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First octavo edition of this influential classical treatise on aesthetics, Pearce's Latin translation printed in parallel to the original Greek text. The first edition was published in quarto in 1724, and this octavo edition with enlarged notes was released for wider circulation in 1732, receiving further printings in 1743, 1752, and 1775. In his edition, Zachary Pearce (1690-1774), bishop of Rochester from 1756 to his death, "undertook to adjust the readings, and, what was of far greater difficulty, to write a new Latin version, which should approach as near as is possible to the Greek, without violating its own purity. by what method he proceeded in this work may be known from his preface and his notes. Some of his first thoughts were retracted in the subsequent editions; but Dr. Pearce has generally pleased the publick, though he found it difficult to please himself" (Commentary I, x). Pearce's edition was also published in octavo by Henry Wetsten in Amsterdam in 1733, with the variations between the first and second editions added to the end of the volume, and Foulis of Glasgow ran a further print in quarto in 1763. Pearce dedicated his De sublimitate to the lord chancellor Thomas Parker, 1st Earl of Macclesfield, out of gratitude for his appointment as vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields in 1724. When Macclesfield was impeached for corruption the following year, Pearce remained faithful to his patron, attending each day of his trial; "Dr. Pearce was so favourably received by him, that their acquaintance might be called strict friendship" (Commentary I, xv). The present edition retains his lengthy dedication to the disgraced chancellor. The true author of this first-century AD Greek work is unknown; the 10th-century Paris manuscript (ms. P. 2036), the oldest surviving codex, was headed "Dionysius or Longinus", i.e. either Dionysius of Halicarnassus or Cassius Longinus, but this was misread by early printers as "by Dionysius Longinus". Critics now refer to him simply as "Longinus", and "one of the few things that can be determined with some certainty is that the author must have been a Hellenized Jew or at least in contact with Jewish culture, since the opening of Genesis is cited as a worthy example of sublimity. Such a reference is quite distinctive: no other known pagan writer employs the Bible in this manner" (Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, p. 135). The present volume bears the bookplate of Robert J. Hayhurst, who inherited and improved a successful group of retail pharmacies, John Hayhurst & Son, based in Nelson, Lancashire. He became an avid collector of naval history and of eighteenth-century literature in contemporary bindings; "Mr. R. J. Hayhurst believes that most pharmacists neglect one of their most valuable assets - the tradition and dignity of the pharmacy. His historical sense, indeed, is no narrow one, for his feeling for the past reveals itself also in his hobbies. A collector of books, in a delightful room at his home, white-painted bookshelves stacked high on all the available wall space show to advantage the hand-tooled leather bindings of a collection that has been acquired slowly and with discrimination over the years" (The Chemist and Druggist, 7 September, 1957). Dibdin II, 177; Zachary Pearce, A Commentary with Notes on the Four Evangelists and the Acts of the Apostles, 1777. Octavo (195 x 125 mm). Contemporary brown calf, red spine label, boards ruled in blind with scalloped design at joints, board edges rolled in gilt, book block edges speckled red. Engraved frontispiece by Gerard Vandergucht, woodcut head- and tailpieces and initials. Ownership inscription of one "Geo. Dodsworth" to first blank. A very good copy, extremities rubbed, boards marked, offsetting to endpapers, contents clean. Seller Inventory # 158530
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