PRÆLECTIONES POETICÆ: IN SCHOLA NATURALIS PHILOSPHIÆ

London: Henrici Lintott, 1736. 171 x 102 mm. (6 3/4 x 4"). Two volumes..
Appealing contemporary polished calf, covers with blind-ruled borders and floral tooling along the joint, raised bands, gilt volume numbers. With an engraved allegorical frontispiece to volume I. Title page of volume I printed in red and black. Front endleaves with ink ownership inscription, "Chas. Chichester, His Book, 1741." ◆Three small, slightly discolored areas on boards, two short worm tracks to one board, a couple of tiny abrasions to another, but the binding tight and lustrous. A hint of offsetting from frontispiece, otherwise AN ESPECIALLY FINE COPY INTERNALLY, clean, crisp, bright, and in as close to original condition as one could hope to find.

This little set is of special interest because of its astonishing condition. These two volumes contain a series of lectures on poetry given at Oxford by Joseph Trapp (1679-1747). The lectures are in Latin, and his illustrations are taken largely from Latin poets, although he also discusses Greek poetry, and occasionally a phrase is given in Greek using a Greek font. His presentation is divided into such categories as tragic, lyric, epigrammatic, and so forth, and there is a lecture "On the Concept of Beauty; or Elegance, and Sublimity." An Oxford graduate, Trapp was that university's first professor of poetry; he was also an Anglican clergyman who wrote poetry himself. In addition, he was a polemicist for the Tory cause, and the Puritan rebellion which broke out at the end of his life filled him with horror. The pupil who owned these books was apparently markedly dilatory or even a dropout, because the volumes have clearly experienced no use and remain much as they were on the day of their issue..