The first Lambin edition and a milestone in Horace scholarship

Lambinus, Denys

Q. Horatius Flaccus, ex fide atque auctoritate decem librorum manuscriptorum, opera Dionysij Lambini Monstroliensis emendatus: ab eodemq́[ue] commentariis copiosissimis illustrati

Lugduni: apud Ioan Tornæsium, 1561. 4to, 2 parts in 1, here with the first part bound before the second, but the book is complete; pp. 543, [21]; [14], 493, [15]; [*1]-*3, A-Z4, AA-ZZ4, Aa-Yy4, Zz6; A-B4, a-z4, aa-zz4, A-R4, S2 (S2 and Zz6 blank); page 11 of the second part (here bound first) is erroneously numbered 491; printer's woodcut device on both title pages; woodcut initials and ornaments, numismatic woodcuts on GG2v; occasional contemporary annotations in ink, and a few also in pencil in what is clearly a later hand; contemporary full tan goat, triple gilt rules on covers (dots, double rule, floral motif) enclosing a gilt supralibros 'Collegium Pontoe Sianum', gilt-decorated spine in 6 compartments, gilt-lettered direct in 1, edges marbled; repair to paper in bottom margin of T1-T3 in the first part (no loss of letterpress); edges worn, corners bumped, bottom of spine chipped level with textblock, some peeling of the leather but the text block is clean and the binding is sound. The first Lambin edition of Horace, and the best edition before Bentley. 'He had gathered illustrations of his author from every source; and he had collated ten MSS, mainly in Italy. The text was much improved, while the notes were enriched by the quotation of many parallel passages, and by the tasteful presentment of the spirit and feeling of the Roman poet' (Sandys). Lambin demonstrated here a new type of criticism: "the readers he has foremost in mind are not schoolboys ... so much as his professional colleagues ... The judicious reading of the text of Horace is the business of Lambin in his general comments as well as in his discussion of manuscript variants. He elucidates Horace's pronouncements on poetry by very exact, very cogent paraphrase which makes fine distinctions of meaning... (Cambridge Hist. of Lit. Crit., III, p. 76). Even the typography, like the editing, "marks a new æra" (Dibdin) - the poems are printed in full and followed by a commentary arranged by lemma, in place of the medieval tradition of surrounding small portions of text with commentary; this is also 'one of the first [editions] to use italics to differentiate commentary from lemmas, boldface to distinguish the lemma itself ... All of these changes point to an increased presence of the editor in shaping the text' (Tribble, Margins and Marginality, pp. 66-67). The signatures and two-part arrangement evidently confused the binder of this copy, since it has been arranged with the last half of the second part at the end of the first, and vice versa; the signatures thus run through three complete alphabets instead of the first part ending at S before the second starts again. Adams, H-907; BM STC French, p. 231; Graesse III, 351; Mills College Check List 168; Riedel-Horatiana A-34. Item #70330

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