Sir Thomas Overbury (1581-1613) was a celebrated victim of court intrigue. A friend and adviser of James I's favourite R
BERNARD QUARITCH
NEW ACQUISITIONS JULY 2017
THE ‘HORRIBLE IPOCRISY’ AND ‘BYTTER BLASPHEMYE’ OF ‘LUTHERS FURIOUS FACTION’ 1. BARLOW, William. A dialoge describing the originall ground of these Lutheran faccions, and many of their abuses, compyled by syr William Barlowe chanon, late byshop of Bathe. (Colophon:) Prynted at London in Paules Churcheyard by John Cawood, 1553. 8vo, pp. [176]; black letter, title within woodcut border, woodcut initials; very light damp stain at head of several leaves, light foxing at end, small worm track to blank lower margin of quires A and part of B, small paper flaw to lower margin of E8 (not touching text); a very good copy in modern calf by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, gilt lettering to spine; initials ‘B. F.’ at head of title. £5500 Very rare second edition of this lively anti-Lutheran dialogue by William Barlow (d. 1568), the first edition of 1531 surviving in just two copies, only that at the Bodleian being complete. Barlow, a post-Dissolution clerical emigré and acolyte, in Cologne and Strasbourg, of Tyndale and William Roy, began his literary career as the poetical satirist of Cardinal Wolsey’s abuses. Late in 1529 he craved pardon from Henry VIII for his ‘frivolous’ writings, returned to England, and followed the course of court patronage to a string of preferments, giving proof of his loyalty with this Dialoge. He became a favourite of Anne Boleyn, developed a new zeal against relics, pilgrimages and saint-worship, and later maintained a tempestuous bishopric in Wales; he prospered under Edward VI and Somerset, and escaped imprisonment under Mary, fled again to the Continent, and returned to a new see (Chichester) on the accession of Elizabeth I.
In the Dialoge ‘the interlocutor William, recently returned from the Continent, names to his friend Nicholas the leading reformers he has met and outlines Luther’s controversies with Henry VIII, Carlstadt, and Zwingli. He discusses the quarrel between the Lutheran and Zwinglian factions over the Eucharist and their subsequent meeting at Marburg (1529). His account of the “third faccyon”, the Anabaptists, constitutes an early source for England’s knowledge of Anabaptist beliefs and many of their startling practices. This account is relatively fair and accurate for the times’ (Andrew M. McLean, ‘A noughtye and a false lyeng boke’: William Barlow and the Lutheran Factions’, Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 2 (Summer, 1978), pp. 173-174). This copy has a passage underlined on f. I3r: ‘By my trouthe I deme the people would be good ynough, if they had good heades’. ESTC S101046; STC 1462. This is the only copy to appear in auction records, apparently being that sold by Sotheby’s in 1969.
2. CONDILLAC, Étienne Bonnot de, Abbé. Traité des Sensations ... A Londres; & se vend à Paris, Chez De Bure l'ainé, M.DCC.LIV. 2 vols, sm. 8vo, pp. [2], vi, 345, [1]; [4], 335, [1]; a very good copy in full contemporary catspaw calf, raised bands, spines florally scrolled gilt in compartments, contrasting morocco labels lettered gilt, head of vol. II slightly chipped. £1950 First edition of this great classic of psychology and Condillac’s most important work. A devoted follower of Locke, he was convinced that all mental processes could be analysed into atomic constituents consisting of basic, irreducible units of sensation. His careful analysis of actual sensations (which constitute more of our experience than had hitherto been allowed) and his emphasis on the central importance of attention influenced nineteenth-century European naturalism, most particularly in literature and popular science. Garrison-Morton 4968; Tchemerzine (1977) II, 479.
‘RESTORED TO HER FORMER SPLENDOUR’ – THE “MAURETANIA”
3. CUNARD WHITE STAR. The New “Mauretania”, 34,000 tons, Latest achievement of Luxury afloat. Sectional diagram showing the interior of this magnificent new liner. Printed in England, [n.p.], April, 1947. 4to, four-part folding plan of ship interior on silver card and folding overlay of ship exterior at half-height, with 1 page of text and 6 halftone illustrations 4⅛ x 6½ inches (10.5 x 16.6 cm), each with printed caption below, on verso of plan; slight creasing at a fold of the overlay; stapled in the original beige printed card wrappers, red paper spine; a little foxing to wrappers, red ink stamp of Frames, Morecambe on upper and lower wrappers, very good condition. £170 An extravagant advertising brochure for the luxury liner Mauretania, announcing that: ‘Completely reconditioned from stem to stern after distinguished war service on which she carried, between 1940 and 1945, 350,178 troops and steamed 542.446 miles, the “Mauretania” returns to the North Atlantic passenger service resorted to her former splendour’. The sectional diagram with its overlay portrays the impressive scale of the ship – the largest liner built in an English shipyard at that time. The verso of the folding overlay provides a very detailed key to the plan, with 117 individual features outlined. The key covers the Sports, Sun, Promenade and Main decks and decks “A” to “E”, as well as the machinery holds. The illustrations are captioned ‘The attractive first class observation lounge and cocktail bar’; ‘The Grand Hall can be used as a lounge, cinema or ballroom’, ‘An impression of the first class swimming pool’, ‘A corner of the spacious cabin dining room’, ‘An impressive cabin smoking room and cocktail bar’, and ‘One of the largest lounges for tourist passengers’.
