1700-1724

1700 Fables Choisies de M. de La Fontaine.  Henrik Cause, after Chauveau.  Hardbound.  The Hague: Chez Henry van Bulderen.  $69 from Sand Lake Farm, through eBay, Feb., '16.

This book becomes one of the stars of the collection!  Bodemann #77 describes a family of editions that starts with Denys Thierry's 1668 publication of La Fontaine's first six books of fables, illustrated by Chauveau (Bodemann #77.1).  The first "Gesamtausgabe" of the twelve books was published between 1669 and 1694 in five "volumes," each of which contained one to three "books" of La Fontaine's fables (Bodemann #77.3).  Were these five, published by different publishers over twenty-five years, bound together to make one volume?  Volume I contained La Fontaine's first three books, and Volume II the next three books.  Life gets trickier with Volume III: it contained what we know as Books 7 and 8 of La Fontaine's fables, but they were called "Books I and II" and their pages were freshly paginated.  Volume IV contained what we know as Books 9-11 but called them "Books III to V."  Volume V contained what we know as Book 12 but called it, mistakenly, "Book VII."  Bodemann correctly notes "richtig VI."  Henrik von Bulderen published the next version of this book in 1688 (Volumes I through IV) and 1694 (Volume V): Bodemann #77.4.  He republished it in 1700 (Bodemann #77.8).  This volume continues the unusual numbering of books and the mistaken numbering of the final volume.  My understanding is that Henrik Cause is the engraver and he models these engravings after the drawings of Chauveau.  Bodemann describes the title-page picture in terms of a satyr pointing to the pictorialized character of fable.  In fact, the illustrations are very well preserved here.  The book itself is not well preserved.  Both front and back cover boards are separated.  270 pages plus 346 pages, separately paginated.  Bodemann says of #77.3 that it contains 235 illustrations.  The illustrations are surprisingly large: 2¾" x about 3".  Some foxing.

1701   Phaedri, Aug. Liberti Fabularum Æsopiarum Libri V. Notis illustravit in usum Serenissimi Principis Nassavii David Hoogstratanus (David Hoogstraten). (Medallion engravings by Jan van Vianen). Amstelædami: Ex typographia Francisci Halmae (François Halma). $525 from Michael Hirschfeld, April, '95.

One of the jewels of this collection. I am so delighted to have found this book! Hobbs describes it accurately when she uses its fifth plate to open her little essay "Five Hundred Years of Illustration and Text." There are eighteen such plates with six medallions apiece, and they are wonderful! That fifth plate and the twelfth (92) are particularly beautiful; among the best individual illustrations are I.IX (the sparrow and the hare), I.XII (the deer admiring its horns), II.II (2W), II.VI (the eagle, the turtle, and the crow), III.X (the wife-suspecting man who kills his son in bed), IV.XXIV (Simonides saved from an earthquake), and V.IX (the bull in the doorway). Individual medallions do an excellent job of portraying in several planes the several phases of a given story or both the fable and its exemplification in life. Even the initials are beautiful, particularly that for the prologue to Book I. There are other designs, some repeated, throughout the book, particularly involving Bacchanalia. The folded-in portrait of the Prince of Nassau is torn and repaired. Book IV is off twice in relation to Perry's numbering, since Perry 4.1 and 4.13 are missing. Thus Hoogstraten 4.1-11 are Perry's 4.2-12, and Hoogstraten's 4.12-24 are Perry's 4.14-26. Hoogstraten's 4.13 does not have the usual Latin title in the circle around the medallion; this image (of a woman with a bird seated on a crocodile) seems to have nothing to do with the fable's subject of a woman's tongue and private parts. There is an appendix of five fables from "Marquardo Gudio," the illustrations for the fourth and fifth of which are misnumbered. Hobbs mentions "moral indexing" that I cannot find here. I do find an AI of Latin titles just before the fables begin and, at the end, indices (1) of all vocables and (2) of items in the notes worthy of observance. Hoogstraten was a classics scholar. Some pages (e.g., 57 and 157) have a square cut out of the lower outside corner. Is the ribbon as old as the book? Michael mentioned that he had had the book rebound in Europe.

