PLUTARCH.

The Lives of the noble Grecians & Romans, compared together by that grave learned Philosopher & Historiographer Plutarch of Chæronea. Translated out of Greek into French by James Amiot ... With the Lives of Hannibal & Scipio African; translated out of Latin into French, by Charles del'Escluse, and out of French into English by Sir Thomas North, Knight. Hereunto are added the Lives of Epaminondas, of Philip of Macedon, of Dionysius the Elder, Tyrant of Sicilia, of Augustus Cæsar, of Plutarch, and of Seneca: with the Lives of nine other excellent Chieftains of Warre: collected out of Æmylius ...

London, Printed by Abraham Miller, and are to be sold by William Lee … 1657. Folio, mostly in sixes, pp. [16], 443, 446-1031, [27], 76, [34], with an engraved title, dated 1656, designed by Francis Barlow, and integral engraved portrait vignettes in the last part (the space for the intended vignette of Priscian the Grammarian remains blank on 5G1 verso), title printed in red and black, separate title pages for ‘The Lives of Epaminondas [etc.]’, dated 1656, and for ‘Prosopographia: or some select Pourtraitures and Lives … by Andrew Thevet’, dated 1657 (mistakenly bound before the ‘Notes and Explanations’ at 3T1); with an advertisement leaf and thirty-four pages of index; early prelims a little tattered, split in 5D2 without loss, but a very good copy in contemporary calf, rubbed, rebacked. ‘Fifth’ (sixth) edition, with added material. North’s translation of the Vitae Parallelae, dedicated to Elizabeth I, first appeared in 1579; the 1603 third edition appended his translations of L’Escluse and of the lives attributed then to Æmylius Probus (now to Cornelius Nepos). There was no new material in the next two editions (1612, 1631).Having been encouraged ‘to venture upon a new and fifth impression’, the stationer William Lee, wishing to render it ‘both acceptable to the present Age, and famous to Posterity, decided to add the ‘quintessence’ of André Thevet’s Pourtraits et vies des Hommes illustres Grecz, Latin, et Payens (Paris, 1584), being ‘the very marrow of his observations during his twenty three yeers travails and Peregrinations, throughout the chiefest and remotest parts in the world … (never as yet extant nor seen in English)’. Among the new biographies (in translations mostly by the playwright George Gerbier d’Ouvilly) are those of Aristotle, Homer, Sappho, Charlemagne, Tamburlaine, Atabalipa King of Peru, and Gutenberg, with a two-page poem celebrating his life and ‘the Excellency of the Art of Printing’.North’s celebrated translation of Plutarch has long been recognized as a major source for Shakespeare, providing not only the historical framework for Julius Caesar, Anthony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus, but ‘long passages of … magnificent prose’ that Shakespeare put ‘into blank verse with little change’ (F. E. Halliday).Wing P 2633.

• GBP 2,850.00 > autres monnaies
• Commande nro.: E1179

• libraire: Bernard Quaritch Ltd. (GREAT BRITAIN)