THE FIRST TAXONOMIC STUDY OF THE ENTIRE ORDER OF CIRRIPEDIA, WHICH FORE-SHADOWED THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION: THE RARE FOSSIL SECTION 4. DARWIN, Charles Robert. A Monograph on the Fossil Lepadidae, or, Pedunculated Cirripedes of Great Britain [–A Monograph on the Fossil Balanidae and Verrucidae of Great Britain]. London: C. and J. Adlard [vol. I] and J.E. Adlard [vol. II] for The Palaeontographical Society, 1851-1854. 2 volumes bound in one, 4to, pp. I: [iii]-vi, 1-86, [87]-88; 5 engraved plates by James de Carle Sowerby with explanatory text ll. bound opposite; woodcut illustrations and letterpress tables in the text; II: [4], 1-44, [1]-2 (letterpress ‘Index to Monograph on Fossil Balanidæ’); 2 engraved plates by George Brettingham Sowerby with explanatory text ll. bound opposite; woodcut illustrations and letterpress tables in the text; a few light marks, quires I, πe lightly browned, bound without half-titles; mid-20th-century maroon cloth, spine lettered in gilt; spine slightly faded, corners slightly bumped, otherwise a very good copy retaining the rare index leaf for the second volume; provenance: [?]Wheldon and Wesley Ltd, Hitchin (loosely-inserted invoice for a copy of the work addressed to Julian Seymour dated 26 January 1994). £1750 First edition. Darwin’s interest in the Cirripedia began with his study in 1846 of a barnacle he had found off the coast of Chile during the voyage of the Beagle; when he realised that the literature on the classification of Cirripedia was deeply unsatisfactory, he spent the following eight years completing the first taxonomic study of the entire order. These two volumes on fossil Cirripedia were published as vol. V, no. 13 and vol. VIII, no. 30 of the series of monographs issued by the Palaeontographical Society, and, although it is not indicated on the title-pages, Darwin states in the preface to volume II that ‘the present short Monograph completes my work on British Fossil Cirripedes’ (p. [v]). These two volumes were complementary to the
two volumes of his monograph on living Cirripedia, which were published by the Ray Society, like the present Monograph, in 1851 and 1854: ‘[i]t seemed best to [Darwin] to separate the Lepadidae, or stalked barnacles, from the more familiar sessile Balanidae in each set of publications. In fact, he believed the two great divisions had diverged early from each other in evolutionary history, and, if one reads between the lines, his taxonomic arrangement was steeped in ideas derived from his theory of evolution. His written descriptions and the manner in which he skilfully grouped species into clusters that resembled each other would have been impossible for him without the idea of real blood relationships existing between them. Yet not a word was officially revealed. As he had come to recognise, his view made sense of the living world in a way that few other naturalists had grasped at that period’ (Browne, I, p. 504). In 1853 (before the publication of the second volumes of the two Monographs) Darwin was nominated for and awarded the Royal Society’s Royal Medal for his work on the Cirripedia and the 1851 publication of the combined geological observations of the Beagle, as J.D. Hooker excitedly wrote to Darwin on 4 November 1853: ‘[t]he R[oyal].S[ociety]. have voted you the Royal Medal for Natural Science – All along of the Barnacles!!! I am most intensely delighted, infinitely more than you can be, very much on the strength of the Lepadidae too; for you must know that I neither proposed you, nor seconded you; nor voted for you – I was base, perfide – [Joseph Ellison] Portlock proposed you for the Coral Islands & Lepadidae. [Thomas] Bell [Secretary of the Royal Society] followed seconding, on the Lepadideae alone, & then, followed such a shout of paeans for the Barnacles that you would have [sunk] to hear’ (Correspondence of Charles Darwin, V, p. 165).
When, in late 1854, his work on barnacles was concluded, Darwin was pleased that this obstacle to researches into species was removed: ‘[f]or several months before [September 1854], maybe almost a year, he had longed to return to some more direct work on species – the barnacles raised so many interesting possibilities that he fretted impatiently to get the last proof sheet out of the house [...] The entry [in his journal on the day he considered the work finished] closed with the words “Began sorting notes for species theory”’ (Browne, I, p. 510). The index was accidentally omitted from the second volume when it was published in 1854, and this omission was not made good until 1858 when the single-leaf index was issued. The index leaf – which is present here – is frequently lacking, presumably due to its publication some four years after the second volume and its ephemeral nature. Freeman 342.1-3; Norman 590.
