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Aristippus, or, Monsieur de Balsac’s Masterpiece, being a Discourse concerning the Court … Englished by R.W.

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First edition in English of Aristippe (1657), a treatise on wisdom in political administration dedicated to Queen Christina of Sweden, who was an admirer. Balzac was particularly reputed for the quality of his prose, seen as raising it to the same perfection as Malherbe did for French verse. At the end is an apposite extract from an earlier work, The elegant Combat (1634), comprising his conversations with Pierre du Moulin. Wing B 612.

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BALZAC, Honoré de, and Fedor Kuz’mich SOLOGBUB, pseud. [Fedor TETERNIKOV], translator.

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FIRST HUNGARIAN EDITION OF THE BIBLE OF LIBERALISM MILL, John Stuart.

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First Hungarian edition of John Stuart Mill’s great essay On Liberty, with a lengthy introduction by the Austro-Hungarian statesman Béni Kállay (1839–1903). First published in 1859, Mill’s vastly influential essay was dedicated to his wife Harriet who had provided the stimulus for the work. ‘Many of Mill’s ideas are now the commonplaces of democracy. His arguments for freedom of every kind of thought or speech have never been improved on. He was the first to recognize the tendency of a democratically elected majority to tyrannize over a minority, and his warning against it has a contemporary ring: “We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and, if we are sure, stifling it would be an evil still”’ (PMM 345).

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