Quinti Horatii Flacci Opera

Item Details

London, John Pine, 1733/ 1737, original full morocco.

First edition, first issue, fine condition.

Quinti Horatii Flacci Opera

Londini: Aeneis Tabulis Incidit, Iohannes Pine, 1733/ 1737.

First edition, first issue with "post est" error in the Caesar medallion on page 108 of Volume II.

Includes the frequently wanting “List of Antiquities…” in V. I.

Two volumes: 8vo. V. I: 5.5 x 8.625 x 1.25 inches. V. II: 5.5 x 8.625 x 1.125 inches. 

Original full dark green/brown morocco binding with five raised bands and ornate gilt stamping to spine, and marbled endpapers, with all edges gilt. 

…a masterpiece of 18th-century book art. -Michael Suarez

A tour de force of 18th century printing…which foreshadowed much of what lay directly ahead. -Joseph Blumenthal

Pine's Latin text was based on Talbot's 1699 edition.

Condition: A fine and handsome set. Internally clean and bright with strong impressions in both volumes. Occasional mild tanning and very rare light foxing to the text. Light foxing and toning to only the free front and rear endpapers to both volumes. Light rubbing to joints and extremities. Both boards of vol. I only just starting at the head. No losses to the heads and tails. No evident restorations or repairs. A former owner’s bookplates to the front paste-downs, and color reproductions of ancient Roman frescoes(?) to rear paste-downs. V. I only: Period Latin notations on one of the free front endpapers, and on an adjacent tipped-in piece of paper, together with a tipped in engraved “Kalendarum Romanum” dated 1666. The bookplates comprise copies of two Rembrandt etchings mounted on paper with the owner’s hand-written signature below. V. I’s bookplate is a copy of Rembrandt’s 1639 etching “Old Man Shadowing His Eyes With His Hands. V. II’s bookplate is a copy of Rembrandt’s 1650’s etching of the artist’s son Titus. (See images.)

Pine’s Horace is among the most celebrated of XVIIIc books; nearly every scholar and critic from its publication has praised its elegance and beauty.

With every page fully engraved, including not only the plates, portraits, vignettes, initials and other decorations, and, remarkably, all the text, too. Pine’s Horace is a high-water mark of 18th century English printing and graphic design, and remains a tour-de-force of the book arts and one of its most famous exemplars.

A fine example of this masterpiece of book-design and 'remarkable enterprise in engraving' (DNB), exhibiting a harmony and delicacy reminiscent of the best French printing of a period when English printing was not particularly distinguished. 

Additional information derived from various sources: 

“John Pine was England’s pre-eminent engraver in the first half of the XVIIIc. With his great friend William Hogarth (who did the famous portrait of him qua Rembrandt) he championed Engravers’ Copyright act of 1734, which extended the protections of printers to engravers — an absolutely crucial moment in the history of illustrated books in Britain. Pine was a Freemason, and so gained great fame and wealth from engraving Masonic materials. His other major project while working on this Horace was to print the official account of the Order of the Bath.

“Quintus Horatius Flaccus [Horace] (65–27 bc) was the great poet of the dying days of the Roman Republic; Augustus, the first emperor, was his heir. His verses — satires (2 books), odes (4), epodes (1), epistles (2), the Carmen Sæculare and the Ars Poetica — were standard fare for Latin learning from the Carolingian Renaissance right through to the present. As such his influence on European poetry is perhaps greater than any other’s. The printing history of his verse matches this stature, and as such Pine’s task was to distinguish his publication from others.

Founded on Talbot’s 1701 Cambridge text, its real ancestor is Tonson’s 1699 quarto edition using an earlier Talbot recension. The value of the book and reason for its unparalleled popularity — nearly 1,000 subscribers, including the kings of England, France, Spain and Portugal, and the Holy Roman Emperor — is the integration of text and image. Since the whole of the work was engraved, there is an unrivaled harmony on each page. There is also a superabundance of (germane) illustrations: coins, statues and vases all illuminate the text. Indeed, as Michael Suarez argues in his first Lyell lecture (28 April 2015), the value of the book was really as a florilegium of antiquary volumes in the libraries of English virtuosi.

“…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).”

Brunet III, 320; De Ricci-Cohen pp. 497-8; Dibdin I, 419; ESTC N504923; Lowndes 1113; Printing and the Mind of Man 2 105; Rothschild 1548; Blumenthal, 72.

Price includes USPS Priority postage to addresses in contiguous 48 states. Cost of postage to be added for all others.

From Pied Oxen Printers' collection of objects related to print and book history.