MODERN GREEK
5. [DICTIONARY.] VLACHOS, Gerasimos. Θησαυροs τηs εγκυκλοπαιδικηs βασεωs τετραγλωσσοs. Venice, ex typographia ducali Pinelliana (i.e. Giovanni Pietro Pinelli), 1659. 4to, pp. 28, 688, [116]; mostly Greek letter, printed in double columns, large engraved Medici arms at head of second leaf, woodcut ornaments; a very fresh copy in contemporary Italian vellum gilt, red edges. £2000 First edition of what is evidently the first dictionary of modern Greek. Dedicated by Gerasimos Vlachos (1607–1685), Abbot and teacher, a native of Crete (the printer/proof-reader Arsenios Kaloudes was also a Cretan monk: see pp. 24 and 688) to Ferdinand II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, its entries are in then current, i.e. modern, Greek, accompanied by Latin and Italian translations, together with synonyms and cognate words in both classical and modern Greek. While the main entries receive no grammatical extension, the synonyms and cognate words are usually given, if nouns, their genitive form and, if verbs, their future and aorist forms. The thesaurus is followed by indices in Latin and Italian giving the page numbers on which Latin and Italian words may be found, so that the book becomes in effect a dictionary out of those two languages into Greek, as well as being in the thesaurus proper a dictionary out of Greek into those two languages. Vlachos’s book must have proved useful, especially during Venetian possession of the Ionian islands. It was reprinted in Venice in 1723, and again in 1801 at Jannina. The preliminaries comprise a flattering dedication and a number of flattering poems to the Medici family who, as Vlachos writes, preside over
Florence, which gave Greeks such a warm-hearted welcome. OCLC records ten copies, of which two are in the UK (Cambridge, National Library of Scotland) and one in the US (Harvard).
6. [GIGNOUX, John] and John ENTICK. The Child’s Best Instructor in Spelling and Reading. In which the Division of Syllables is taught in such a natural Way, that the Learner may soon attain to a correct and true Pronunciation of Words … By John Entick, M.A. Author of the New Spelling Dictionary. A new Edition, being the ninth, carefully revised, corrected, altered, and enlarged. London: Printed for B. Law … and C. Dilly … 1788. 8vo, pp. [2], 2, 164, with twelve woodcut vignette illustrations; a very good copy in contemporary sheep, edges slightly rubbed. £850 A very rare and attractive reading and spelling primer for young children, with the standard syllabaries and reading exercises followed by twelve illustrated fables (pp. 133-144), a history of British monarchs, and some moral verses. The first edition of Gignoux’s Instructor was published in 1757 (not in ESTC, but two copies recorded by Alston); the next extant edition was the ‘fifth’ of 1769 (1 copy known), which added a grammar by John Entick and was evidently revised by him. Subsequent editions dropped Gignoux, a minor English teacher, from the title-page, and replaced him with Entick, a slightly better known miscellaneous author, recently made notorious by his successful suit against the government for the illegal seizure of his papers in 1762. Editions of 1773, 1780 and 1785 followed, surviving in 1 or 2 copies each. That of 1785, and also the present, dropped Entick’s grammar once more and apparently made ‘great alterations’ – ‘In the first place then, the Lessons are nearly all new and much more numerous … [and] the Tables of Spelling-columns … more extensive’ (Advertisement, signed by one ‘W.C.’ at Northfleet). The work was evidently popular enough to demand this series of reprints, as well as two American editions recorded by Evans but not known in any surviving copy, but
its ephemeral and scholastic use has made survival rates extremely low. Not in ESTC. Alston IV, 682, lists a single copy, at the Bibliothèque nationale.
7. [GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang von]. An anonymous, unpublished manuscript draft translation of Erwin und Elmire (1775) into English. England, late eighteenth-century? 25 leaves, 4to, uncut, loose in gatherings, unidentified watermarks; written in brown ink in a clear italic hand, with numerous deletions, additions and corrections. £4500 A fascinating, unpublished manuscript translation of Goethe’s ‘Schauspiel met Gesang’ (play with songs), Erwin und Elmire (1775), testimony to the rapid growth in interest in German thought that Goethe and his contemporaries inspired in England. Erwin und Elmire was based on the ballad of Edwin and Angelina by Goldsmith, which had appeared in chapter 8 of The Vicar of Wakefield. Goldsmith was one of Goethe’s favourite English writers – indeed in 1772 he had arrange the private printing of an edition of The Deserted Village by his friend Johann Merck in Darmstadt. Erwin und Elmire was begun in November 1773, but it was not completed until January 1775, after Goethe’s sudden rise to fame with Werther. 1775 was an important year for Goethe, the year of his tempestuous love affair with Lili Schönemann, and many have seen Erwin und Elmire, which was dedicated to Lili when it appeared in print later in 1775, as a coded representation of their relationship. ‘Erwin has disappeared, no one knows where, after being coldly treated by his beloved Elmira. Filled with remorse she is advised to make her confession to a local hermit. This she does, the hermit proves to be Erwin in disguise, and the lovers depart from the isolated hermitage to love a happy life together …’. But through its minor characters the operetta ‘has a particularly clear eye for the class basis of the opposition to Sentimentalism which was the defining characteristic of Storm and Stress’ (Nicholas Boyle, Goethe, the Poet and his Age).
