in purplish patches’, but this copy shows more typical brownish foxing on those leaves. They were also clearly touched by damp before being bound in, since the dampmarks match across the cancels but do not affect the other leaves.

28


54. Juvenal & Persius. Satyrae. Tabulis Aeneis illustravit, et notas variorum selectas, suasque addidit G.S. Cambridge: Prostant venales Londini, apud Gul. Sandby, 1763, 15 engraved plates (including frontispiece), light spotting, pp. [xii], 229, [1], 8vo, contemporary mid-brown calf, boards bordered with a gilt roll, gilt in compartments, lettering piece in second compartment (rather chipped), boards with later Chancellor’s Prize stamp in blind (i.e. the arms of Baron Grenville as chancellor of Oxford), marbled endpapers, extremities rubbed, head of spine chipped, front joint cracking but strong, armorial bookplate of Revd Charles Lyttelton, good (ESTC T123561) £250

Between 1749 and 1763 William Sandby produced editions of several Latin authors, all elegantly printed and illustrated with engraved plates showing antiques, coins, medallions, etc. that are meant to support passages in the text; the Horace was compared favourably to Pine’s wholly engraved edition. The Juvenal was one of his last productions. (For other Sandby editions, see items 87 and 93.)

55. (Latin Language.) [LILY (William)] A Shorte Introduction of Grammar, generally

to be used. Compiled and set forth for the bringing up of all those that intend to attaine the knowledge of the Latine Tongue. Printed by Bonham Norton, 1630, title-page dusty, a dampmark to fore-corners, some other spots and stains, repairs to blank corners of title-page and also to just some corner-tips of next two and last six leaves, contemporary ownership inscription of William Houghton to title-page and third leaf, ff. [26], 4to, sometime stitched into limp wrappers reusing a parchment manuscript of the sixteenth century, the parchment somewhat unevenly trimmed around the edges and externally dust-soiled, sound (ESTC S93489; STC (2nd ed.), 15627.9) £1,500

Lily’s grammar, partly printed and variously revised through the first half of the sixteenth century, settled into its lasting printed form in the 1540s, when it was established as the authorised Latin grammar by royal proclamation; it remained the standard until 1758, when a modified version under the name ‘Eton Latin Grammar’ took its place. As a standard text it was frequently reprinted (dozens of editions before 1650) but almost all are rare, and this quarto is no exception. In the same year the same printer produced a fuller octavo edition which survives in a handful of copies; this quarto, containing only the English-language Latin grammar section (the ‘shorte introduction’; the larger portion being the ‘Brevissima institutio’), is traced only in ‘Private collections’ by ESTC, without full details of title or pagination. STC elaborates: the copy is known from ‘Maggs, Mercurius Britannicus No. 10 (Jan. 1934), item 1179 (cannot now be traced). This may be the copy examined at some time by F.S. Ferguson and recorded as collating A-F4 G2, like 15628.5’ – that STC record being the 1632 edition, St Paul’s School only in ESTC. This copy (quite possibly the same copy sold by Maggs and seen by Ferguson) confirms that collation.

29


56. Livy. Morceaux choisis de Tite-Live, traduits en François, Pour l’usage des Classes Supérieures, par M. l’Abbé Paul. [2 vols.] Marseille: Chez Jean Mossy, 1781, text (including title-pages) on facing pages of Latin and French, small wormhole to lower blank margin throughout vol. i and in second half of vol. ii (never touching text), pp. xv, [i], 303, [5]; [iv], 366, [2], 8vo, contemporary marbled sheep, spines divided by decorative gilt rolls, yellow and green lettering pieces, labels a bit rubbed, slight wear to headcaps, a little unobtrusive surface damage to spine of vol. i, very good £400

A nice and fresh copy of a rare school-book edition of Livy by the Jesuit schoolteacher Armand-Laurent Paul (1740-1809). Worldcat locates only three copies, in the BNF, Augsburg, and Stanford.

57. Lucan. Pharsalia. Cum notis Hugonis Grotii et Richardi Bentleii. [Twickenham:]

Strawberry-Hill, 1760, engraved vignette on title-page and dedication, prelims in the first state, some light spotting, pp. [vi], 525, [1], 4to, contemporary calf, rebacked and recornered in a slightly different shade, preserving original lettering piece, spine gilt in compartments, marbled endpapers preserved, old leather scratched, bookplate of the Earl of Guildford to front pastedown, good (ESTC T112686; Hazen 7) £500

Lucan’s epic poem as ‘edited’ by Richard Cumberland, Richard Bentley’s grandson, whose name follows the dedication; it prints for the first time notes by his famous grandfather. In fact, as Walpole complained, ‘the MS of the notes, I believe, was in Cumberland’s possession, who gave it to his uncle [i.e. Richard Bentley, the scholar’s son] for the latter’s benefit, and for the latter’s benefit I printed it at Strawberry Hill, entirely at my own expense... Mr. Bentley alone selected and revised the notes, and he and I revised the proof-sheets; and as Mr. Bentley did not choose, for reasons best known to himself, or to his nephew, to appear the editor, Cumberland’s name was affixed to the dedication, which, with the gift of the MS, entitled him, I suppose to the right of calling it his publication’ (quot. in Hazen).

Hazen himself adds: ‘This volume is perhaps the most distinguished piece of printing to come from the Press at Strawberry Hill.’

58. Lucian of Samosata. Dialogorum selectorum libri duo Graecolatini. Accesserunt

Theognidis Megarensis sententiae Elegiacae, itidem graecolatinae. Ingolstadt: Ex officina typographica Adami Sartorii, 1598, final blank discarded, errata leaf present, top margin of last few leaves worn (with loss to running title), title-page dustsoiled and a bit frayed at fore-margin, small paperflaw in leaf y4 affecting a few characters, occasional marginal annotations in Latin and Greek in an early hand, gathering v bound out of order (1, 5-6, 2-3, 7-8, 4), pp. [iii], 404 (recte 406), [5], 8vo, contemporary dark sheep, paper label to spine, rubbed and scratched, some wear to joints, the leather since treated to conserve it, various inscriptions in English, Latin, and Greek to front endpapers and title-page (see below), sound (VD16 L 2946; not in Adams) £750

30


A scarce edition of selected dialogues by Lucian of Samosata, printed by Adam Sartorius, who succeeded his father David as printer to the Jesuit university in Ingolstadt. David had first printed the selection in 1593; Adam took over a few years later and produced this edition followed by two more in 1605 and 1608. Despite Sartorius’s close ties to the university in Ingolstadt, this copy made its way fairly early on to Britain; an early inscription on the title-page reads ‘Ja: Carnegy, dono Mrs Fodall[?]’, and the book can next definitively be placed at Duns Castle, in the ownership of Andrew Baxter (1686-1750), then in the hands of his son Alexander, and after that with Thomas Mein of Lessudden (or St Boswell’s), about 20 miles from Duns Castle. Each of these has left an ownership inscription of some form (Alexander Baxter in the Greek alphabet) on the endpapers or a blank, among a few pen trials and one additional struck-through inscription.

Andrew Baxter came to Duns Castle in 1719, in the employ of the Hays of Drumelzier, and remained for a number of years serving the family in various capacities. While there he corresponded with Henry Home about Newton, and later established himself as a metaphysician and ‘one of Britain’s leading exponents of Newtonian metaphysics’ (ODNB). The annotations in the text are probably in an earlier hand than his.

