CATULLUS, Gaius Valerius; BLAKE, William (illus.).

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The Poems. First edition in English of Catullus's complete poems, for which William Blake engraved the two frontispiece portraits of Catullus and Cornelius Nepos. The edition, which presents Latin and English texts presented in parallel, with extensive notes, began the English commentary tradition on Catullus.The technique of stipple engraving employed by Blake for the two frontispieces was "unusual for him in book illustration" and resulted in "a pleasing softness quite different from the effect conveyed by the ordinary line engraving" (Ryskamp, p. 40). The Catullus engraving was reproduced in the 1894 edition of the Carmina by Richard Burton and Leonard Smithers, who identified Blake's illustration as the statue in the Council House of Verona.The anonymous editor John Nott (1751-1825) was a physician and classical scholar. This edition "sealed his reputation as a gifted classicist and poet" (ODNB). In the introduction, he makes no apologies for Catullus's frequent "indecencies", writing that "when an ancient classic is translated, and explained, the work may be considered as forming a link in the chain of history: history should not falsified... we must not in our translation suppress, or even too much gloss them over, through a fastidious regard to delicacy". Nott's commitment to the integrity of the original is uncommon for its day. A generation later, in 1821, George Lamb published a new translation in which Catullus's text is normalized to accommodate the contemporary m

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