The most important musical setting of Erwin und Elmire was by Goethe’s patron, Anna Amalia of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, written after Goethe’s arrival in Weimar in November 1775 (the opera premièred there in May 1776); but there was in fact an earlier setting, performed in Frankfurt in May 1775. Later, while touring Italy in 1787/8, Goethe revised the text substantially, the rewritten work being published in 1788 as a ‘Singspiel’, in verse, rather than the mixture or prose and verse in the original. The present manuscript comprises a literal English translation of the 1775 text of Erwin und Elmire, perhaps produced as a prelude to a more idiomatic translation, though we can trace no early English version of Goethe’s libretto in print. The copious corrections, in the same hand as the first draft, amend some of the more infelicitous literalisms to more natural language: ‘Dear child what have you again?’ for example becomes ‘Dear child what ails you again’ (rendering ‘Liebes Kind, was hast Du wieder?’), and ‘If a rat runs through your head, if you will not speak any thing in the morning, or hang the mouth during the table … ’ becomes ‘If any thing displeases crosses you, if you will not speak the whole morning, & close your mouth all the time we are at table …’ (rendering ‘Wenn Dir eine Ratte durch den Kopf läuft, daß Du einem Morgen nichts reden magst, oder bei Tische das Maul hängst …’). Goethe had a raft of important English translators, among them William Taylor, Walter Scott, and later Coleridge, but we have not been able to identify the hand here.
RARE ILLUSTRATED ACCOUNT OF A LOST LIBRARY
8. [LIBRARY HISTORY. KRASIŃSKI LIBRARY]. Biblioteka ordynacyi Krasińskich w Warszawie. Warsaw, Krasińskich Library, 1917. Small 8vo, pp. 46, [2] plus rear blank; with three full-page woodcut illustrations of the library building, woodcut Krasiński arms at end, head-pieces; a very good copy in the original grey wrappers, title and crest printed on the upper wrapper; spine ends a little worn. £280 Only edition. Rare account, with illustrations that are particularly valuable since the subsequent partial destruction of the building, of the Krasiński library in Warsaw, founded by Wincenty Krasiński in 1844. Krasiński was a Polish nobleman, political activist and military leader. The largest extant collections of his foundation are those on the Napoleonic Wars and November Uprising. Part of the library building was destroyed in 1939 during the German invasion. In May 1941 its collections were moved to the Staatsbibliothek Warschau, the University Library, SGH and the National Museum. Much of these were burned in 1944 at the end of the Warsaw Uprising, and after the war the surviving collections were transferred to the National Library of Poland. OCLC finds 3 copies in the US (Harvard, NYPL, Stanford), 2 in Europe (Royal Danish Library, NL Sweden).
WITH CHARACTERS BY WEBSTER, DEKKER AND DONNE
9. OVERBURY, Sir Thomas. Sir Thomas Overbury His Wife. With Additions of new Characters, and many other Witty Conceits never before printed. The sixteenth Impression. London, Printed by John Haviland, for A. Crooke … 1638. Small 8vo, 160 leaves, unpaginated; a few scribbles on the title-page, some worming to lower blank margin at the beginning and in sheets N-O, torn corners C1 and K2 without loss, short tears just entering text on H1 and M1-2 without loss, and a few short marginal tears; an unsophisticated copy in original unlettered sheep, slightly shaken, corners worn and some erosion to leather on covers. £600 Sixteenth and last STC edition of the most popular character book of the early seventeenth century. Sir Thomas Overbury’s poem, A Wife, now a Widowe, based on Ovid, was published posthumously, in 1614. The second edition, also 1614, adds some pieces in prose including twenty-one characters. The collection finally reached eighty-three characters by 1622, describing, among others, a good wife, a dissembler, a courtier, a flatterer, a sailor, an amorist, a ‘wideman’, a pedant, etc. The authors of these added characters included Webster, Dekker, Donne (‘The true Character of a Dunce’), and others. Donne’s contributions also included ‘An Essay of Valour’ and ‘Newes from the very Country’, one of the satirical newsletters at the end. Sir Thomas Overbury (1581-1613) was a celebrated victim of court intrigue. A friend and adviser of James I’s favourite Robert Carr, Viscount Rochester, he fell out with Rochester by opposing his liaison with Frances, Countess of Essex. Rochester turned the King against Overbury and contrived to have him imprisoned in the Tower, where he was slowly poisoned to death. The notoriety of the whole affair no doubt contributed to the popularity of Overbury’s Wife and its gradual accretions.
The five small quarto editions that appeared in 1614 have always been difficult to find, but even the octavo editions from the 1620s and 1630s have now become elusive. STC 18919; Gwendolen Murphy, ‘A Bibliography of English Character Books’, Supplement to the Bibliographical Society’s Transactions no. 4 (1925), p. 24.
PORTUGUESE MISSIONARY TO THE EAST
10. OLIVEIRA, Nicolao Pedro de. Compendio da vida do excmo. e rmo. senhor d. Eusebio Luciano Carvalho Gomes da Silva, Bispo de Nankin ... Lisbon, Regia Officina Typografica, 1792. 4to, pp. [xx], 162, [2 blank]; with engraved frontispiece portrait of da Silva, half-title; slight stain at head of p. 162, a few pinhole wormholes to blank inner margins of last few leaves, small loss at inner margin of last blank leaf; a very good, crisp and clean copy in 20th-century mottled calf, spine gilt in compartments with two red morocco lettering-pieces, floral endpapers. £950 Rare first edition of this biography of the Portuguese bishop and missionary Eusebio Luciano Carvalho Gomes da Silva (1763-1790), covering his childhood, lifelong piety, studies at the Seminario de Rilhafoles and noviciate at S. Vicente de Paulo, his time as a missionary at the college of Bom Jesus in Goa, India, his ordination as a priest there, his election as bishop of Nanking, China, and his premature death, with an overview of Christian missionary activity in China. Only the British Library copy on COPAC; two copies in the US recorded on OCLC (Syracuse, New York Public Library).
