Quinti Horatii Flacci Opera

[Horace]

Verlag: John Pine, London, 1757

Beschreibung

THE FINEST ENGRAVED CLASSICAL BOOK OF THE XVIIIc. First edition, second printing. London: John Pine, 1733-1737 (i.e., 1757). Octavo in 2s (i.e., quarter-sheets printed in folio; 8 3/8" x 5 5/16", 213mm x 135mm). [Full collation available.] Bound in extra-gilt red morocco. On the boards, an extra-gilt border surrounding a gilt lozenge, filled with gilt ornaments. On the spine, five raised bands with a gilt roll between two gilt fillets left and right. Panels gilt within a triple gilt fillet border top and bottom, double left and right. Title gilt to green morocco in the second panel. Number gilt to green morocco in the third panel. Gilt chevron roll to the edges of the boards and the inside dentelle. Marbled end-papers. All edges gilt, with concealed fore-edge paintings of floral scrollwork. Green silk marking-ribbons. Both boards of vol. I starting at the head. Chips and loss to the head and tail. First free end-paper of vol. I reinforced but still loose. Fore-corners bumped and turn-ins splitting a little. General scuffing to the extremities. Internally quite bright with a strong impression in both volumes. Occasional mild tanning and very rare foxing. Altogether quite a magnificent set. Cancelled armorial bookplate of Portsmouth Cathedral library to the front paste-down of both volumes (nos. 8618 and 8619). Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65-27) was the great poet of the dying days of the Roman Republic; Augustus, the first emperor, was his heir. His verses were standard fare for Latin learning from the Carolingian Renaissance right through to the present. As such his influence on European poetry is perhaps greater than any other's. The printing history of his verse matches this stature, and as such Pine's task was to distinguish his publication from others'. John Pine was England's pre-eminent engraver in the first half of the XVIIIc. With his great friend William Hogarth (who did the famous portrait of him qua Rembrandt) he championed Engravers' Copyright act of 1734, which extended the protections of printers to engravers -- an absolutely crucial moment in the history of illustrated books in Britain. Pine's Horace is among the most celebrated of XVIIIc books; nearly every scholar and critic from its publication has praised its elegance and beauty. Indeed, the text itself is almost an afterthought. Founded on Talbot's 1701 Cambridge text, its real ancestor is Tonson's 1699 quarto edition using an earlier Talbot recension. The value of the book and reason for its unparalleled popularity -- nearly 1,000 subscribers, including the kings of England, France, Spain and Portugal, and the Holy Roman Emperor -- is the integration of text and image. There is also a superabundance of (germane) illustrations: coins, statues and vases all illuminate the text. Indeed, as Michael Suarez argues in his first Lyell lecture (28 April 2015), the value of the book was really as a florilegium of antiquary volumes in the libraries of English virtuosi. The standard point, recognized as early as Dibdin (1804) identifying this as a second printing is the medallion of Augustus Caesar on p. 108 of vol. II; the legend in the first printing reads "POST EST" but it was corrected, as in the present copy, to "POTEST." Suarez demonstrates in his Lyell lecture that the original seven shareholder booksellers bought from Pine's widow (Pine died in 1756) the remaining shares in order to recoup their losses from the original plates. Thus they readvertised and reprinted (with the noted correction being the only substantive change) the work in 1757, rather misleadingly, as remaining copies of the original. Although the poems are deeply blasphemous, the present copy belonged to the Virtue and Cahill collection of the library of Portsmouth Cathedral (the bookplate is Victorian in design). The bookplate is rather dramatically cancelled. Brunet III, 320; De Ricci-Cohen pp. 497-8; Dibdin I, 419; ESTC N504923; Lowndes 1113; Printing and the Mind of Man2 105; Rothschild 1548. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 6JLR0038

Bibliografische Details

Titel: Quinti Horatii Flacci Opera

Verlag: John Pine, London

Erscheinungsdatum: 1757

Einband: Hardcover

Zustand: Very good

Auflage: First.