LUCRETIUS CARUS, Titus.

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De rerum natura libri sex. First Lambin edition, large paper copy, 3 cm larger in both dimensions than copies on regular paper and uniquely, according to Brunet, with contemporary colouring, in a splendid Parisian gold-tooled morocco binding of the period.Brunet writes of "cette première édition estimée du Lucrèce de Lambin" and describes at length this unique copy, on large paper, with contemporary colouring: "Un exemplaire de l'édition de 1563, en Grand Papier (avec les capitales du commencement de chaque livre enluminées), et relié en maroquin olive à compartiments, a été vendu 15 liv. chez M. Dent, qui, selon le Repertorium bibliogr., 246, l'avait payé 40 liv. Jusque-là on ne connaissait point le Grand Papier de cette édition estimée."The French classical scholar and philologist Denys Lambin (1516-1572) was one of the greatest critical editors of his time; his "editorial work expresses a deep sympathy for his subject and the prefaces and notes are a monument of erudition and fine vigorous Latinity" (PMM). The edition was likely initiated by Guillaume Rouillé, the prodigious merchant-publisher of Lyon, and published in short-term partnership with his nephew in Paris, as a means of getting him established there.This is the edition of Lucretius cited in Printing and the Mind of Man, where it is described as "one of the grandest and most moving poems in the Latin language". "Of very few languages can it be said that the first surviving major poem in it is an exposition of a p

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