LIGHTFOOT, John.

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Horae Hebraicae & Talmudicae, Early edition, bound for Jean-Baptiste Colbert, and later purchased and marked "collated & perfect" on the pastedown by Thomas Rowlandson.This scriptural commentary - the fifth part of a series of commentaries published under the same title - begins with an essay on sacred geography summarising the places mentioned in the Gospel of Luke. The commentary per se is divided into short sections each opened by a line from the Gospel in Greek, and followed by Lightfoot's commentary based on Latin and Hebrew sources. John Lightfoot (1602-75) was an English cleric and scholar of Hebrew studies, later vice-chancellor at Cambridge. He donated some of his books to Harvard University, but they all perished in a fire in 1764. The work first appeared three times - once in Cambridge and twice in London - in 1674, but the priority has not been established.This copy was bound for Colbert (1619-1683) - First Minister of State in the years 1661-83 under Louis XIV, and one of the most influential political figures of his time - and has his manuscript ex-libris "Bibliotheca Colbertina" on the titlepage. Colbert amassed a vast library, managed by knowledgeable librarians, which he used as reference in his political work. Rowlandson (1681-1725) was an "omnivorous bibliophile"; his 16 library sales, which took place after his death, were remembered as "the largest library as yet sold in England" (De Ricci, pp. 45-6).Provenance: Stephen C. Massey.

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