59. Lucretius. De Rerum Natura libri sex. A Dionysio Lambino...locis

innumerabilibus ex auctoritate quinque codicum manuscriptorum emendati... Paris: In Guilielmi Rouillij, et Philippi G. Rouillij Nep. 1563, several library-stamps to title-page, also a struck-through early inscription, some light spotting and browning, one leaf with a substantial manuscript note in an early hand, pp. [xxiv], 559, 4to., eighteenth-century vellum boards, spine divided by raised bands, second compartment gilt-lettered direct, a scattering of wormholes to backstrip, the vellum partly defective in lower compartment, the worn area partly covered by a library shelfmark label, front hinge splitting at title-page, library label (with ‘withdrawn’ stamp) to front pastedown, endpapers treated (to - successfully - stop the worming coming through from the covers), sound (Gordon 102; Adams L1659; Schweiger I 574; Dibdin II 199; Moss II 279; Ebert/Brown 12438) £900

The first edition of Lucretius edited by Denis Lambin (1520-1572), among the most important editors of that author, and only the second to add a commentary (after Pius in 1511): ‘the superiority of his over all preceding texts can scarcely be exaggerated...for nearly three centuries his remained the standard text.’ Furthermore, ‘his copious explanatory and illustrative commentary...calls for unqualified eulogy, and has remained down to the present day [i.e. 1864] the great original storehouse, from which all have borrowed who have done anything of value for the elucidation of their author’ (Munro). Some copies have the date 1564 on the title; the book was in the press over the new year and copies with varying dates are identical in all other respects.

60. Lucretius. De Rerum Natura libri sex. Birmingham: Typis Johannis Baskerville,

1772, light age-toning, a few marginal pencil marks, pp. [ii], 131, 128-214, 12mo, contemporary calf, spine divided by gilt fillets, red morocco lettering piece, other compartments with central gilt flower tools, rubbed, front joint cracking but strong, bookplate of Charles Wordsworth (covering an earlier bookplate), good (ESTC T50366; Gaskell 50; Gordon 20A) £150

This copy belonged to Charles Wordsworth (1806-1892), classical scholar, educator, and Bishop of St Andrews.

31


61. Lucretius. De Rerum Natura libros sex, ad exemplarium mss. fidem recensitos, longe emendatiores reddidit, commentariis perpetuis illustravit, indicibus instruxit; et cum animadversionibus Ricardi Bentleii. Impensis editoris, typis A. Hamilton, 1796-7, FIRST WAKEFIELD EDITION, LARGE PAPER COPY, engraved frontispiece, a little spotting and dustsoiling here and there, pp. [viii], xxxiv, [2], 382, [2, blank]; [xii], 404, [4]; [xii], 396, [100], tall 4to, contemporary vellum, boards bordered with a gilt roll and with central gilt stamp of the arms of the Duke of Devonshire, spines titled in gilt, deep blue endpapers, edges gilt and marbled underneath, the vellum on each spine split horizontally just above the middle, vol. ii in two places (with slight loss of vellum on vols. ii and iii), otherwise just a little bit age-yellowed and with a touch of wear to spine ends, bookplates of the Chatsworth Library, red morocco gilt booklabels of Baron Holland, plus modern paper booklabel in vol. i, very good (ESTC T49791; Gordon 115; Dibdin II 203-6) £3,000

Gilbert Wakefield’s monumental edition of Lucretius, which ‘established Wakefield as one of the two leading British scholars of his time, the other being Richard Porson’ (ODNB). ‘Of this work about 50 copies were struck off on Large Paper, in folio; and, owing to a number of them having been destroyed by fire, with the printing-office in which they were deposited, they used to sell at a very extraordinary price’ (Dibdin)

Now the large-paper and small-paper copies are almost equally rare on the market, but the large-paper version is much more impressive, being not only considerably taller but on finer paper as well. However, even more scarce now - somewhat oddly given attention lavised on the original production - are copies (in whatever format) which survive in the luxurious bindings with which many must have originally been graced.

62. Lucretius. De Rerum nature Libri sex. In aedibus Ricardi Taylor. 1832, inscribed

on the front endpaper by Dr. Keate, pp. 295, [1] 4to, contemporary polished russia, boards bordered with a double gilt fillet, spine divided by raised bands with gilt fillets, second and fourth compartments gilt-lettered direct, the rest with gilt borders and arabesques in blind, boards a bit marked, joints and extremities rubbed, good (Gordon 22A) £150

This text of Lucretius was commissioned by John Keate, the celebrated headmaster of Eton, as a gift to pupils leaving the school, and several editions were printed as more copies were necessary. Keate was himself a brilliant writer of Latin verse, a fine classical scholar and popular among the boys despite the harsh regime of the time and the frequent floggings. The inscription in this copy reads: ‘J. Ralph Ormsby Gore, from Dr. Keate’ - i.e. John Ralph Ormsby-Gore (1816-1876), who became an MP in 1837 and 1st Baron Harlech in 1876, a few months before his death.

32


63. Lucretius. De Rerum Natura libri sex. Carolyus Lachmannus recensuit et emendavit. [Two volumes bound as one.] Berlin: Impensis Georgii Reimeri, 1850, a little foxing at beginning and end, pp. 252, 439, [1], 8vo, contemporary vellum, boards ruled in blue, spine gilt, red and green morocco lettering pieces, green morocco date piece at foot (albeit with the wrong date, 1840), marbled edges and endpapers, boards just slightly bowed, a touch of rubbing to extremities, bookplate and ownership inscription of William Dickinson (Trinity College, 1851), very good (Gordon 122) £1,000

A very nice copy of Lachmann’s epoch-making edition of Lucretius, perhaps the most important piece of classical scholarship in the nineteenth century. ‘Hardly any work of merit has appeared in Germany since Lachmann’s Lucretius, in any branch of Latin literature, without bearing on every page the impress of his example,’ Munro wrote in the introduction to his own edition 36 years later. ‘The influence of Lachmann on the general course of philological study has probably been greater than that of any single man during the present [nineteenth] century (Nettleship, Essays, 1885, p. 9).

Lachmann’s innovations were not wholly sui generis; two other German scholars, Purmann and Bernays, were working in similar directions, but ‘until the first version of [my] study... everyone attributed to Lachmann the merit of having been the first to reconstruct the genealogy of the manuscripts of Lucretius...’ Still, ‘as a matter of fact, Lachmann went beyond Bernays in two regards: eliminatio lectionum singularium and reconstructing the archetype’s external form’ (Timpanaro, The Genesis of Lachmann’s Method, p. 105-6).

64. Manilius. Astronomicon ex recensione et cum notis Richardi Bentleii. Henry

Woodfall for Paul and Isaac Vaillant, 1739, FIRST BENTLEY EDITION, engraved portrait frontispiece (by Vertue) and a folding engraved plate of the marble globe in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, engraved arms at head of dedication, some spotting and dustsoiling, a faint dampmark at head, pp. xvi, 307, [5], 4to, modern dark brown diced calf, boards bordered with a gilt fillet, spine with raised bands between double gilt fillets, red morocco lettering piece, other compartments with a central blind tool, marbled endpapers, edges gilt, good (ESTC T165913; Houzeau & Lancaster 1037) £600

First edition of Bentley’s edition of Manilius, his last published work although it had been one of the first classical editions he attempted. In the preface to his Phalaris (1699) Bentley records that he had ‘had prepared a Manilius for the press, which had been published already, had not the dearness of paper and the want of good types, and some other occasions, hindered.’ It was some forty years later that he would entrust the manuscript to his nephew to be printed, and the result displays all his usual brilliance and recklessness, while being ‘in elegance of type and paper ... superior to any of Bentley’s other books’ (Monk, ii 397).

33


Housman praised this edition highly: ‘his Manilius is a greater work than either the Horace or the Phalaris ... Had Bentley never edited Manilius, Nicolaus Heinsius would be the foremost critic of Latin poetry ... Great as was Scaliger’s achievement it is yet surpassed and far surpassed by Bentley’s ... it is significant that Scaliger accomplished most in the easiest parts of the poem and Bentley in the hardest’ (pref. to Manilius vol. i, 1903).

