Publius Virgilius Maro (Virgil) , John Ogilby (translation, Illustrations) VIRGIL : THE WORKS OF PUBLIUS VIRGILIUS MARO Thomas Roycroft London 1663 First folio edition of Ogilby's translation of Virgil's works Fine Binding Folio - over 12" - 15" ta First Folio Edition of Ogilby's translation of Virgil's works, magnificently illustrated with frontispiece, portrait of Ogilby, double-page map of Greece and Italy, and 100 splendid full-page copper-engraved plates. With a frontispiece portrait of Virgil by Cleyn after Lombart, engraved portrait of Ogilby by Faithorne after Lilly, folding map (opp. P. 117) , and 101 full-page engravings by W. Hollar, W. Faithorne and P. Lombart after designs by F. Cleyn. Folio, 392 x 257 mm, bound in near-contemporary French brown morocco, spine gilt a la groteque, marbled edges, a. E. G. London: Roycroft, 1663. One of the very few notable English illustrated books of the Restoration period, "a great folio with plates dedicated to noble patrons by Pierre Lombart" (Pollard, Great Books, p. 289). This elaborate English production was much admired by the French: "Belle edition, executee en gros caracteres. Elle est recommandable par le grand nombre et la qualite des gravures dont elle a ete ornee. Ces gravures on ete faites par le plus habiles artistes de ce tems, Hollar et autres, au depens de differens Seigneurs d'Angleterre..." (De Bure, no. 2686). Thiscopy was no doubt bound in France at an early date, possibly for "Claude Le Muet (Lemuet) , Tresorier de Legle d'Auxerre" whose name is inscribed on p. 95 (it was erased from the title-page). Ogilby's Latin edition of Virgil was first published in 1658; the illustrations first appeared in his second English translation of Virgil in 1654. The above work, which is described by Brueggemann as a "Splendidum opus, forma augusta contains the Bucolics, Georgics, and Aeneid. As Lowndes has shown, copies of Ogilby's Latinedition of Virgil were prized by such noteworthy collectors as Towneley, the Marquis of Townshend, La Valliere, Count MacCarthy Reagh, Hibbert, and the Duke of Roxburghe. The engravings were executed by Wenceslaus Hollar, William Faithorne, and Pierre Lombart after designs by Franz Cleyn. Cleyn (1590, Rostock- 1658, London) was for some time in the employment of Christian IV, King of Denmark. He worked as an artist in Rome for four years, after which time he embarked to London where he served as an artist in the court of James I and (until the Civil War) Charles I. This is a choice copy, all the more remarkable owing to the fact that seventeenth-century English books almost never survive in tolerable condition. Furthermore, very few English books of the period were so grandly illustrated as here. Frontispiece mounted; inscription on lower blank portion of final leaf excised. An extremely attractive copy from the Ambrose Firmin Didot collection, with leather book-label. Extra pictures added.
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