IN PRAISE OF MONTGOLFIER
DURINI, Angelo.
Versi latini dell’ eminentissimo Sig. Cardinale Angelo Durini sopra il Cocchio Volante del Sig. di Montgolfier volgarizzati da Francesco Mainoni C.R.B.
[Milan, 1784.]
8vo, pp. [2], 51, [1 (blank)]; title within engraved border, engraved illustration of balloon on p. 8, and headpiece on p. 9; aside from occasional very minor spotting, clean and crisp throughout; in recent vellum-backed green marbled boards, title gilt on spine; a good copy.
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Versi latini dell’ eminentissimo Sig. Cardinale Angelo Durini sopra il Cocchio Volante del Sig. di Montgolfier volgarizzati da Francesco Mainoni C.R.B.
First edition, with a parallel Italian translation, of these Latin verses commemorating the first Montgolfier experiments with balloon flight by the Milanese diplomat and cardinal Angelo Maria Durini (1725–1796).
A contemporary reviewer in the Journal des scavans notes that ‘The enthusiasm which the Montgolfiers’ discovery has excited in Italy could not be better demonstrated than by this suite of pieces in Italian and Latin’. In his dedication, to the first Italian balloonist Paolo Andreani, the translator Francesco Mainoni, argues that the best use the rich can put their riches to is the advancement of the sciences and the arts, and that experimentation with balloons, the ‘mirabile scoprimento de’ nostri giorni’; the experiments of Andreani and the Montgolfiers are the perfect examples of this. There follow fifteen poems of various forms and lengths, on subjects ranging from the Montgolfier iconography to the false claims of, respectively, England and Brescia that Roger Bacon and, later, Francesco Lana-Terzi had come before the French brothers, as well as suggestions for inscriptions for Montgolfier’s balloon. The parallel translations by Mainoni, who was a frequent collaborator with Durini (also translating the latter’s verses on the death of the empress Maria Theresa among other works), are often very free – Durini’s Latin is spartan and precise, and four Latin lines often result in eight or more in Italian.
OCLC records copies at Yale, Harvard, the BnF, and the Deutsches Museum in Munich.
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[LITURGY.]
Cerimonie piu’ notabili della messa privata; Cavate dalle rubriche del Missale, ed altri autori da un Sacerdote D.C.D.M. Coll’aggiunta di quelle della messa, e vespri solenni si pei vivi, che pei defunti, col modo di servire alla messa privata. Da un’Alunno del Seminario di Torino.
As far as we are aware unrecorded edition of this uncommon treatise on the celebration of the mass and its associated rituals. Dealing both with private (low) masses and with solemn mass and solemn vespers, the work explains the meaning and performance of the non-verbal aspects of the liturgy: genuflection, the sign of the cross, the communion of the faithful, the movements of the celebrant’s hands, the role of acolytes and thurifers (also during requiem masses), the office of the subdeacon and deacon, the use of incense, and instructions for serving at the missa private. The woodcut on page 200 depicts the altar, annotated with numbers referring to the relevant parts of the text.
The text itself appears first to have been published around the turn of the century; the earliest issue in SBN is a Naples printing of 1701, but that claims to be ‘novamente riviste, ed accresciute’, and is only of 134 pages in 12s. Other editions appeared in Pavia, Turin, and Modena, while Venetian printings were issued in 1739 and 1750. All seem very scarce.
Not in OCLC, which records only a Venice printing of the same year (in the Polish Union Catalogue); SBN does not record this edition.
TALES OF PIRACY AND SHIPWRECK [TURNER, John.]
Sufferings of John Turner, chief mate of the country ship, Tay, bound for China, under the command of William Greig, including the seizure of him and six lascars in the cutter, and their captivity and danger amongst the ladrones … Also a curious account of Peter Serrano, who having escaped from shipwreck, lived seven years on a sandy island, on the coast of Peru.
Scarce account of piracy and shipwreck, with a striking aquatint frontispiece portraying a pirate attack.