Lehndorff, Vera - Wills, DavidMareMagnum
SPENCE, Reverend JosephBiblio.com
Polymetis: or An Enquiry concerning the Agreement between the Works of the Roman Poets and the Remains of the Antient Artists being an attempt to illustrate them mutually from one another.
1747réf. 223First Edition 1747. Complete with 41 plates. Tall folio 11 by 17 inches contemporary full tan polished calf newly rebacked to style with elaborately gilt-decorated spine with seven compartments. Engraved frontispiece portrait by George Vertue after Isaac Whood 17 vignette tailpieces and 41 full-page engraved plates four double-page two of these folding by Boitard after Paderni and others. Covers & corners slightly rubbed. Internally there is a little intermittent light spotting but generally a clean and bright copy now housed in a custom slipcase made by The Heritage Bindery. Many years in the making this large and finely printed volume traces classical mythology in Roman art and literature. "Remains an agreeable book owing to the urbanity of its old-fashioned scholarship the justice of some incidental observations and its affluent stores of quotation; and as an intellectual if heterogeneous banquet may be compared with the Deipnosophists of Athenaeus. Gibbon speaks of its taste and learning" DNB. Samuel Johnson wrote of Spence: "His criticism was commonly just; what he thought he thought rightly and his remarks were recommended by coolness and candor" DNB. "A highly regarded work" Brunet. Published by London; R Dodsley 1st edition,, 1747. hardcover