1703 Aesop's Fables in English & Latin, Interlineary, for the Benefit of those who not having a Master, Would Learn Either of these Tongues. (John Locke). Hardbound. London: A.and J. Churchil. $1592.95 from Owl Books, Leitrim, Ireland, Dec., '09.

There are 337 pages for two-hundred-and-thirty fables. I think I laughed at Locke's project when I first read of it. It makes more sense to me now. He is trying to help people who cannot get to school to learn Latin, and he wisely conjectures that his book can also help those who already know Latin but need to learn English. He admits in his preface that the English here will not be stellar. But it will clearly reflect the Latin. The printer does a good job of varying the typeface, so that a reader can easily see which Latin and English words correspond to each other. While I am still not a fan of this method of learning, I admire the project and the practical working of Locke's mind to offer a method for learning Latin. The title-page promises sculptures but they are not here. As I recall, they are not so much fable illustrations as animal illustrations, perhaps meant for the young who may not yet have experienced some of the various animals mentioned here. There is a page of errata just before the beginning AI. Bodemann mentions the five pages of illustrations, with sixteen pictures each of individual animals. I had forgotten that Locke's name is not mentioned in the book and was frustrated at first when searching for the book in Bodemann under Locke's name. This is apparently the first edition (1703) without pictures. I wonder why no one has ever reprinted this book.

1703/2010 Aesop's Fables in English & Latin, Interlineary, for the Benefit of those who not having a Master, Would Learn Either of these Tongues. (John Locke). Paperbound. London/LaVergne, TN: A.and J. Churchil/Kessinger Publishing. AU$39.49 from The Nile, Australia, through eBay and Premier Books, Roseburg, OR, Sept., '10.

I closed my remark on my original copy of this book with this comment: "I wonder why no one has ever reprinted this book." Here is my answer. This copy, manufactured at request, provides a good supplement to the original edition. First of all, it contains the illustrations that are missing in that copy. Secondly, it provides a book that can be used without harming that fragile copy over 300 years old. I am slightly confused over buying a book from an Australian firm on eBay, having it printed in Tennessee, and shipped to me by a bookdealer in Oregon! Let me include some comments from the original copy. There are 337 pages for two-hundred-and-thirty fables. I think I laughed at Locke's project when I first read of it. It makes more sense to me now. He is trying to help people who cannot get to school to learn Latin, and he wisely conjectures that his book can also help those who already know Latin but need to learn English. He admits in his preface that the English here will not be stellar. But it will clearly reflect the Latin. The printer does a good job of varying the typeface, so that a reader can easily see which Latin and English words correspond to each other. While I am still not a fan of this method of learning, I admire the project and the practical working of Locke's mind to offer a method for learning Latin. There is a page of errata just before the beginning AI. I had forgotten that Locke's name is not mentioned in the book and was frustrated at first when searching for the book in Bodemann under Locke's name.

1704/1966 Aesop Dress'd or a Collection of Fables Writ in Familiar Verse. Bernard Mandeville. Introduction by John S. Shea. No illustrations. Original: London: Lock's-Head. Reprint: Los Angeles: The Augustan Reprint Society Publication Number 120: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. $6.50 at the Book House on Grand, St. Paul, Nov., '94. Extra for $1.90 at Bargain Bookstore, San Diego, Aug., '93.

Thirty-eight fables, almost all from LaFontaine, done in couplets apparently based on the rhythms of Samuel Butler. They move along swiftly enough. LaFontaine is clearly behind this work. I first found this pamphlet thinking that I had one at home. In fact all I had was a xerox for $15 from the publisher because the work had been sold out! I would rather be lucky than good!