65. Martial. Epigrammaton Libri XIII. Lyon: Apud Seb. Gryphium, 1546, a few minor

spots, ownership inscription erased from title-page, pp. 398, 16mo, eighteenth-century mottled calf, spine gilt in compartments, boards bordered with a triple gilt fillet, marbled endpapers, label lost from spine, extremities worn, label removed from front pastedown, ownership inscription of F.G. Kenyon (1894) to verso of flyleaf, good (Adams M701) £250

A pleasant little pocket edition, in Gryphius’s usual style, one of several of this author that he published between 1530 and 1550. It formerly belonged to Sir Frederic George Kenyon, the classical scholar and director of the British Museum.

66. Ovid. Metamorphoses, in fifteen books. Translated by Mr. Dryden. Mr. Addison.

Dr. Garth. Mr. Mainwaring. Mr. Congreve. Mr. Rowe. Mr. Pope. Mr. Gay. Mr. Eusden. Mr Croxall. And other Eminent Hands. [Two vols. in one.] Dublin, Printed by S. Powell, for G. Risk, G. Ewing, and W. Smith, 1727, engraved frontispiece (portrait of the Princess of Wales) and 16 plates (one per ‘book’ plus a portrait of Lady Juliana Boyle), a few plates a little frayed at edges (one with part of fore- and lower-edge lost outside of platemark), some soiling and staining, early ownership inscriptions of Owen and Mary Wynne to title-page, pp. [viii], xlv, [7], 234, [2, ads], [ii], 277, [1, ads], 12mo, contemporary dark calf, label lost from spine, rear flyleaf excised, two corners and head of spine worn, some old scratches and a little rubbing, sound (ESTC N41874) £200

34


The uncommon first Dublin printing of Garth’s Ovid, containing selections translated by a number of notable hands. The second volume calls itself the ‘third edition’ on its title-page, which for once is reasonably accurate; this edition was preceded by the 1717 folio first (on large and small paper) and the 1720 second (a duodecimo), appearing the same year as the London third edition (also duodecimo). It is scarcer than any of the London printings, with ESTC locating three copies in Ireland, three in the UK, and seven elsewhere.

67. Persius. Satyrae sex. Cum posthumis Commentariis Ioannis Bond, quibus

recens accesit Index verborum: nunc primum excusae. Paris: Apud Sebastianum Cramoisy, Architypographum regium, & Gabrielem Cramoisy, 1644, some spotting and light browning, pp. [xvi], 215, [7], contemporary vellum, slightly soiled, letterpress booklabel of the natural philosopher and theologian Etienne-François Dutour (1711-1784), very good (Morgan 195) £500

A scarce small-format printing of Persius with Bond’s notes, published by the director of the Imprimerie Royale in the same year as that office produced its lavish large-format edition of the satirist. Bond’s edition was first published posthumously by his son-in-law in 1614, and as with his Horace it was immediately adopted as as schoolbook, but more on the continent than in England. His Persius was twice reprinted at Nuremburg and once in Paris before this edition; an Amsterdam edition followed the next year, and so on through the century. This particular printing is recorded in 4 locations in COPAC (Manchester, BL, Newcastle, Cambridge - 2 copies); Worldcat adds a handful in the USA plus only Dresden in Europe.

68. Phalaris (pseudo-) Epistolae. [Latin] Tr: Franciscus Griffolinus (Aretinus). Ed:

Johannes Antonius Campanus. [Rome: Ulrich Han (Udalricus Gallus), 1470,] Roman letter, capital space on [A2r], a few contemporary marginal marks in ink, 46 leaves (of 48, without the 2 terminal blanks), 4to, carta rustica of an indeterminate date (not very recent, not very old), red sprinkled edges, old headbands, good (ISTC ip00547000) £18,500

The second Latin edition (first, same printer, 1468-69) of the spurious letters of Phalaris, a Sicilian tyrant of the 6th century B.C. In 1697 Richard Bentley proved on the basis of the language (Attic, not Doric, Greek) and the use of anachronistic place names in the text that the work was a forgery by a 2nd century A.D sophist. Numerous editions of this translation appeared in the 15th century - witness Goff nos. P546-565, plus Italian translations. This is the first edition of the complete text, including the final four letters for the first time. The date of the edition is usually given as 1470-71, however the copy in the Vatican Library has the blanks at the end filled with manuscript, dated 20th September 1470 at the end.

Rare: ISTC records a total of 11 copies, 3 of which are in the UK, BL (lacking the blanks), Bodley, Rylands, and 2 in the US, Harvard and NYPL; 5 are in Italy of which 1 is imperfect, lacking not only the blanks (as often), but a text leaf.

35


69. Philo Judaeus. In Libros Mosis: De Mundi Opificio, Historicos, de Legibus. Eiusdem libri singulares. Ex bibliotheca Regia. Paris: Ex officina Adriani Turnebi typographi Regii. 1552, EDITIO PRINCEPS, lightly toned, title-page a little dusty, three small wormholes briefly stretching to a short trail in blank margin at beginning, blindstamp of the Earls of Macclesfield to initial leaves, pp. [xii], 736, [48], folio, eighteenth-century panelled calf, rubbed and scuffed, some wear to joints, bookplate of Shirburn Castle, good (Adams P1033; Lewis p. 167) £2,750

The first printing of any of Philo’s works in Greek, from a trio of Greek manuscripts uncovered in the king’s library by the French scholar-printer Adrian Turnebé, who succeeded Robert Estienne as Royal printer of Greek. It is a reasonably complete collection of his surviving writings in Greek; there are a number of surviving treatises omitted, but mostly because they survived only in a Latin translation (these had been printed in 1527) or an Armenian translation (eventually printed in the nineteenth century).

‘Of all the Jews who have written in Greek, Philo of Alexandria is undoubtedly the greatest on account of the breadth and richness of his ideas, the number of his works and his brilliant literary qualities’ (Cambridge History of Judaism). Philo (20 BC - 50 AD) makes no mention of Christ, but his philosophical attempt to reconcile Greek thought and Judaism was influential in early Christianity and he was often considered a kind of honorary Church Father until the early modern period. Since then he has been recognised (more accurately) for his important contributions to Greek philosophy and Judaism instead.

70. Pindar. Olympia, Pythia, Nemea, Isthmia. Caeterorum octo Lyricorum carmina...

Editio IIII. Graecolatina H. Stepha. recognitione quorundam interpretationis locorum, & accessione lyricorum carminum locupletata. Lyon: Apud Ioan. Pillehotte, 1598, browned and spotted, some old annotations in ink and pencil, pp. 387, [4], 388-684, [2], 16mo, contemporary limp vellum, spine lettered in ink, darkened and rubbed, no flyleaves, hinges cracking and a little wear to joints, sound £600

An odd and probably pirated printing of Estienne’s pocket Pindar. Calling itself the 4th edition on the title-page, it is dated 12 years after Henri Estienne’s 3rd edition (see Schreiber 214) and 2 years before Paul Estienne’s 4th edition (Schreiber 271). However, the contents are a page-for-page reprint of the 5th Estienne Pindar, which was printed by Paul in 1612 (Schreiber 276), suggesting that the date must be false. Furthermore, the publisher and date on title-page bear no relation to the colophon, which reads ‘Ex typograpia Ioannis Havard, alias Iamet, anno salutis 1589’.

A similar edition - matching this one page-for-page - was published at Yverdon, in Switzerland, supposedly in 1624, ‘Ex Societatis Heluct. Cald.’, calling itself the 6th edition. Two years after that Paul Estienne would publish his own reprint of his 5th edition, though without calling it a ‘sixth’.

