HORATIUS FLACCUS, Quintus (Horace).

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Opera. First edition, second printing, with "Post Est" amended to "Potest" in Volume II, page 108, this copy in a fine contemporary Parisian binding. Pine's Horace is entirely engraved for both the text and the illustrations, and liberally supplied with initials, head- and tailpieces and vignettes, exhibiting a harmony and delicacy reminiscent of the best French printing of the period.John Pine (1690-1756) "may well have been the pupil of Bernard Picart, the great French engraver at Amsterdam; he was the best English engraver of the century. His edition of Horace is engraved throughout... The results are a unity between decoration and text which at times suggests Didot's Horace of 1799; a contrast between thick and thin strokes in the letters which naturally follows from the engraving process but which foreshadows the type design of Baskerville, Bodoni, and Didot; and the wide 'leading' between the lines of text which did so much to give their pages a brilliant effect" (PMM Exhibition). The style of the decoration on the spine, with gilt flowers surrounded by numerous smaller tools such as dots, stars, and leaves, was popularized in Paris by the royal bookbinder Antoine-Michel Padeloup, and continued by his successors Louis Douceur and Pierre-Paul Dubuisson. The royal binders were often handling London printings and one copy of Pine's Horace bound by Padeloup was sold by Quaritch and later by Christies (see Quaritch, pl. 81, and Christies Paris, Collection Michel Wittock, 8 N

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