1706 Novus Candidatus Rhetoricae. Hardbound. Lyon: Antonius Molin. $79 from Don Nash, Plymouth, MA, Oct., '04. 

The fuller title includes the following: "Altero se candidior comptiorque, non Aphthonii solum Progymnasmata ornatius concinnata; sed Tullianæ etiam Rhetoricæ Præcepta clarius explicata repræsentans Studiosis Eloquentiæ Candidatis. Accessit nunc primùm Dissertatio de Panegyrico, Auctore P. Francisco Pomey, e Societate Jesu." This book seems to represent an updating and amplification of the Candidatus Rhetoricae of which I have a copy from perhaps 1645. It seems to lack the Greek that one could find in the earlier book. As I wrote there, the book seems to be a Jesuit collegium text in rhetoric following the Progymnasmata of Aphthonius. If one works from the back of the book, there is still present an apparently independent 48-page work, Angelus Pacis by Nicolas Caussini (Latinized name), S.J. The title-page for this is exactly the same as the title-page for the whole present work, with only the bottom few lines changed to indicate not Antonius Molin in Lyon in 1706 but Wilhem Friessem and and Joannes Everardus Fromart in Cologne in 1706. The next element includes two statements of royal privilege. Previous to that, after 418, is first a T of C titled "Index Titulorum" and then an AI titled "Index Rerum." The newly expanded and attributed Pars III is Franciscus Pomey's Dissertation on the Panegyric covering 343-418; in the earlier edition it had simply been titled "De Panegyrico seu Laudatione." Did Pomey amplify the previous classroom material offered by an anonymous teacher and writer? Pars II remains "Rhetoricae Praecepta" and runs from 133-312. Pars I runs through six chapters touching fable and narration, and covers, respectively: fable (8-23), narration, chria, sententia, thesis, and a combination of "locus communis, destructio, and confirmatio." The fable section seems to remain the same. After the famous Greek definition of Theion done into Latin (" sermo falsus veritatem effingens" ), the author distinguishes "rational" (human) and " moral" (animal) fables, with " mixed" fables including both. He holds that the sense of the fable generally needs to be expressed; otherwise people often miss the point of a fable. His Latin for promythium is "praefabulatio," for epimythium "affabulatio." After describing the qualities and uses of fables, the author presents some nine fables that exemplify various levels of style, twice telling the same stories on two levels (WL and FC). The last example is of the florid style: "The Silkworm and the Spider" takes four pages to tell!

1707/2009 Esope En Belle Humeur, Ou Derniere Traduction Des ses Fables / Der Lustige und Anmuthige Aesopus.  Christian Friedrich Hunold, Nach der letzten Frantzösischen Ausfertigung Seiner Fabeln Ins Teutsche übersetzt Von Menantes.  Illustrations after Jan van Vianen.  Mit einem Vorwort von Dirk Rose.  Hardbound.  Hildesheim, Germany: Bewahrte Kultur:  Georg Olms Verlag.  €43.50 from Brungs und Hönicke Medienversand, Berlin, Jan., '15.  

This is a valuable reprint of one of the many books celebrating Aesop having fun.  The frontispiece identifies Hunold as Menantes.  The illustrations are only adequate.  According to Bodemann, they are based upon Solis and Salomon.  It is great to have them in the collection, even in a reproduction.   Those leanings upon earlier great fable illustration conceptions are clear in the second fable: "Fox and Goat."  The illustration is excellent but also derivative.  The French and German are presented in two columns on each page.  There is a typical problem with the lion's face on 19 and again on 23.  For each fable there is about a one-third page illustration above the two columns with their respective titles for the fables.  Further French fables are inserted in open space or open pages after the two-column fables.  The last of the fables -- XCV -- has an excellent illustration of the fox and wolf.  It is followed, as Bodemann notes, by seven French fables without German translation or illustration.  276 pages.  About 5" x 7".

1708 A New Translation of Æsop's Fables, Adorn'd with Cutts.  J.J. Gent (= John Jackson).  By the Most Ingenious Artist Christopher Van Sycham.  Apparent first printing.  Hardbound.  London: Tho(mas) Tebb.  $220 from ElevenEleven Books, Clarkson, NY, through eBay, Oct., '13.