36


71. Pindar. Olympia, Nemea, Pythia, Isthmia. Una cum Latina omnium Versione Carmine Lyrico per Nicolaum Sudorium. Oxford: E Theatro Sheldoniano, 1697, engraved frontispiece and large title-page vignette by M. Burghers, final section printed on poorer paper and rather browned, some spotting and toning elsewhere, pp. [xxxiv], 56, 59-497, [93], 77, [3], folio, eighteenth-century speckled calf, spine gilt in compartments, marbled endpapers, rather rubbed, joints cracking at ends, bookplate of the Skene Library and early-20th-century Blackwell’s bookseller label to front pastedown, good (ESTC R20960; Moss II 410; Dibdin II 289) £700

The first English edition of the Greek text of Pindar, edited by Richard West and Robert Welsted, both then young fellows at Magdalen College (and both of whom left Oxford shortly afterward, West for the priesthood and Welsted for medicine). It prints the Latin verse translation by Nicolas Le Sueur (1545-1594) along with the Greek text, plus a Latin prose paraphrase, the Greek scholia, Latin notes, a chronology of the Olympiads, multiple ‘Lives’ of Pindar, and, in a section at the end, a collection of Pindaric fragments. Dibdin calls it ‘a beautiful and celebrated edition... on the whole, we must allow that the editors of this magnificent work have taken infinite pains to bring together every thing which could illustrate and improve the reading of the poet’.

72. Plato. Omnia Opera cum commentariis

Procli in Timaeum & Politica, thesauro veteris Philosophiae maximo. [Two vols. bound as 3.] Basel: Apud Ioan. Valderum, 1534, EDITIO PRINCEPS OF THE SCHOLIA, some minor spotting and staining, old (probably seventeenth-century) manuscript annotations in ink (in Latin, some shaved) and underlining in red, plus later marginal numbering in pencil, one or two later ink notes in French, marginal dampstaining in vol. iii, seventeenth-century inscription of ‘Ant. Carpentarius, Doct. Med. Paris’ to title-page in vol. i, pp. [lxxvi], 282; 283-690, [2, blank]; [ii], 433, [1], folio, late seventeenth-century brown goatskin, spines gilt in compartments with the second and third gilt-lettered and the central tool of a crowned goat’s head in the others, marbled pastedowns (the colouring different in each vol.), some wear and old repairs to head and foot of spines, vol. i with front flyleaf filled with 8 paragraphs of bibliographic detail in French in a later (late eighteenth-century) hand, good (Adams P1437, P2139; Dibdin II 296) £5,000

The second edition of Plato in the original Greek, following the 1513 Aldine editio princeps, and the first printing of the scholia by Proclus, which fills the third volume. The editor, Simon Grynaeus (1493-1541), was professor of Greek and theology at Basel; he came to England in 1531 with a letter of introduction from Erasmus to Sir Thomas More, through whose offices his ‘visits to the libraries of the Oxford colleges

37


were exceptionally fruitful. He was shown much friendship by John Claymond, the head of Corpus Christi, and permitted to take back with him to Basel a number of medieval manuscripts, especially of Proclus’ (Contemporaries of Erasmus).

The scholia which are printed here are of significant importance in the history of the reception of Plato. Proclus (c.412-485) ‘was the most authoritative philosopher of late antiquity and played a crucial role in the transmission of Platonic philosophy from antiquity to the Middle Ages... The center of Proclus’ extensive oeuvre is without doubt his exegesis of Plato, as is shown by the large commentaries he devoted to major dialogues’ (SEP).

‘This is an elegant, rare, and respectable edition’ (Dibdin), and this copy has seen the attention of a careful reader in addition to later bibliophilic ownership. The annotations could well be the hand of Antonius Carpentarius, a medical doctor in Paris, whose inscription adorns the title-page. There appear to have been several men who fit that description in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries - but he is likely in any case to have been a relation of Jacques Charpentier, the doctor and philosopher of the Collège de France and opponent of Ramus.

73. Plato. The Works of Plato Abridg’d. With an account of his life, philosophy,

morals and politicks. Together with a translation of his choicest dialogues, viz. Of Human Nature, Prayer, Wisdom, Holiness, What one ought to do, Immortality of the Soul, Valour, Philosophy. In two volumes [bound together]... translated from the French. Printed for A. Bell, 1701, FIRST ENGLISH EDITION of 8 dialogues, a few leaves browned or spotted, one or two corrections in manuscript, faint dampmark to upper forecorner of first 50 leaves, pp. [iv], 328, 336, 8vo, contemporary Cambridge-style panelled calf, red morocco label to spine, slightly rubbed and marked, bookplate of Seton of Ekolsund and ownership inscription of Duncan Campbell to front endpapers, more recent chess bookplate of Bruno Bassi to rear pastedown, the name ‘Greeg’ in blank area of first page of text, very good (ESTC T132434) £2,500

The first English-language version of a number of Plato’s dialogues - preceded only by a 1675 translation (from the Greek) of the Apology and the Phaedo. The translations here are made from André Dacier’s French version, rather than from the original language - but it wasn’t until Sydenham’s work between 1759 and 1780 that any further advance was made on the contents of this volume.

Writing of eighteenth-century publications on Plato, Evans notes that ‘the most considerable of these was The works of Plato abridg’d, published in two volumes at London in 1701. These volumes were translated by several unknown hands from André Dacier’s Les Oeuvres de Platon, an incomplete French version published at Paris in 1699 and twice there-after. The English version was reprinted five times... the translations are reasonably accurate and readable, but the notes, which often attempt to reconcile Platonism and Christianity (in the Renaissance manner), abound in errors’ (‘Platonic Scholarship in Eighteenth-century England’, Mod. Phil., Vol. 41, 1943, p. 104).

38


The first 160 pages are taken up primarily by the Life of Plato, which is then followed by four dialogues (three of which are likely spurious): First and Second Alcibiades, Theages, and Euthyphro, plus abridgements/summaries of the two Alcidiades and the Euthyphro. The second volume contains six more dialogues, most with better claim to be genuine works of Plato: Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Laches, Protagoras, and Rival Lovers (only the last of disputed authenticity).

This copy was likely in Scotland early on, to judge by the name ‘Duncan Campbell’; Seton of Ekolsund was also Scottish, a Linlithgow merchant by the name of George Seton (1696-1786) who moved to Sweden in 1718 and bought Ekolsund Castle from Gustav III in 1785; the line was continued by his adopted nephew Alexander Baron (who took the name Seton) and beyond, the family holding ownership of the castle into the twentieth century.

74. Plato. Septem Selecti Dialogi. Juxta Editionem Serrani. Dublin: E typographia

Academiae. 1738, title-page printed in red and black, preliminary blank present, pp. [vi], 344, [4], 8vo, original mottled calf, Trinity College gilt medallion to boards, spine with five raised bands, replacement red morocco lettering piece, rubbed, gilt faded from backstrip, some scrapes and old repairs to boards, joints cracking but strong, algebraic notation in ink to front pastedown, sound £350

The first book printed at the Trinity College Dublin printing house, and the first complete Greek text printed in Ireland (McDonnell & Healy). Thirty copies on large paper were specially bound and given to important people, while a number of the remaning 750 copies were bound to be awarded as ‘premium’ prizes for the best answers at examinations. This one has no signs of having been awarded (a specially-printed paper label was used), but the binding exactly matches other prize copies we have seen.

75. Plautus. Comoediae Viginti. Lyons: Apud Seb. Gryphium, 1549, ruled in red

throughout, a touch of worming to gutter of first few leaves (affecting one word of dedication), paper evenly toned brown, a few minor spots, two leaves near end with small tears from blank margins, pp. 1078, [6, blanks], 16mo, early calf, boards boarded with a gilt roll and with small floral cornerpieces, spine with four raised bands between double gilt fillets and dentelle tools, second compartment gilt-lettered direct, mottled endpapers, a.e.g., a touch rubbed, a few tiny wormholes to spine, old scrape to lower board, good (Adams P1496) £450

A pocket Gryphius edition of Plautus, reprinting the one of 1547, in an attractive and near-contemporary binding.