LOVE AND WINE
11. [POETRY and SONGS.] A manuscript collection of poems and songs on love and drinking. France, early 18th century. Manuscript on paper, in French and occasional Italian, oblong 8vo (115 x 165 mm), ff. [52], neatly written in brown ink in two principal hands, with a few later additions, engraved decorative border to each page (to 4 different designs), doodles to two pages; small loss to bottom inner corner of f. [43] (not touching text), a few ink marks; very well preserved in c.1680 red morocco, gilt frame with corner fleurons and border to covers, spine gilt in compartments, gilt turn-ins and edges, marbled pastedowns; a little worn and marked; an attractive volume. £1400 A charming and attractive collection of poèmes and chansons on the themes of love and drinking apparently compiled in the early 18th century in a handsomely bound blank book from the 1680s, its compilers evidently amateurs of amorous and occasionally bawdy verse, as well as of wine. The majority of the content comprises short verses on love – frequently set in a pastoral milieu and presenting lovers as shepherds and shepherdesses – exploring themes including the suffering lover, love as the enemy of serenity, infidelity and jealousy, falling into and out of love, and the beauty of a lover’s eyes (and teeth). There are some delightful passages: a shepherd so madly in love with Celimene that he is incapable of looking after his sheep (and himself); the lover of Iris suddenly finding her ‘moins ieune et moins belle’ and turning his affections to Philis; and a bawdier poem recounting the amorous adventures of the young lovers Colette and Colinet. Several of the pieces can be traced to 17th-century printed collections of verse and song: Recueil des plus beaux vers qui ont été mis en chant (Paris, 1661), Livres d’airs de différents auteurs (Paris, 1678), and Nouveau recueil
des plus beaux vers mis en chant (Paris, 1680). Another can be found in the 1703 Brunetes ou petits airs tendres and some appear to be airs from operatic works of the period. But many we have not been able to trace in printed form. Verses on the subject of food and wine include praise for ‘la bonne chere et le bon vin’, a drunk lover boasting how wine makes his eyes sparkle, table-thumping choruses such as ‘beuvons iusqu’au dernier soupir’ and ‘en goinfrerie passons la vie’, and the wonderfully evocative line ‘doux glou glou de la bouteille’. The volume was at one time (late 18th-century?) in the possession of one Auguste Roland, whose name appears in a few places. He has added his unequivocal opinion beside a few of the amorous verses, variously dismissing the writer as a ‘cochon’, a ‘crapaud qui a barbouillé sur ce cahier’, and a ‘bardot’.
POLYGLOT LETTERS
12. PORNY, Mr (i.e. Antoine Pyron du Martre). Modeles de Lettres en françois, anglois, et italien … // Models of Letters in French, English, and Italian … a third Edition augmented with the Italian Translation … // Modelli di Lettere [etc.] … Turin. By the Brothers Reycends Booksellers. 1788. 8vo, pp. 492, with 3 title-pages, in French, English and Italian; the text with English and French in columns on the versos and Italian on the rectos; a very good, crisp copy in contemporary half-calf and marbled boards, morocco label lettered in French. £650 First and only Italian edition, very rare, of this collection of model letters for polite and business correspondence, first published in English and French only in London under the title Modern Letters in English and French in 1769 (BL only) and then in a ‘second edition, improved’ as Models of Letters in 1782 (3 copies in ESTC). The present edition was the only one to be published in Italy and the only one to contain the text in Italian as well as English and French. The translation was by Francesco Grassi, a teacher in Turin and later deputy librarian of the Accademia delle Scienze. Although it is named as the ‘third’ edition on the title-page, following the London sequence, it was an independent and probably unauthorised publication, and a conventional ‘third edition’ appeared at London in 1791, with the English and French texts only. Porny (or Pyron), a native of Normandy who came to Britain in the 1750s, was a Master of French at Eton College from about 1773, and author of a work of heraldry as well as a number of French textbooks; his success, increasingly less modest, led to his appointment as a Poor Knight of Windsor in 1780, and he left after his death a not-insubstantial sum to fund a charity school in Eton, to be administered by the printer
and booksellers Charles Knight. Not in ESTC or COPAC. OCLC shows one copy, at the Newberry Library.