The title continues "Suited to the Fables Copied from the Frankfurt Edition. By the Most Ingenious Artist Christopher Van Sycham.  The Whole being rendered in a Plain, Easy, and Familiar Style, adapted to the Meanest Capacities. Nevertheless Corrected and Reform'd from the Grossness of the Language, and Poorness of the Verse us'd in the now Vulgar Translation: The Morals also more accurately Improv'd; Together with Reflections on each Fable, in Verse."  Whew!  I was surprised to find this book offered on eBay, and I am delighted to save it.  The copy is, as the seller noted, in poor condition.  The good news is that the title-page and fable contents are intact, even if the spine has deteriorated and several early pages are lost.  I am amazed that this book is not in Bodemann.  The Van Sycham illustrations are strong, if simple.  As far as I can tell, there is an illustration on every right-hand page.  Excellent for its sheer vigor is the illustration for "The Wolf and the Sow" on 41.  The illustration for TMCM (15) follows a different tradition than do most illustrations and even this text; the center of the action appears to be not a dining room (as in the text) but an outdoor grain bin.  Is that a cat perched on the grain bin?  In all, the book's 288 pages -- followed by an eight-page AI -- contain some 215 fables.  There must be over a hundred illustrations.  I have ordered an inexpensive print-on-demand xerox of this book and will add that to the collection.  This is a tender little treasure!

1708 Fables of Aesop and other Eminent Mythologists with Morals and Reflexions, bound with: Fables and Storyes Moralized, Being a Second Part of the Fables of Aesop and other Eminent Mythologists, etc. By Sir Roger L'Estrange, Kt. Vol I: The Fifth Edition Corrected; Vol II: the Second Edition. Hardbound. Printed in London: Printed for R. Sare, A. & J. Churchil, D. Brown, T. Goodwin, M. Wotton, J. Nicholson, G. Sawbridge, B. Tooke, and G. Strahan; Vol. II printed for Richard Sare, also in 1708. $100 from an unknown source, July, '98.

Bodemann does not seem to have a separate listing for other than the 1692 first edition of L'Estrange's work. The second edition was in 1694, the third in 1699. In the same year, L'Estrange put out a second volume. My favorite private collector quotes Mark Kishlansky's essay "Turning Frogs into Princes" from Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England: "L'Estrange's Aesop was so popular that it achieved three editions in seven years and then was followed by a second volume of non-Aesopic fables in the same format." We get both volumes here in one stout book. The page-format is smaller than in the first three editions of the first volume. Page-numbering starts anew in the second volume after the 550 pages of the first volume. This copy has a frontispiece portrait of L'Estrange; it also has the preface and the portrait of Aesop facing the "Life of Aesop." There is a set of advertisements for L'Estrange's writings just before the first fable. Again, this edition of L'Estrange seems typical for its heavy concentration on text. My understanding is that one of L'Estrange's major contributions to the history of fable publishing is the addition of the "Reflexion" to the moral. We will pay dearly for this innovation in reading L'Estrange's political and religious adversary, Croxall! The reflections include undisguised social and political commentary with more than a hint of Jacobitism. This copy is cracked in half. Its binding and spine are very weak and fragile, and the front cover has broken free but is present.

1708 Les Fables d'Esope Phrygien, Avec Celles de Philelphe: Traduction Nouvelle, Vol. 1. Jean-Baptiste Morvan de Bellegarde. Copper etchings after Baudoin. First edition. Hardbound. Amsterdam: Pierre Mortier. £100 from R. Macauley, Norfolk, UK, through eBay, Sept., '11.

"Enrichie de Discours Moraux & Historique, & de Quatrains à la fin de chaque Discours." In fact, these "moral discourses" are a feature of this lovely little (4" x 6¼") book. The discourses can run to several pages of ruminations on the fables. Each of the seventy-eight fables in this first volume has an excellent copper etching. Bodemann #97.1 points out that these go back to Baudoin. I would have seen Barlow also in their background. With the extensive introductory material, particularly the Planudes life of Aesop in 29 chapters, fables do not begin until 94. Among the finest illustrations are "The Ass and the Dog" (134); "The Old Dog and His Master" (160); FS (175); "The Ass and the Horse" (204); "The Stag and the Horse" (236); "The Fox and the Wolf" (270); and BW (293). One can see the imprint the printer made in putting these pictures "into" the page. The engraver has the common problem with lions' faces, here particularly challenging on 244. There is a tear through 267. This is one of the stars of this collection. Now I need to find the second volume. The book is split through the spine at 96.