76. Plutarch. Select Lives by Plutarch. Viz. Pericles, Pelopidas, Aristides,

Philopoemen, Lysander, Cimon, Nicias, Agesilaus, Alexander the Great. [Two volumes.] London [i.e. Edinburgh?]: Sold by A. Manson, R. Williams, J. Hammond, B. White, H. Newton, W. Middleton, P. Thomson, and S. Bland. [c.1775,] engraved portrait frontispiece in vol. i, pp. 240; 204, 8vo, contemporary sheep, spines with five raised bands, labels lost from second compartments, green

39


numbering pieces in third, the rest with central gilt stamps, joints cracked but boards firmly held, spines darkened, extremities a little worn, recently polished, sound (Not in ESTC) £450

A rare abridgement of Plutarch in English for the popular market. The imprint may be spurious - the BBTI has entries for 5 of the 7 booksellers in the imprint, and two are described as ‘possibly fictitious’ while a third is ‘probably fictitious, should be Edinburgh’. This edition is not listed in ESTC, but there is another edition listed there, a 406-page duodecimo printed at Edinburgh in 1764 (Harvard and Toronto only).

OCLC, on the other hand, does locate three copies of this edition, one at Oxford and two, miscatalogued under the printer ‘A. Mason’, in Bowling Green State University and the Mid-American Baptist Theological Seminary. The Oxford cataloguer gives the date [c.1770-1778] which tallies with the dates given (although marked ‘uncertain’) in the BBTI. If this is a piracy, however, it is an unusual one in being a more lavish production than the genuine thing - the 1764 edition does not include a frontispiece, squeezes more text on a page, and is unornamented, while this printing stretches to two volumes, includes a frontispiece, and has woodcut head- and tail-pieces for every section.

77. (Roman History.) LOCKMAN (John) A New Roman History, by question and

answer. T. Astley, 1737, FIRST EDITION, title-page fore-edge a little creased, last two leaves containing publisher’s ads, pp. viii, 342, [18], 12mo, contemporary sheep, joints cracked and strengthened with glue internally, extremities worn, label lost, early inscriptions of Caleb Lomax to flyleaves, sound (ESTC T187210) £150

The first edition of Lockman’s history of Rome, in the same format as his History of England - somewhat of a trademark, as a history of Greece followed six years later. A scarce publication, with ESTC locating copies in the BL, Cambridge, NLW, Oxford (x2), and the National Trust, plus five in the USA. (For Lockman’s history of Greece, see items 20 & 21.)

78. (Roman History.) GIBBON (Edward) Gibbon’s History

of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, in six volumes, quarto, abridged in two volumes, otcavo. Vol. I [-II]. [Two vols.] Printed for G. Kearsley, 1789, faint foxing in places, the text printed on slightly bluer paper than the prelims, pp. xi, [i], 569, [3, ads]; xi, [i], 562, [2, ads], 8vo, contemporary tree calf, spines divided by gilt fillets, red morocco lettering pieces, circular green numbering pieces (lost from vol. i, chipped on vol. ii), the spines rather rubbed and since conserved, a little insect damage to joints, good (ESTC T78371; Norton 100) £900

The first abridgement of Gibbon’s text, and a scarce book: ESTC locates only 5 copies in the UK (BL, Edinburgh, NLW, Bodleian, and Trinity Oxford) plus three outside (Stanford, Huntington, and UNC). The ESTC record also states that the abridgement is by J. Adams, but the record for the second edition (a reissue of these sheets one year later, N10232) states ‘Abridged and expurgated for “the youthful

40


mind”... by Charles Hereford; abridgment also erroneously attributed to Alexander Adams and to John Adams’. Lowndes calls it ‘An excellent abridgement by the Rev. Charles Hereford’. The same author also abridged Hume’s History of England into two octavo volumes (1795), but ‘nothing seems to be known about him except that he was an Oxford man and all his works were published anonymously’ (Norton).

79. Sallust. [Opera.] Birmingham: Typis Joannis Baskerville, 1773, paper lightly

age-toned, pp. [iv], 318, 4to, contemporary tree calf, boards bordered with a gilt roll, marbled endpapers, rebacked preserving original lettering piece, corners repaired, old leather scratched, good (ESTC T133320; Gaskell 51) £200

One of Baskerville’s series of grand and elegantly printed Latin classics in quarto.

80. Sallust. Bellum Catilinarium et Jugurthinum, cum versione libera. ...I.E. The History of the Wars of Catiline and Jugurtha, by Sallust. With a free translation... by John Clarke, of Hull. Glocester: Printed by R. Raikes, 1789, some browning, foxing, and minor staining, a few wax-marks and slight abrasions to blank area of title-page, pp. xxvi, [3]-226, [2], 8vo, contemporary sheep, joints and edges repaired, front flyleaf excised, gift inscription dated 1841 to front pastedown, ownership inscription of the same era to rear flyleaf, good (ESTC T131424) £250

A scarce provincial printing of Clarke’s school edition of Sallust, originally published in 1734. John Clarke (1687-1734) was master of Hull Grammar School, and sought to reform the teaching of Latin through a number of books and editions of classical authors. The printer of this edition, Richard Raikes (1736-1811), was Clarke’s nephew (the son of his wife’s brother, another printer named Richard, who was instrumental in the history of printing in Gloucester) and himself became a notable promotor of Sunday schools. ESTC locates only 4 copies of this edition, the BL only in the UK, plus McMaster, UPenn, and the College of William and Mary.

81. Sallust. Opera quae supersunt, omnia. Cura Joannis Hunter, A.M. Andreapoli

[St Andrews]: In aedibus academicis excudebat Jacobus Morison, 1796, half-title discarded, pp. [viii], 236, 12mo, contemporary sprinkled calf, spine divided by a double gilt fillet, black morocco lettering piece, arms of the City of Edinburgh blocked in gilt to boards, somewhat rubbed, very good (ESTC T187725) £400

One of the first books printed at St Andrews since the 1620s and the first of the famed ‘immaculate’ classics, proofread three times each by the printer and editor. The editor, John Hunter (1745-1837), had been appointed professor of humanity at the University in 1775 and held the post for the next sixty years. The printer, James Morison, first printed to the University of St Andrews, dedicates the volume to the University’s chancellor, Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville, who was then also War Secretary under Pitt and later became the last person in the United Kingdom to be impeached (for the misappropriation of public money). Morison printed Sallust, Plautus, Horace, and Virgil before resigning his post in 1799 on account of excessive expense; his successor, William Tullis of Cupar, would produce more ‘immaculate’ classics in the following decade. This is a scarce edition, with ESTC listing copies in Edinburgh, NLS (3 copies), NLW, Oxford, St Andrews, and the National Trust only.

41


82. Seneca. Tragoediae: Post omnes omnium editiones recensionesque editae denuo, & notis Tho. Farnabii illustratae. Excudebat Rogerus Daniel, 1659, first leaf blank, one leaf with a paper-flaw to fore-edge affecting a few characters of side-note, small wormhole in gutter of a few gatherings sometimes touching a line number, a few minor marks, bookplate of Robert Maxwell of Finnebrogue to title-page verso, pp. 344, [8], 12mo, original blind-ruled sheep, worn paper label to spine, rear joint damaged near head revealing structure of the binding (but the binding still entirely sound), slightly marked and rubbed, good (ESTC R27481) £200

Farnaby’s edition of Seneca was first published in 1613; this is the fourth edition recorded in ESTC and the first in duodecimo format (the 1613, 1624, and 1634 editions were all octavos). It is also the scarcest of the seventeenth-century editions, with ESTC locating copies at the BL, Oxford, Cambridge, and just three more locations in the UK (Southampton, NT, and St Canice’s in Kilkenny), plus three in the USA (Harvard, Trinity College, and the Clark).