13. [REMONDINI PRESS.] Two original and entire-sheet papers. Bassano, Remondini, second half of the 18th century. Two sheets, 460 x 370 mm; woodcut on blue and green laid paper, very good condition. £400 + VAT in the E.U. A pair of extremely rare Remondini papers. Entire-sheet papers, uncut and never used, are most uncommon. The leaf motif resembles those of Indian textiles imported into Europe by Dutch merchants from the seventeenth century onwards. The Remondini press, one of the most important in Italy between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, produced papers such as these for a number of uses, such as bindings, furniture decoration and wallpaper. Remondini papers were famous in Italy, Europe, even America, though for the latter market shipping across the Atlantic proved too difficult. In the eighteenth century there were more than fifty merchants in Europe selling for Remondini, and a network of travelling salesmen disseminated their prints. In 1792 the seats of the newly-built La Fenice, Venice’s premier theatre, were upholstered with Remondini papers. The history of the Remondini press is closely tied to the dominance of the Venetian Republic; the press would suffer as a result of the Republic’s demise, though it survived until 1861. Besides those in the Remondini Museum in Bassano del Grappa we have been unable to locate further examples. Cf. Mario Infelise, Remondini un editore del Settecento (Milan, 1990); Piccarda Quilici, Carte decorate nella legatorial del ‘700 (Rome, 1989).
THE FIRST COMPLETE VERSE SHAKESPEARE IN GERMAN
14. SHAKESPEARE, William. William Shakespeares sæmmtliche dramatische Werke übersetzt im Metrum des Originales. I[–XLIII] Bändchen. Wien. Druck und Verlag von J. P. Sollinger. 1825[–1827]. 43 parts (including the 6 supplement parts), 16mo, bound in nine volumes, each with a collective title-page facing the volume title-page; with a lithograph frontispiece portrait of Shakespeare in volume I and a vignette on each title-page, the titles and frontispiece lithographed by Joseph Trentsensky; a fine, crisp copy, bound preserving all the individual lithographic card covers, in attractive contemporary half morocco, spine gilt, red and green morocco labels. £1500 First edition thus, very rare, with the 6 supplement volumes of 1827 (containing a life of Shakespeare translated from the English of Augustine Skottowe; notes; critical essays; and the poems). The first attempt at a complete German verse translation of Shakespeare was that of A. W. Schlegel, comprising 17 plays, published in 1797. It was followed in 1818 by the collaborative translation of 36 plays by Johann Heinrich Voss and his two sons, and then by the famous Schlegel–Tieck translation of 1825-33, published in Berlin. The Vienna Shakespeare, much less well-known today, was a lavishlyexecuted rival to the contemporaneous Schlegel–Tieck Shakespeare, and though the latter is often referred to as the first complete metrical Shakespeare in German, it was not finished until 1833. Containing all 37 plays plus the poetry, the Vienna edition included 11 new translations commissioned for the project (and so indicated on the title-pages), by Eduard von Bauernfeld, Ferdinand von Mayerhofer, Joseph Fick and Franz Hermann von Hermannsthal, alongside previously published translations by Schlegel, Tieck, Dippold, Kessler,
Krause, Schumacher, Spina and Voss. The plays (but not the critical essays and poems etc) were reprinted in a weighty one-volume edition the following year, when there was also a second printing of the set in parts. Complete sets are very rare. We have traced copies at the University of Leipzig, the Anna Amalia Bibliothek, the Biblioteca civica di Arco, and the British Library only. Folger has only the edition of 1826-7. Not in COPAC.
THE NOTION OF ‘IMPARTIAL SPECTATOR’ AS SMITH UNDERSTOOD IT WHEN WRITING THE WEALTH OF NATIONS 15. SMITH, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments … The Second Edition. London, A. Millar, 1761. 8vo, pp. [xii], 436, [2] blank; light browning throughout with some foxing, but a very good copy in recent half calf and marbled boards; ink ownership inscription (dated 1825) to the title, with an earlier ink inscription erased. £6000 Second edition of Smith’s first book, first published in 1759. The intention to produce a substantially revised second edition is evident as early as July 1759, when Hume wrote to Smith with a detailed suggestion on the sentiment of sympathy. Smith sent a full paper containing his adjustments to Gilbert Elliot in October 1760. He was to be highly dissatisfied with the printing, a fact which further evinces the extent of his intended revision (Glasgow Correspondence, nos. 36, 40, 50 and 54). The editors of the Glasgow edition have established that the 1761 edition is indeed ‘considerably revised’ (‘contains substantial revisions’) – and is ‘not quite the same book’ as the first edition, though not as altered as the sixth (the last to be published in Smith’s lifetime). Aside from extensive stylistic changes, the ‘most important feature [of authorial revisions of the Theory] is a development of his concept of the impartial spectator’ (D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie, introduction to the Glasgow edition, 1976). ‘In TMS, [Smith] tries to develop moral theory out of ordinary moral judgments, rather than beginning from a philosophical vantage point above those judgments; and a central polemic of WN is directed against the notion that government officials need to guide the economic decisions of ordinary people. Perhaps taking a cue from David Hume’s
skepticism about the capacity of philosophy to replace the judgments of common life, Smith is suspicious of philosophy as conducted from a foundationalist standpoint, outside the modes of thought and practice it examines. Instead, he maps common life from within, correcting it where necessary with its own tools rather than trying either to justify or to criticize it from an external standpoint. He aims indeed to break down the distinction between theoretical and ordinary thought’ (S. Fleischacker, SEP). On the conceptual development between editions, pp. 15–20, and on textual points, pp. 34–38 (contra Rae, Life, pp. 148–9); Simpson Ross, Life, pp. 182–6, 196). Jessop, p. 170; Vanderblue, p. 38; Kress 5983; not in Goldsmiths’ or Einaudi.
