PERSIUS; [Thomas BREWSTER, translator].
The Satires of Persius translated into English Verse; with some occasional Notes; and the original Text corrected … The second Edition; to which is now prefixed, the Life of the Author.
London, Printed for A. Millar, 1751.
8vo, pp. [4], [iii]-xxiv, 154, [2]; short tear to [π]2; a very good copy in contemporary British calf, spine gilt-ruled in compartments, edges speckled red; a few scuffs, cracks to joints and endcaps chipped; ink inscription ‘Jno James (1751.)’ to title with notes and corrections in the same hand (see below).
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The Satires of Persius translated into English Verse; with some occasional Notes; and the original Text corrected … The second Edition; to which is now prefixed, the Life of the Author.
Second edition, with the addition of Bayle’s life of Persius, with manuscript corrections.
Our commentator, an unidentified John James, is unusually strident in his annotations, adding to the title not only his name but an additional epigraph adapting Persius 5:28-29 (‘Totumque hoc verba resignent / Quod latet arcana (vix) enarrabile fibra’) and changing ‘and the Original Text corrected’ to read ‘and the Latin Original subjoin’d & corrected’. In the preface he identifies the translator, ‘Dr Brewster of St Jns Oxfd’, and in the Life continues as confidently as before, correctly noting that Persius was born in the reign of Tiberius, not Nero, changing his native town of ‘Volterra’ towards a more Roman form ‘Volterræ’, and making seemingly trivial additions to the text, e.g. ‘the famous Grammarian Palemon’, ‘the Orator Verginius Flaccus’, or ‘Italian Genealogists vainly alledge’.
James on occasion engages critically with the notes, for example changing ‘Trowses’ to ‘Breeches’ and noting that they were worn not only by Medes but also by ‘some Gauls in that Age’ (p. 67), but – beyond implementing the errata and a few minor changes – he appears to pay relatively little attention to the translation itself.
ESTC T143345.