83. Terence. Comoediae, Andria,

Eunuchus, Heautontimorumenos, Adelphi, Hecyra, Phormio. Ex emendatissimis ac fide dignissimis codicus summa diligentia castigatae... Paris: Apud Ioannem de Roigny, 1552, FIRST THEIRRY EDITION, numerous woodcut illustrations within the text, some light spotting, ink splotch to second two leaves, ownership inscriptions to title-page of Johann Adolph Freitagh (1653), Dotsias(?) Freitag (1670), the College of Notre Dame de Mongré (removed to Yzeure in 1911), pp. [ii], 776, [40], folio, contemporary French mid-brown calf, boards bordered with a black strap within gilt fillets, a central decorative arabesque panel in gilt and black, flat spine divided by gilt rolls, second compartments gilt lettered within a gilt shield outline, other compartments with a central decoration in black and gilt, spine ends, joints, and corners skilfully repaired, some old scratches and marks to leather, dampmark to front endpapers, bookplate removed from front pastedown, smaller modern booklabel in its place, very good (Adams T341; Mortimer Harvard French 512) £3,000

The colophon is dated from the kalends of December 1551, marking the first issue (a second is dated January 1552). ‘A most excellent edition, and not sufficiently attended to by critics and editors. It may be called the Folio Variorum edition of Terence, as containing almost all the valuable treatises upon the author up to the period of its publication... It is of rare occurrence’ (Dibdin). The illustrations, along with much of the text, are based on Girolamo Scoto’s 1545 Venice edition, although the wood blocks used there ultimately trace their origin back to a French incunable printing.

42


84. Terence. Comoediae, Phaedri Fabulae Aesopiae, Publii Syri et aliorum veterum sententiae, ex recensione et cum notis Richardi Bentleii. Cambridge: Apud Cornelium Crownfield, 1726, FIRST BENTLEY EDITION, two engraved portraits, some soiling in places, pp. [vii], xxv, 444, [viii], 87, [1], 4to, contemporary calf, spine gilt, quite rubbed and scratched but now conserved, joints expertly renewed and red morocco lettering piece replaced to style, book label of Peter Allen Hansen and ownership inscription of (MP for Durham) R[obert] Shafto, good (ESTC T147529; Dibdin II 474; Moss II 673) £400

Bentley’s important version of Terence, notable for his advances in understanding the metre of Latin comedy; ‘the text is corrected in about a thousand passages, mainly on grounds of metre’ (Sandys). Bentley rushed to print after his former friend Bishop Francis Hare had produced his own edition using Bentley’s metrical discoveries without credit, and was perhaps too hasty in including Phaedrus (since Hare was then able to counterattack by citing inaccuracies in that section). Bentley’s preface was still the best explication of comedic metrics, and he provides metrical marks throughout the text; ‘we are, however great or numerous the faults of this edition may be, greatly indebted to him’ (Moss).

85. Terence. Comoediae, Phaedri Fabulae Aesopiae, Publii Syri et aliorum veterum

sententiae, ex recensione et cum notis Richardi Bentleii. Cambridge: Apud Cornelium Crownfield, 1726, FIRST BENTLEY EDITION, engraved frontispiece and engraved portrait dedication leaf, a little spotting, a faint but substantial dampmark to first plate (minimally visible on printed side), first two letters on title-page printed poorly, pp. [vii], xxv, 444, [viii], 87, [1], 4to, contemporary sprinkled calf, spine gilt in compartments, joints cracking but strong, a bit of wear to endcaps and corners, good (ESTC T147529; Dibdin II 474; Moss II 673) £400

Another copy, in a typical and unrestored contemporary binding, albeit a little worn.

86. Terence. Comoediae. Recensuit, notasque suas et Gabrielis Faerni addidit Richardus Bentleius. Editio altera. Amsterdam: Apud R. & J. Wetstenios, & G. Smith, 1727, three engraved plates, a little light toning but generally quite clean and fresh, pp. [xxxii], 444, [182], [viii], 87, [96], 4to, prize binding of marbled calf, circa 1813, boards bordeered with a gilt roll and with the arms of Haarlem blocked in gilt at the centre, spine gilt in compartments, printed prize leaf bound with front endpapers, green silk ties present and wholly intact, label lost from spine, some surface damage to leather of boards, very good (Dibdin II 474) £600

43


The second edition of Bentley’s important version of Terence. ‘Of these two editions that of Amsterdam, according to Harwood, is the most valuable, as Bentley communicated to Wetstein, the publisher, many additional notes and emendations’ (Dibdin). This copy, not unusually, was presented as an academic prize to a Dutch student. Calf prize bindings like this are less common than vellum ones, but what is more unusual is that this example retains both the silk ties - fragile and virtually always torn or lost completely - and the printed prize leaf, which records (by manuscript addition) that the book was presented to Arnoldus Henricus van Wickevoort Crommelin (probably b. 1797), for his academic performance, in August 1813.

87. Terence. Comoedia ad optimorum exemplarium fidem recensitae. [2 vols.

in one.] Impensis J. et P. Knapton, et G. Sandby, 1751, 6 engraved plates, some soiling, last leaf a bit stained, pp. [xxvi], 208, [ii], 209-400, [6], 8vo, contemporary vellum, spine lettered in black, somewhat soiled, endpapers renewed, preserving old bookplate of William Henry Mason and old flyleaves with pencilled inscription of George William Mason (Trinity, Cambridge, 1840), good (ESTC T137043) £120

Between 1749 and 1763 William Sandby produced editions of several Latin authors, all elegantly printed and illustrated with engraved plates showing antiques, coins, medallions, etc. that are meant to support passages in the text; the Horace was compared favourably to Pine’s wholly engraved edition. This Terence has relatively few illustrations, in this case small reproductions of select illustrations of masks from the 9th-century manuscript Codex Vaticanus Latinus 3868, which had first been printed in Fortiguerra’s 1736 Italian translation of Terence. (For other Sandby editions, see items 54 and 93.)

88. Terence. Comoediae ex recensione

Danielis Heinsii, collata ad antiquissimos Mss. Codices Bibliothecae Vaticanae, cum ... Italica versione. Recensione ... Carolus Cocquelines. [2 vols.] Rome: Impensis Nicolai Roisechii, 1767, title-pages printed in black and red, a number of large engravings within the text (some full-page), pp. [viii], xxxii, 254; 252, folio, untrimmed in contemporary half vellum, paper boards decorated in brown, red and yellow, spines lettered in gilt, bookplates of William Markham of Becca Lodge in Yorkshire, bindings soiled and worn around the edges (particularly corners and spine ends), a splash of white paint to backstrip of vol. ii, good £500

The second edition of the Italian translation of Terence by Fortiguerra, originaly published in 1736, also in a large format. That edition was the first appearance of the engravings, which are important reproductions of the illustrations in the 9th-century manuscript Codex Vaticanus Latinus 3868 (believed to be copied from a 3rd-century

44


model). The editor supplies a preface which also includes engraved reproductions of the lettering in in that manuscript and two other early ones. Until relatively recently these volumes were the best source for the best illustrations of Roman staging and costume (excepting a photographic reproduction of just one play, the Phormio, which appeared in 1894).

