Quinti Horatii Flacci Opera (1727 Edition)

A Venetian printing of the Delphin Horace, one of the more historically resonant schoolbooks ever produced. The text and apparatus are those of Louis Desprez, prepared under commission from Louis XIV as part of the ad usum Delphini series begun in the 1670s for the education of the Grand Dauphin — a project overseen by Pierre Huet and involving some thirty-nine scholars across sixty-four volumes of the classics, each furnished with a simplified prose paraphrase, explanatory notes, and a text purged of matter judged unsuitable for a royal pupil. Desprez's Horace became one of the standard vehicles for the poet through the eighteenth century and beyond, reprinted widely across the Continent long after the original Dauphin for whom it was intended had died; the present dedication, extended on the title page to the Dauphin and the young Princes of Burgundy, Anjou and Berry, reflects one of these later states of the text rather than the original 1691 Paris issue.

This Venice printing of 1727, issued by Joannes Malachinus "superiorum permissu, ac privilegio," belongs to the considerable tradition of Italian reprintings of the Delphin classics that flourished once the series had become the accepted schoolroom standard across Catholic Europe. At 914 pages of text with a substantial 133-page index, it is an unusually thick and complete example of the type, generously proportioned in its large octavo format and presented here in a handsome contemporary vellum binding that has worn honestly and well.

Quinti Horatii Flacci Opera. Interpretatione et Notis Illustravit Ludovicus Desprez Cardinalitius Socius ac Rhetor Emeritus, Jussu Christianissimi Regis, in usum Serenissimi Delphini ac Serenissimorum Principum Burgundiae, Andium, Biturigum. Large, thick octavo. [vii], 914, [cxxxiii]pp (the latter comprising the rear index). Contemporary full vellum, spine titled in gilt on a brown morocco panel, sewing exposed at the spine ends in the manner typical of the binding. Vellum soiled to the outer covers but structurally sound throughout, the binding remaining tight; contents near fine, generally clean and bright, with only occasional light marking and creasing to the page edges. Overall a good copy of a substantial and handsome volume.

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Catalogue Number: HH000207