1708 Truth in Fiction or Morality in Masquerade: A Collection of Two hundred twenty five Select Fables of Aesop and other Authors Done into English Verse. Edmund Arwaker. Hardbound. London: J. Churchill. $50 from Philadelphia Rare Books & Manuscripts Company, through abe, August, '06.

Four books of fables in English verse in blind-stamped cloth, covers detached, cloth lost over spine. Lacking the title-page, first leaf of the dedication, and last six pages. Back free endpaper and pastedown with pocket and slip. Pages browned and foxed, with some waterstaining to first few leaves; last few leaves with edges a bit ragged. The foregoing comments are almost all from PRBM's description. The four books contain, respectively, 68, 68, 58, and 31 fables. Helpful subtitles often give the theme of the fable. Thus the first three fables are "The Peasant and Hercules: or No Pains, No Profit"; "Jupiter and the Tortoise: or Home is Home"; and "The Ass, Ape, and Mole: or Sufferings lightned [sic] by Comparison." I have been able to supply the lost title-pages and the final pages of the book from a copy on the Internet Archive. It also helps to be able to read the book online without disturbing this very fragile book! The format changes slightly in Book III, where the "theme" comes before the subject. There are a few fables which I do not immediately recognize as traditional here, including "The Mad-house: or Expensive Sports, destructive Folly" (I 32); "The Bigamists" (II 9); "The Lapwing" (II 11); "The Coffee-House: or A Man's Credit is His Cash" (III 29); and "The Miss: or the Sponge Squeezed" (III 53).

1708/2013 A New Translation of Æsop's Fables, Adorn'd with Cutts.  J.J. Gent (= John Jackson).  By the Most Ingenious Artist Christopher Van Sycham.  Facsimile.  Paperbound.  London/NA: Tho(mas) Tebb/Gale Ecco Print Editions.  $3.41 from Amazon, Oct., '13.

Here is apparently a print-on-demand facsimile found at a sharply reduced price.  I ordered the book after I enjoyed cataloguing the original.  Before I include my comments from that book, I have a theory that the xerox bookmaking machine skipped a page just before the first page of fables here (1).  In the original, all the illustrations are on right-hand pages.  Here they are all on left-hand pages.  As I wrote there, the title continues "Suited to the Fables Copied from the Frankfurt Edition. By the Most Ingenious Artist Christopher Van Sycham.  The Whole being rendered in a Plain, Easy, and Familiar Style, adapted to the Meanest Capacities. Nevertheless Corrected and Reform'd from the Grossness of the Language, and Poorness of the Verse us'd in the now Vulgar Translation: The Morals also more accurately Improv'd; Together with Reflections on each Fable, in Verse."  Whew!  The Van Sycham illustrations are strong, if simple.  As far as I can tell, there is an illustration on every right-hand page.  Excellent for its sheer vigor is the illustration for "The Wolf and the Sow" on 41.  The illustration for TMCM (15) follows a different tradition than do most illustrations and even this text; the center of the action appears to be not a dining room (as in the text) but an outdoor grain bin.  Is that a cat perched on the grain bin?  In all, the book's 288 pages -- followed by an eight-page AI -- contain some 215 fables.  There must be over a hundred illustrations.

1713 Phaedri Aug. Liberti Fabularum Aesopiarum Libri Quinque. Hardbound. London: Jacob Tonson and John Watts; Michael Mattaire. £52.25 from Elaine Robinson, Rye, East Sussex, UK, Nov., '12.

Here is a Bodemann #100.1, a Phaedrus edition with a number of printer's designs. Unfortunately, this copy lacks the frontispiece featured in Bodemann 100.1. The printer's designs that mark the beginning and ending of each book and chapter seem unrelated to the fables themselves. Beginnings are further marked with elaborate initials. The five books of Phaedrus' fables conclude on 57 and are followed by "Fabulae Quaedam a Marquardo Gudio e veteri Manuscripto desumptae," containing five Latin fables, and a list of variant readings. The very detailed index to Phaedrus' fables starts after 62 and runs over seventy pages. The following appendix begins with a number of Greek fables: "Fabulae Graecae Latinis Phaedri Fabulis respondentes; Ex Aesopo." Then follow nine quatrains from "Gabrius," nine Latin prose fables, and finally forty-two Latin verse fables titled "Avieni Aesopicarum Fabularum Liber." A curious English language element headed "Anner" and signed "Dartmouth" follows the title-page; it seems to announce Michael Mattaire as the publisher. I do not understand how he fits with Tonson and Watts. I suspect that they put up the money and he did the publishing. Thereupon follow the dedication, lives of Phaedrus and "Avienus," a letter from Avianus to Theodosius, and an AI of the fables of Phaedrus. The book once belonged to Thomas Robyns. 

