Horatius, Quintus Flaccus

Opera

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Johannis Pine Londini, 1733-[1737] Engraved throughout and with numerous illustrations by John Pine. Two volumes. 8vo. [232 x 142 x 70 mm]. [16]ff, 176, [3], 178-264, [1] pp; [12]ff, 48, [3], 50-94, [3], 96-152, [3], 154-172, [3], 174-191, [14] pp. Bound in contemporary red goatskin, the covers with a gilt single fillet border and a large ornamental tool in the corners. The spines divided into seven panels with gilt compartments formed from a fillet and dog-tooth roll, lettered in the second panel on a blue goatskin label, numbered in the third, the others with a face-in-the-sun within two circles at the centre and a sun-burst tool in the corners, the edges of the boards and turn-ins tooled with a gilt roll, plain endleaves, gilt edges. The Rothschild Library, 1547. The first issue with the misprint "Post Est" round the Caesar medal on p.108 in vol.II (corrected to "Potest" in the second issue). As in most copies this was bound without the printed folio half-sheet "List of Antiques". This is a superb copy. The binding is elegant and in fine condition, with just a hair-line crack at the foot of the lower joint on vol.II and the most trivial of marks. Internally it is almost spotless. There is a rather distinguished looking ink shelf-mark "R.7.23" and a pre-1938 Maggs Bros cost code. "John Pine (1690-1756) may well have been the pupil of Bernard Picart, the great French engraver at Amsterdam: he was the best English engraver in the first half of the [eighteenth] century. His edition of Horace is engraved throughout, text as well as ornament, though it is said that the text was first set in type and an impression transferred to the plate before it was engraved. The results are a unity between decoration and text which at times suggests Didot's Horace of 1799; a contrast between thick and thin strokes in the letters which naturally follows from the engraving process but which foreshadows the type design of Baskerville, Bodoni, and Didot; and the wide "leading" between the lines of the text which did so much to give their pages a brilliant effect". - Printing and the Mind of Man, Exhibition of Fine Printing, British Museum 1963, no.105. "Pine's complete command of his craft makes this the most elegant of English eighteenth century books in which text and illustrations alike are entirely engraved". - Ray, The Illustrator and the Book in England from 1790 to 1914, p.3.

• GBP 3,500.00 > other currencies
• ordernr.: ebc2879

• bookseller: George Bayntun (GREAT BRITAIN)