[WALSH, William.]

A Funeral Elegy upon the Death of the Queen. Addrest to the Marquess of Normanby.

London, Printed for Jacob Tonson … 1695.

First edition of Walsh’s elegy on the death of Queen Mary II, the very rare first issue without the author’s name on the title-page. The second issue replaces a thick rule on the title-page with Walsh’s name, and adds two thick rules to the final page – this latter setting is also used...

£350

ITALY – PIEVE DI SAN MINIATO DI RUBBIANA.

Petition to Pope Clement VII, in Latin, on paper, 30 lines in a small Italian notarial...

The petition explains that the parish of San Miniato in the Valle Rubbiana, in the diocese of Fiesole and in the lay patronage of the Buondelmonti family of Florence, is vacant following the death of the organist Mariotto di Michele Giovanni. The patrons, or the majority of them, or their duly appointed...

£250

[TORGA, Miguel, pseud.] ROCHA, Adolpho Correia da.

Abismo. Poemas.

[Coimbra, “Atlantida”, 1932.]

First (and only) edition of one of the very rare early collections of poetry of Miguel Torga, published under his own name while he was still a medical student in Coimbra.

£3500

AESOP, et al. [George STEWART, editor].

Selectiores Aesopi Phrygis fabulae, et Luciani Samosatensis dialogi. Isocratis...

Edinburgh, Tho. Ruddiman for George Stewart, 1723.

First edition thus, scarce, a Scottish school textbook comprising selections in Greek and Latin from Aesop’s Fables, Lucian’s Dialogues, the orations of Isocrates, and the Tablet of Cebes.

£375

ARISTOPHANES.

The Frogs, a Comedy. Translated from the Greek of Aristophanes, by C[harles] Dunster, A.M …

Oxford, J. and J. Fletcher; London, Rivington, Payne, Faulder, Cadell; Cambridge, Merrill, [1785].

First edition in English, and the only separately published translation of The Frogs in the eighteenth century. ‘It is … somewhat surprising that in an age so studious of ancient literature as the present, and which so much abounds in translations of the Greek and Latin classics, we...

£500

ARISTOPHANES, and Henry Francis CARY, translator.

The Birds … with Notes.

London, Printed for Taylor and Hessey … 1824.

First edition of the first metrical translation of Aristophanes’ The Birds into English by Henry Francis Cary (1722–1844) – perhaps best known for his blank verse translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy.

£350

ARISTOTLE.

Αριστοτελους περι ποιητικης: Aristotelis de poetica liber ex versione Theodori Goulstoni. Lectionis...

Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1780.

Large-paper issue of the first Winstanley edition, handsomely bound. The first work published by the Oxford historian and classicist Thomas Winstanley (1749–1823), subsequently Camden Professor of History and Laudian Professor of Arabic, this edition of Aristotle’s De poetica was based...

£675

BOETHIUS, Severinus.

Of the Consolation of Philosophy. In five Books. Made English and illustrated with Notes, by the right honourable...

London, J. D. for Awnsham and John Churchill, and Francis Hildyard, York, 1695.

First edition of this translation by the diplomat, politician and Jacobite conspirator Richard Graham, first Viscount Preston (1648–1695). The translation had initially been completed in 1680; after the Glorious Revolution, Preston was arrested as a supporter of James II in exile, released,...

£950

CICERO, Marcus Tullius.

De Officiis … libri tres. Item, de amicitia: de senectute: paradoxa: & de somnio Scipionis. Cum indice...

London, [Felix Kingston for] the Stationers’ Company, 1631.

London edition of the ‘greatest hits’ of Cicero for the early seventeenth century: De Officiis, ‘Laelius on friendship’, ‘Cato Major on old age’, the Stoic Paradoxes, and the Dream of Scipio from De Republica, with the notes of Erasmus, who was famously an admirer of...

£600

CLAUDIANUS, Claudius.

Claudii Claudiani Alexandrini, poetae illustriss. quotquot nostra hac tempestate extant opsucula, ad series...

Paris, Simon de Colines, 1530.

