Quintus Horatius Flaccus. [Carminum. Epodon. Carmen Seculare. Sermonum. Epistolarum. Ars Poetica curis Joannis Livie] Livie, Joannis Classical Literature,Poetry,Press Books

First Baskerville quarto edition, 4to, pp. [2], 344; lacking the half-title; frontispiece, vignette title page, 4 plates by Gravelot; 19th-century full parchment by Henderson & Bisset, gilt thistle central on both covers, attractive red and brown morocco label on spine, yapp edges, a.e.g., salmon endpapers; slight cracking of the upper hinge, but overall a very good, clean and sound copy. Bookplate of Herbert Asquith. 2A1 is a cancel, as per Gaskell and the state in which last line of title page is not damaged. Gaskell notes that the plates were included in only about half the copies he examined. This is the first of the classical authors issued by Baskerville, and by all accounts the rarest. "A very beautiful and extremely scarce work, the rarest of all Baskerville's editions" (Dibdin, Greek and Latin Classics, 4th ed., 1827, II. 111). Mr. Livie, "an elegant scholar," carefully revised and edited the 1762 Baskerville edition of Horace, and it is likely that he was involved in revising the text for the 1770 edition as well. "In 1762 appeared . the lovely 12mo Horace, which Harwood calls the most beautiful book, both in regard to type and paper, I ever beheld. It is also the most correct of all Baskerville's editions of the classics; for every sheet was carefully revised by Mr. Livie, who was an elegant scholar (Editions of the Classics, p. 226). Shenstone had some share in bringing it out; the engravings especially were under his supervision (Letter to Graves in Works, 1791, iii. 334)" (Henry Tedder in On-line DNB). Gaskell 39. Mills College Check List 719; Riedel-Horatiana A-213.