89. Terence. Comoediae. Birmingham: Typis Johannis Baskerville, 1772, title-page

toned, a little minor spotting elsewhere, pp. [ii], 364, 4to, slightly later half red morocco, marbled boards, spine divided by gilt rolls, second compartment gilt-lettered direct, the rest with central oval or fountain & bird tools, marbled endpapers, spine somewhat fadded, slight rubbing to extremities, bookplates of L.W. Greenwood and Lytton Strachey to front pastedown, very good (ESTC T137489; Gaskell 46) £300

One of Baskerville’s series of grand and elegantly printed Latin classics in quarto. This copy belonged to the author Lytton Strachey and bears his bookplate.

90. Theocritus. The Idyllia, Epigrams, and Fragments, of Theocritus, Bion, and

Moschus, with the Elegies of Tyrtaeus; translated from the Greek into English Verse... A new edition, corrected. By the Reverend Richard Polwhele. [Two vols. bound as one.] Bath: Printed by R. Cruttwell, 1792, half-title discarded, a little minor spotting, ownership inscription of W. Mayer, T.C.D., to title-page, pp. [iii]-viii, 319, [1], iv, 226, [2], 8vo, later half maroon roan, marbled boards, spine lettered in gilt, corners worn, spine rubbed, shelfmark to front pastedown, good (ESTC T138184) £120

The first edition of Polwhele’s Theocritus had been published in Exeter, six years earlier, and his text ‘was often reprinted in the early nineteenth century, the translations of Tyrtaeus being included in a polyglot version published at Brussels by A. Baron in 1835’ (ODNB). This elegantly printed Bath edition, liberally sprinkled with woodcut head- and tail-pieces, is the second edition; there is also a rarer variant with the date 1791 (otherwise identical: ESTC T183939, Bodleian and Cornell only).

91. Thucydides. De Bello Poloponnesiaco libri octo, cum Adnotationibus integris

Henrici Stephani, & Joannis Hudsoni. Recensuit, & Notas suas addidit, Josephus Wasse. Editionem curavit, suasque Adnimadversiones adjecit Carolus Andreas Dukerus. Amsterdam: Apud R. & J.s Wetstenios & Gul. Smith. 1731, engraved frontispiece and two folding plates, some spotting and toning, first few leaves with a dampmark to fore-margin, pp. [xxxvi], 34, 728, 48, 123, [1], folio, slightly later brown calf, spine gilt in compartments, joints and corners expertly repaired, new morocco lettering piece, marbled endpapers, old scratches and scrapes to boards, good (Dibdin II 509) £750

For many years the best edition of Thucydides and the basis of subsequent texts, this substantial folio edited by Karl Andreas Duker and Joseph Wasse is ‘one of the most sumptuous and erudite productions which we have ever received from the continent, and has long borne the distinguished title of “Editio optima”’ (Dibdin). Dibdin also reports that ‘the famous Wasse had prepared a variety of materials for this work, by a careful revision of all the preceding editions: but he dying, Duker was prevailed upon to complete it’ - this is a frequently-told story about editions with multiple editors, but in fact Wasse only died in 1738.

45


92. Virgil. [Opera.] Edinburgh: apud Robertum Freebarnium, 1732, small stain to blank margin of last quarter, ownership inscriptions of Allan Livingston (early) and Mary Lloyd Aston (twentieth-century) to title-page, pp. [ii], 349, [1], 24mo, contemporary Scottish red morocco, spine gilt in compartments containing a saltire design, boards with a central cross shape made up of arabesques containing dotted lines, with thistles at its points, corners with square tools containing fan sprays, endpapers of decorative paper in multiple colours with gilt, edges gilt, joints cracking but strong, leather a bit darkened, good (ESTC T139224) £500

An unusual binding, almost certainly Scottish, on a scarce little printing of Virgil. ESTC locates copies in the BL, NLS, Bodleian, Rylands, and Princeton only. Freebarn’s other Latin classics, including Ovid, Horace, Juvenal, and Curtius Rufus, all printed between 1731 and 1732, are no more common.

93. Virgil. Bucolica, Georgica, et Aeneis, illustrata, ornata, et accuratissime impressa.

[Two vols.] Impensis J. et P. Knapton, in Vico Ludgate, et Gul. Sandby, 1750, 58 engraved plates, paper lightly toned and spotted, pp. [50], 239, [1]; [ii], 288, 8vo, contemporary sprinkled calf, boards bordered with a decorative gilt roll, rebacked (in a different colour) preserving old lettering pieces and endpapers, corners repaired, armorial bookplate to front pastedowns, good (ESTC T139415) £200

Between 1749 and 1763 William Sandby produced editions of several Latin authors, all elegantly printed and illustrated with engraved plates showing antiques, coins, medallions, etc. that are meant to support passages in the text; the Horace was compared favourably to Pine’s wholly engraved edition. The Virgil is one of the more heavily-illustrated, with dozens of plates of coins, scupltures, and scenes. (For other Sandby editions, see items 54 and 87.)

94. Virgil. Bucolica, Georgica, et Aeneis. Birmingham: Typis Johannis Baskerville.

1757, FIRST BASKERVILLE EDITION, initial blank creased as often, small wormhole to lower blank margin in last quarter of book, stretching into a short trail towards the end, one leaf in subscriber’s list with a small dampstain to lower corner, pp. [xii], 103, [2] 105-231, 233-432, 4to., later mottled calf, spine richly gilt, green morocco lettering piece, marbled endpapers, a touch rubbed at extremities, very good (Gaskell 1; ESTC T131451; Mambelli 414; Kallendorf ‘Morgan’ L1757.1) £1,500

Baskerville’s first production, and a landmark of typography and printing. It was the first book printed with Baskerville’s new type, and was also the first book printed in the West using wove paper instead of laid. This was not all that made it stand out; Baskerville’s other, less obvious innovations include careful attention to the materials and construction of his presses and the process of ‘glazing’ the paper with pressure after printing. The ‘startlingly novel and calligraphic type, the density of the ink, the

46


excellence of the presswork, the smoothness and gloss of the paper’ resulted in such a success that a near-identical reprint edition was produced later, distinguished by having the J in ‘Johannis’ on the title aligned before the B of ‘Birminghamiae’.

In this copy the J is in the correct alignment for the first edition, between the B and the i. The hand-correction on p. 134 (which Gaskell observes was probably ‘done before the sheets left Baskerville’s warehouse’) has not been made here. The other relevant point identified by Gaskell is that the additional names on the subscriber’s list usually number four, while ‘a few copies have lists of either twenty-one or twenty-four additional names’. In this copy the list has twenty-one additional names.

95. Virgil. Bucolica, Georgica, et Aeneis. Birmingham: Typis Johannis Baskerville,

1757, [but circa 1770,] some light toning and foxing, pp. [x], 103, [2], 105-231, 233-432, 4to, contemporary red crushed morocco, spine divided by raised bands between double gilt fillets, green morocco lettering pieces in second compartment and at foot, marbled endpapers, edges gilt, board edges and turn-ins gilt, a little bit marked and rubbed, spine slightly faded, very good (ESTC T131452; Gaskell 2) £750

The concealed second edition of Baskerville’s landmark of typography and printing, probably produced because of demand from collectors for the original. Baskerville’s 1757 Virgil was the first book printed with Baskerville’s new type, and was also the first book printed in the West using wove paper instead of laid, among other innovations. Sometime later, probably in 1770, it was reprinted in a very careful imitation, by Baskerville himself, even down to reproducing the original subscribers’ list. The distinguishing feature is the position of the J in ‘Johannis’ on the title-page, which is here aligned before the B of ‘Birminghamiae’ instead of between the B and the i as in the first printing. ‘The second edition, unlike the first, is a rare book’ (Gaskell).