1714 Les Fables d'Esope et de plusiers autres excellens mythologistes.  Roger L'Estrange.  Illustrated by Francis Barlow.  Hardbound.  Amsterdam: D'Etienne Roger.  $1000 from Rooke Books, August, '20.

I have long wanted to add this book to the collection because of the 1666 Barlow that we already have.  It is not clear to me if the plates used here were by Barlow or after his 1666 originals.  In any case, the illustrations are again thrilling!  They now include those for the life of Aesop, not in the 1666 edition but in that of 1687.  The bookseller's notice indicates that the illustrations for the vita form "an unusually complete copy. Here with 27 plates as called for. All the copies at sold at auction in the last 40 years have been seriously incomplete being no more than 22 plates."  The 102 in-text engravings are fewer than were published because several pages have been removed.  Which pages becomes clear from the seller's account: "[4], v-lxxxiv, 1-60, 65-96, 99-118, 221-172, 175-208, 211-222, [2pp]."  In terms of the book's leaves, that means that the following are missing: H3, H4, N1, P4, Y3, and Dd1.  Page 121 is incorrectly numbered 221.  8" x 9.5".  Bookplate to the front pastedown 'Steadfast, John Gretton, Stapleford'. Gretton was a British businessman and Conservative politician of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He won two gold medals in the 1900 Olympic Games for sailing.  Original calf binding.  Ribbon marker detached but present.  This book is another treasure!

1714 Les Fables d'Esope et de plusiers autres excellens mythologistes.  Roger L'Estrange.  Illustrations by Francis Barlow.  Hardbound.  Amsterdam: D'Etienne Roger.  $1100 from AdLitem, August, '19.

Perhaps due to some pandemic confusion, we have two copies of this marvelous book.  Here is the earlier copy, catalogued well after the later copy.  This copy lacks the frontispiece, has a sturdier cover, and is in slightly less good condition than our other copy, especially due to some foxing.  However, other than the missing frontispiece, this copy seems to be complete.  It thus makes a great companion to the other copy with its missing pages.  As I wrote of the copy acquired in 2020, I have long wanted to add this book to the collection because of the 1666 Barlow that we already have.  It is not clear to me if the plates used here were by Barlow or after his 1666 originals.  In any case, the illustrations are again thrilling!  They now include those for the life of Aesop, not in the 1666 edition but in that of 1687.  Page 121 is here, as there, incorrectly numbered 221.  8" x 9.5".  This book is another treasure!

1715 Fables and Stories Moralized, Being a Second Part of the Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists, etc., Vol. II. Third edition. By Sir Roger L'Estrange, Kt. Hardbound. London: Printed for Richard Sare near Grayes-Inn-Gate in Holborn. $80 from Patty Rosen, Bend, Oregon, Dec., '03.

Formerly presented to the Portsmouth Athenaeum by George Jaffrey, Esq. The covers are separated. Otherwise it is in fair to good condition. 5" x 7½". There are 277 numbered fables with morals and without illustrations. The format is what we are used to from L'Estrange: good prose fables separated from each other by a line across the page. Following each is a longish "Moral" in smaller typeface. Elements of the fable are frequently italicized. My favorite private collector quotes Mark Kishlansky's essay "Turning Frogs into Princes" from Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England: "L'Estrange's Aesop was so popular that it achieved three editions in seven years and then was followed by a second volume of non-Aesopic fables in the same format." Bodemann surprisingly seems to list only the first edition of the first volume. Neither Hobbs nor Snodgrass is any help on the sources of the fables here. I notice several familiar old friends like "The Blind and the Lame." Ms. Rosen was good enough to sell me the book after I was able to answer some of her questions about it.