16. TACITUS. C. Corn. Tacitus ex I. Lipsii editione cum not. et emend. H. Grotii. Leiden, ex officina Elzeviriana, 1640. 2 vols, 12mo, pp. [xvi], 746, [16 index], [4 blank]; engraved title-page, engraved busts of Augustus, Livia and Tiberius to p. [xvi], folding plate (‘Stemma Augustae domus’) following p. 400, p. [401] a titlepage (‘Historiarum libri quinque’) with printer’s device, woodcut initials and head-pieces; folding plate somewhat creased with neat repair to blank verso, otherwise an excellent, crisp and clean copy in 18th-century red morocco, gilt triple fillet border to covers, spines gilt in compartments, gilt-lettered labels, gilt edges and turn-ins, marbled endpapers. £350 A lovely copy of the handsome second Elzevier edition (first 1634) of Tacitus’s Annals, Histories, Germania, and Agricola, edited by Justus Lipsius, this edition enhanced with an appendix of notes and corrections by Hugo Grotius, and much admired by Dibdin. Provenance: Inscription ‘Ed Howard’ to head of titles. Armorial bookplate of Robert Edward ninth Baron Petre (1742-1801) of Thorndon Hall, Essex, to front pastedowns; a leading figure in the English Catholic community, Petre agitated for the freeing of Catholics from civil disabilities and was an influential negotiator in the Catholic Relief Acts. Book label of the bibliophile Irish judge William O’Brien (1832-1899) to vol. 1; Milltown Park Library labels and ink stamps. Dibdin Greek and Roman classics p. 452 ([the edition] ‘of 1640 is preferred, on account of its having the notes of Grotius’); Willems 509.
A CHEMIST’S VIRGIL
17. VIRGIL. Bucolica, Georgica, et Aeneis. Paris, Petrus Didot, natu major, anno reip. VI [1798-9]. 18mo, pp. xxviii, 390; engraved plan of ‘Aeneae Troiani navigatio’ at end, half-title, engraved medallion portrait to title; p. 178 line 1 beginning ‘Nec’; handsome engraved head- and tail-pieces; ink stamp to title and show throw from inscription to verso; a very good copy in near contemporary red morocco, gilt border to covers, spine richly gilt and lettered, gilt turn-ins and edges, green endpapers; very slightly rubbed. £350 A handsome copy of this lovely pocket edition of Virgil’s works by the great Parisian printer Pierre Didot the elder (1761-1853), brother of Firmin, issued as a cheaper alternative to his sumptuous, prize-winning folio edition published earlier the same year. Didot devotes his preface to pointing out errors in earlier editions and to praising the new process of stereotyping, promising thereby to publish ‘avec rapidité une collection immense, et extraordinairement économique’. The correctness of this edition was much admired by Brunet and Schweiger. Provenance: facsimile signature stamp ‘Chas Hatchett’ to title verso, beneath which is inscribed ‘to his grandson J C Hatchett 14 Feb: 1839’. Hatchett (1765-1847) was an eminent mineral chemist who discovered the element niobium in a mineral sample sent from North America; he had wide cultural interests and ‘owned a large collection of rare books, musical scores, pictures, and curios’ (ODNB). Book label of the bibliophile Irish judge William O’Brien (1832-1899). Milltown Park Library label and ink stamp. Brunet V, 1294; Schweiger II, 1182.
WAR, SEX CHANGES AND BEASTLY LANGUAGE: INCLUDING SCARCE WORKS BY COYER AND VOLTAIRE 18. [WAR OF THE AUSTRIAN SUCCESSION.] Recueil des Pieces. France, various places and printers, 1744-1749. 4to, pp. [694] with a few blanks, various paginations; one folding plate showing the siege of Berg-op-Zoom; woodcut devices and initials to most pamphlets; a few pamphlets torn or trimmed with loss, including the Voltaire Fontenoy which has several holes pp. 3-8 with loss, and a few soiled, else all good copies bound in a near-contemporary binding of polished calf with blindstamped border, edges and corners bumped; original blue ribbon; joints slightly cracked; spine gilt. £6500 An impressive recueil of 75 patriotic and satirical political pamphlets, several of which are very scarce, most relating to successful French exploits throughout Europe during the War of the Austrian Succession, including the Dutch and Italian campaigns and the conclusion of the war in 1789. Of particular note here is the rare group of pamphlets surrounding the Abbé Coyer’s famously absurd, anonymous tract L’année merveilleuse (1748), in which the author predicts that on the 1st August of the same year, due to an unprecedented alignment of five planets, ‘les hommes seront changés en femmes & les femmes en hommes.’ Coyer satirises the effeminacy of the modern man, depicting a metamorphosis whereby men are suddenly found to be wearing earrings and taking audiences in bed in the middle of the day. In this recueil Coyer’s pamphlet is preceded by his Supplement de l’année merveilleuse (1748), which bears the surprising imprint of Pegu in Myanmar. The Supplement provides a more scientific explanation of the astrology behind Coyer’s prediction and describes, in addition to the usual gender-transmutation, the occurrence of natural phenomena in the far east such as the flooding of the Ganges (both Barbier I.202.b); the Supplement is rare, OCLC notes 3 copies, BnF, Bibl Mazarine and Danish Natl Bibl; not in
COPAC. Further material relating to Coyer’s pamphlets includes two notes 3 copies, BnF, Bibl Mazarine and Danish Natl Bibl; not in COPAC. Further material relating to Coyer’s pamphlets includes two humorous critiques, Valdancourt’s Lettre a un abbé sur l’année merveilleuse (1748) (Barbier II.1117.e) and the Lettre de Mademoiselle D*** a Monsieur l’Abbé du R*** sur le supplement de l’année merveilleuse [?1748] (Barbier I.202.b); both are very rare: OCLC shows only one copy of each worldwide, both in the BnF; not in COPAC. The recueil contains another tract of Coyer’s, also very rare, L’astrologue du jour [?1748], without imprint but written from ‘the Observatory’, in which Coyer makes further prophetical predictions of two eclipses to occur in the following year, and answers the attacks suffered by the L’année merveilleuse and Supplement, this time using the term Hermafrodites. OCLC shows only one copy worldwide, at the BnF; not in COPAC; not in Barbier.