47


96. Virgil. Publii Virgilii Maronis Bucolica et Georgica tabulis Aeneis olim a Johanne Pine sculptore Regio defuncto illustrata opus paternum in lucem profert Robertus Edge Pine. [Two volumes bound as one.] [n. pr.,] 1774, 80 plates on 59 sheets (including two frontispieces, title-pages, and section titles, and 6 engraved dedications - two of them on the verso of letterpress pages; one plate folding), frequent further engravings within the text, complete with the advertisement leaf at the front which is often discarded, some foxing and offsetting from plates, pp. [ii], XV, [I], 49, [6], 52-144, [4], 8vo, contemporary vellum, spine divided by a gilt roll, second compartment dyed yellow and lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers, vellum soiled, boards splaying outward somewhat, bookplate of Henry Anthony Littledale and ownership inscription of G.A. Littledale to front endpapers, (ESTC T139773; Kallendorf L1774) £500

Pine’s Virgil, less well-known and less commonly seen than his Horace of 1733-7 (but no less elegant), was begun in 1755 but the project was halted by Pine’s death when only the Eclogues and Georgics had been illustrated and issued. In 1774 his son, Robert Edge Pine, a notable painter in his own right, published this reissue with new preliminaries. Unlike the Horace, which was wholly engraved, this combines illustrations with letterpress, though the engravings are still demonstrations of Pine’s remarkable skill.

The publication was complicated: as Kallendorf puts it, there are ‘significant variations among copies in placement of engraved matter and imposition of letterpress’; in this case the engraved dedication to the Marchioness of Granby is present on the verso of p. 95, and the engraved dedication to Robert Lowth, Bishop of Oxford, is present on the verso of p. 119. ESTC asserts that the plates in the 1774 reissue have been altered to add ‘Vol. II’, but that has not been done to the plates in this copy (or in any of the copies we have handled). (See item 43 for Pine’s Horace.)

97. Virgil. Opera, varietate lectiones

et perpetua adnotatione illustrata, a Chr. Gottl. Heyne, accedit index uberrimus editio tertia emendatior et auctior. [Four vols.] Typis T. Rickaby: Impensis T. Payne, B. & J. White, R. Faulder, & J. Edwards, 1793, engraved frontispiece and dedication, some spotting and offsetting, pp. iv, cclv, [i], 566; xciv, 820; [ii], 730; [ii], vi, [iii], 10-704, 8vo, contemporary russia, boards bordered with a greek key gilt roll, spines divided by raised bands between gilt fillets, second and tfourth compartments gilt-lettered direct, first and sixth gilt decoration, third and fifth with the same tool in blind behind a smaller central gilt tool, edges patterned with brown dye, a touch of rubbing to joints, one raised band with a small chip, very good (ESTC T139434) £1,200

48


A handsome set of the attractive first London edition of Heyne’s Virgil, the third overall. ‘These are the incomparable editions of Virgil, by Heyne... the second Leipsic edition of 1788, which contains, in the first volume, a rich fund of scholastic and critical information, was republished by the London booksellers in 1793, in a very beautiful manner’ (Dibdin). In fact, three versions were produced (apparently at a cost of £4,000): a quarto imposition (with the title-pages reset), this octavo version, copiously illustrated with engraved head- and tail-pieces, and another octavo where simpler generic woodcuts were used in place of the engravings. Reportedly Richard Porson was employed as corrector for the press, and also supplied a few notes, as described in the unsigned letter to the reader at the front of the first volume.

98. (Virgil.) WALLIS (Arthur) Select Passages from the Georgics of Virgil, and the

Pharsalia of Lucan; Translated from the Latin: with notes, and miscellaneous poems. By Arthur W. Wallis. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1833, FIRST EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY, initial blank inscribed ‘The author, age 20, to his father, 1833’, a single erratum listed by hand at the foot of final page of text (the erratum also corrected by hand in the preface), paper lightly toned, some spotting, pp. xiii, [i], 145, [1], 8vo, original half purple calf, textured cloth boards, spine lettered vertically in gilt, blue chalked endpapers, a little rubbed, a letter pasted to verso of initial binder’s blank (see below), good £250

Although not the dedication copy - the book is dedicated to ‘Mrs and the Misses Powell, of Exmouth’ - this is nonetheless a significant one. In addition to the presentation inscription to to the translator’s father, there is pasted in a letter on behalf of the Dutchess of Kent and Princess Victoria, dated 4 months before publication, offering to subscribe to the intended volume. (The letter has been annotated in pencil, presumably by Wallis or his father, ‘Be pleased to fold this document carefully’.)

Of the Arthur Wallis, little seems to be known, but this is a scarce book, with COPAC locating a cluster of copies in Scotland (Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and NLS) but only one copy in England (Nottingham).

99. Xenophon. De Cyri Vita et Disciplina. Libri tres priores Graecolatini. Munich:

Ex Typographeo Nicholae Henrici, impensis Ioannis Hertsroy, 1612, title-page a little bit frayed around the edges, with ownership inscription of a Jesuit college (probably Trino, Italy), paper somewhat browned and spotted, several leaves with early annotation in a very small and cramped hand, pp. 285, [3], [bound with:] Homer. Iliados liber septimus, octavus, nonus. Cum interpretatione Latina. Ingolstadt: Ex officina Typographica Davidis Sartorii, 1595, paper somewhat spotted but of notably better quality than in the first work, pp. [ii], 131, [1], 8vo, contemporary blind-stamped pigskin, brass clasp mounts (clasps lost), a bit rubbed and marked, a Latin couplet and ink squiggle in a later hand to pastedown, above a rubbed-out inscription, good (VD17 12:634817A & £1,200

Two Jesuit Greek schoolbooks, both with facing Latin translations, from different cities, printers, and centuries, but clearly bound together at an early date. Both are also rare: VD17 lists one copy of the Xenophon (Munich, naturally), with Worldcat adding a handful more across Europe (Utrecht, Rovereto, Augsburg, possibly Warsaw; none in the UK or USA), while VD16 finds two of the Homer (Munich and Freiburg) and Worldcat adds just Strasbourg.

49


The printer of the Xenophon, Nikolaus Henricus (1575-1654), was a court printer in Munich and successor (and son-in-law to Adam Berg), while the publisher, Johannes Hertsroy, was known for academic and religious printing for the local Jesuits; both also produced notable books of Baroque music. The Homer, printed nearly two decades earlier and 80 kilometres away, was produced by David Sartorius, printer to the Jesuit university in Ingolstadt. It was part of a series: Sartorius had the previous year printed books 4, 5, and 6 of the Iliad; in 1597 his son Adam printed books 1-3 and then in 1600 books 10-12. These editions could be sold more cheaply than the full text, making them ideal for the school market.

100. Xenophon. Expeditio Cyri. Tomis quatuor. Ex editione T. Hutchinson. [4 vols.]

Glasgow: In aedibus academicis excudebant Robertus et Andreas Foulis, 1764, paper lightly toned, pp. [iv], 261, [3]; [iv], 255, [1]; [iv], 245, [3]; [iv], 271, [1], foolscap octavo, contemporary mid-brown calf, spines gilt, red morocco lettering pieces (one renewed), the next compartment down stained darker and gilt-lettered direct, a little wear to spine ends and slight rubbing to extremities, good (ESTC T139177; Gaskell 435) £300

The foolscap octavo issue with Greek and Latin on subsequent leaves (and thus facing pages alternating sides).

50

Blackwell’s Rare BooksDirect Telephone: +44 (0) 1865 333555 Switchboard: +44 (0) 1865 792792Email: [email protected] Fax: +44 (0) 1865 794143www.blackwell.co.uk/rarebooks

Documents

BLACKWELL S RARE BOOKS GREEK AND LATIN … · A scarce and attractive near-miniature edition of Anacreon, similar to the Foulis edition of 1751, ... known as the ‘Organon’. The