Olympia-2015

FROM THE DAVID HUME LIBRARY52. GUARINI, Gian Battista. Il pastor fido. Paris, Prault, 1766.Small 8vo, pp. 379, [1 blank]; with an engraved titlepageand five engraved vignettes to text; a very goodcopy in contemporary calf, gilt triple fillet to sides,rebacked with the original spine laid on, flat spinedecorated in gilt with gilt morocco lettering-piece;eighteenth-century ownership inscription ‘DavidHume’ to the front free end-paper; additional laterinscription ‘baron Hume’, dated 1829; ownershipinscription of Joseph Hume to the head of the title,almost completely erased. £2500This is the Hume family copy, almost certainlyoriginating from the library of the philosopherDavid Hume (1711-1776), of a pastoral drama bestseller,‘the most popular work of secular literature inEurope for almost two hundred years…Too richlyambivalent to be dismissed as a mere example ofsensually idyllic escape literature, [it] reveals anepistemological crisis that reflects the crisis of valuescharacteristic of the Counter-Reformation age’ (N. J.Perella, The Critical Fortune of Battista Guarini’s ‘Il Pastor Fido’, Florence, 1973,passim).This copy is recorded in Norton’s David Hume Library and described in thecatalogue of Baron Hume’s library edited by T. Stevenson in 1840, and inStevenson’s sale catalogue of 1851.TOCQUEVILLE’S TEACHERCAST BY MARX AS THE EXORCIST OF THE COMMUNIST SPECTRE53. GUIZOT, François Pierre Guillaume. Des moyens de gouvernement etd’opposition dans l’état actuel de la France. Paris, Librairie française deLadvocat, 1821.