Of significant interest is the material relating to the Battle of Fontenoy, especially an appearance of Voltaire’s poem La bataille de Fontenoy (1745). This is an apparently unrecorded early printing of the poem, without an imprint and with approbations, probably false, signed by Crebillon and Marville; the date of the first approbation is obscured by a tear, the second is signed 7th June 1745. The dates of the approbations of the present edition follow shortly after the first anonymous edition, which was published by Prault Père and bore approbations by Crebillon and Marville, dated the 17th and 20th May respectively (Bengesco 610). All of the recorded first printings of the poem are anonymous or bear the shortened name M. de V. hist. de France; our printing bears Voltaire’s name and must have been one of several, almost certainly pirated, that quickly followed Prault Pere’s, slightly amending the text and adding explanatory footnotes. In the pamphlet that here precedes La bataille, the author Dromgold addresses to Voltaire his profound irritation at the profligacy of printings, claiming that five versions appeared in the eight days following the battle. OCLC lists only one edition with the same collation (pp. 7, blank), which we have been unable to examine, but this apparently bears imprints of both Paris and Dijon. Cf. Besterman, Studies on Voltaire, vol. CXI: Some eighteenthcentury Voltaire editions unknown to Bengesco (1973), p. 97.
the eight thousand interments he has had to perform since the battle and the economic quandary this has placed him in. Furthermore, the fameux Monsieur de Voltaire has already done the business of mourning the perished nobility and has thus stolen the curate’s prerogative, leaving him jobless! OCLC shows numerous copies on the continent and in the US; COPAC lists 3 copies in British institutions, of which only the Cambridge UL copy is the first edition; cf. Barrovecchio, Voltairomania (2004), p. 27.
A second rare, anonymous work by Voltaire is present later in the volume, Epistre sur la victoire remportée par le roi à Lavfeld (1747), a verse epistle praising King Louis’ military prowess. First edition, first issue (Bengesco 779). OCLC shows copies in BnF and Erfurt Gotha only; not in COPAC.
Another very scarce edition is the Ode sur la paix (1748), signed by M. Masson, Trésorier de France. La France littéraire (1769) gives the author as Pierre-Toussaint Masson (b. 1715), whose original Latin poem was translated into French by Charles le Beau (vol. I, p. 331); this work is not listed under Masson’s entry in Quérard. OCLC and COPAC together list three copies of a 1750 edition of this translation, at the BnF, BL and Oxford, but no copies of this 1748 edition, presumably the first; not in Barbier.
Voltaire’s Bataille de Fontenoy had a significant influence on the literature surrounding the battle, such that almost everything written in its aftermath makes some allusion to the poem (Quérard, Supercheries littéraires, I.501.f). One such response contained in this recueil is a first edition, first issue of Jean-Henri Marchand’s anonymous satire, Requête du curé de Fontenoy, au roy. Supposedly completed in three hours, it is the complaint of a ‘curate’ of Fontenoy to the king about
Equally of note is a very rare and curious tract arguing for the anima viventis in animals, Lettre de Madame de *** a Madame de *** sur … le langage des bêtes (1748), written in contradiction of the Cartesian idea of the ‘animal-machine’. This heavily ironic pamphlet consists largely of onomatopoeic animal noises (kro, kro, kro; glou glou glou, etc.), used to demonstrate that animals must be more than automatons because they communicate in a complex and emotional language. The author describes the ingenuity of a number of creatures, including beavers, monkeys and antlions, and illustrates instances in which humans have been known to copy intelligent animal behaviour. OCLC lists only one copy worldwide, at the BnF; not on COPAC; not in Barbier.
A full listing is available on request.
BERNARD QUARITCH EST 1847 OUR RECENT LISTS: Olympia Book Fair Medicine, Gastronomy & Sexology Economics The Photographic Portrait The Armchair Traveller: ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ Parties & Festivals
Cover image: 9. Krasiński Library