First Colines edition of the major works of Claudianus Claudius, known in the English-speaking world as Claudian, a Greek-speaking Latin poet best known for the unfinished epic De Raptu Proserpinae. It is printed in the same attractive italic type Colines used for his octavo editions of...

£850

EUNAPIUS.

Ευναπιου του Σαρδιανου βιοι φιλοσοφων και σοφιστων … De vitis philosophorum...

‘Cologne’ [but Geneva?], Samuel Crispin, 1616.

Very uncommon edition of the twenty-four biographies of Eunapius of Sardis (b. 347?), valuable as a source for the neo-Platonic, and anti-Christian, philosophy of the fourth century; among his subjects were Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Epiphanius. The Latin translation is by Hadrianus Junius.

£450

FULBECKE, William.

An Historicall Collection of the continuall Factions, Tumults, and Massacres of the Romans and Italians during...

London, Printed for William Ponsonby. 1601.

First edition. Fulbecke’s Historicall Collection ‘was a narrative history of the last years of the Roman republic and it is significant as one of the very few attempts by a Renaissance Englishman to write such a work … An interesting attempt to weave together such often-contradictory...

£5250

GIBBON, Edward.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

London, W. Strahan & T. Cadell, 1776–88.

First editions of all six volumes of Gibbon’s ‘masterpiece of historical penetration and literary style’ (PMM). The first volume here is of the second variant (of two), with the errata corrected as far as p. 183 and X4 and a4 so signed. The first edition of volume I (1000 copies, published...

£14000

GOODWIN, Thomas.

Romanae Historiae Anthologia … An English exposition of the Roman Antiquities wherein many Roman and English...

London, R.W. for Peter Parker, 1661.

A wholly unsophisticated Restoration sammelband of three popular seventeenth-century schoolbooks.

£850

HERODOTUS.

Historiae Libri IX: et de vita Homeri libellus. Illi, ex interpretatione Laurentio Vallae adscripta; hic ex interpretatione...

Frankfurt, Heirs of Andreas Wechel (Claude de Marne and Johann Aubry), 1594.

Freidrich Sylberg’s edition of Herodotus in the Latin translation by Lorenzo Valla, based on the text published by Estienne in 1566, along with extracts from the Greek physician Ctesias’s Persika, a history of Persia, and Indika, the first book to be devoted entirely to India, Estienne’s...

£1500

HIPPOCRATES.

The Eight Sections of Hippocrates Aphorismes review’d and rendred into English: according to the Translation of...

London, W. G. for Rob. Crofts, 1665.

First edition of this translation of the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, a succinct summary of medical advice directed at the practitioner. The first English translation was published in 1610, and a second version, derived from it in 1655. Here the aphorisms are entirely re-arranged by topic...

£850

HORACE.

Q. Horatius Flaccus ex recensione Dan. Heinsii.

Edinburgh, George Mosman, 1704.

A rare, modestly printed Scottish Horace, apparently the only printing in the British Isles of Heinsius’ edition, first published by Louis Elzevir in 1612.

£450

HORACE; James TATE, editor. 

Horatius restitutus: or the books of Horace arranged in chronological order according...

Cambridge, J. Smith for J. & J.J. Deighton, 1832. 

First edition of this attempt to arrange the books of Horace in chronological order by the classical scholar and master of Richmond School, James Tate (1771–1843), this copy presented by him to Thomas Gaisford (1779–1855), classicist, Dean of Christ Church Oxford, Regius Professor of Greek,...

£150

HORACE.

Quinti Horatii Flacci Opera cum novo commentario ad modum Joannis Bond.

Paris, Didot, 1855.

The deluxe issue of Didot’s Horace, a fine early photographically-illustrated work, complete with all the photographic plates, headpieces and maps, and printed on fine paper.

£750

JUVENAL, Decimus Junius, and Aulus Persius FLACCUS.

Satyrae.

London, J. Brindley, 1744.

First Brindley edition, edited by the Irish classical scholar Usher Gahagan (d. 1749). John Brindley began to publish his series of well-printed duodecimo classics in 1744, for which Gahagan edited eleven works before his arrest and conviction for high treason, having become embroiled with a...

£650