The Works of Horace

Bound in the publisher’s brown calf, in a simple wrap with a smooth spine, contemporary to the time of publication. The boards gilt ruled with blind stamped decorations. Gilt decorations to the spine laying out five gilt ruled panels with a stamped gilt decoration to the centre of each panel. Very delicately done and still in very good condition. A Red Moroccan lettering piece in the second panel. Marbled endpapers.

Top front hinge cracked, but still firm. Minor rubbing to the boards and spine

Internally the engraved title page and Frontispiece with some dirt stains. The leaves without stains or water damage but a bit browned at the edges.

Please see the slideshow in order to gain a greater appreciation of the condition of this volume.

Per Wikipedia: Of his rendering of Horace, Samuel Johnson said: ‘The lyrical part of Horace never can be perfectly translated. Francis has done it the best. I’ll take his five out of six against them all.’ The first part, consisting of the ‘Odes, Epodes, and Carmen Seculare of Horace in Latin and English,’ in which he was assisted by William Dunkin, was issued at Dublin in two volumes in 1742. It was republished in London in the next year, and in 1746 two more volumes, containing the ‘Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry,’ appeared with a dedication in prose to Robert Jocelyn, lord chancellor of Ireland. The whole version was reissued in 1747, and it ran into many subsequent editions, that edited by Edward Dubois being the best. It was also included in the set of poets edited by Alexander Chalmers, the ‘British Poets,’ vols. xcvii–viii., and in Charles Whittingham’s ‘Greek and Roman Poets,’ vol. xii.