1717 Sir Roger L'Estrange's Fables, With Morals And Reflections, In English Verse. E. Stacy. London: Thomas Harbin. $35 at Ahab, Cambridge, MA, June, '91.

A curious little treasure. There are poetic versions of 201 of l'Estrange's 500 prose fables published in 1692, with shorter applications (they still seem long!). Stacy says that earlier verse attempts have been "flat and insipid" (l'Estrange's words for earlier attempts generally). The advertisement facing 1 promises a second volume. L'Estrange was not originally illustrated, and neither is Stacy. AI at the beginning.

1718 Favole Scelte.  Translated by Balthasar Nickisch.  Illustrations after Jan van Vianen?  Hardbound.  Ausburg: Johann Ulrich Krauss.  €320 from Antiquariat am Dom, Trier, July, '17.

Here is the top prize of the books I found on this summer trip around Europe.  We had an overnight in Trier.  I got to the bookstore in the afternoon, and Dr. Jochen Staebel mentioned that he had a fine old book at home.  We arranged that I would be back when he opened the next morning.  The book belonged to the head of the public library in Trier.  It is missing pages 1-2 and so does not have the first part of the first fable.  The book seems to be a printing 5 years later of Bodemann #88.4, itself a reprinting of a Krauss edition of 1707.  The edition -- even the title -- is trilingual.  The three languages are side by side for the fables but consecutive in the pages before the fables.  Illustrations -- with titles in all three languages -- come two to a page and measure about 3" x 2 1/2".  There are 95 fables on 106 pages.  Picture pages are not printed on the obverse and do not figure in the pagination.  According to Bodemann, the illustrations are based on #88.1 from 1695.  Where Bodemann's #88.4 has a frontispiece that sounds like the same as in #88.1, the frontispiece here is an elaborate scene situated on a pedestal.  Under the pedestal and on its front are scripts very difficult to read.  Vegetation grows up on both sides of the scene seated on the pedestal, offering various perches for birds and other animals, presumably characters in fables.  The viewer sees into a long background of waters, mountains, forests, and human habitation.  At the front of this scene, two human characters converse, surrounded by further animals including two mice at the front of the scene. An apparently older character seated on the left reaches a hand in explanation.  Similarly the standing character on the right reaches out his right hand, while his left hand balances what seems to be some kind of spear or perhaps a pruning hook.  I cannot find a similar frontispiece illustration in Bodemann.  For good samples of the fable illustrations here, consider "The Man and the Satyr" facing 16, OF facing 28, and DS facing 40.

1720 Fables Nouvelles Dediées au Roy. M. (Antoine Houdar) de La Motte. Quatrième Edition. Hardbound. Leiden: Balthasar Herwart. $53.67 from Robert Patocchi, Novato, CA, through eBay, June, '09.

I have wanted to dip into de La Motte's fables, and this book at last gives me a chance. Luckily, Google has a copy of an English translation online: One hundred new court fables: written for the instruction of princes, translated by a Dr. Samber, apparently in 1721. The book opens with a fable about the beautiful woman and the mirror. The mirror tells her that she is beautiful and that she has a few faults to correct. While the mirror is talking, admirers show up and she charms them -- and forgets the wise advice of the mirror. So, de La Motte suggests, is it with fable readers, and in this case the king as fable reader. After a long discourse on fable, the first fable of Book One speaks of an eaglet who tries his first look into the sun and his first flight. He can get only so far. Then he sees a mature eagle looking regularly into the sun and flying very high; that vision inspires him to keep trying and to seek greater things. "Thus Reading may begin, but 'tis Example that must accomplish all." A second fable strikes me particularly. It contrasts the pelican who returns to the nest without food and opens her chest to feed her children her own blood. A spider nearby calls the pelican a fool. Her food supply is her young! She shall never fail to have food because she consumes them! De La Motte challenges the kings of the world: Will you be pelicans or spiders to your subjects? Five books, without about twenty fables in each book. These are not as inaccessible as I feared they would be. 

1722 Fables of Aesop and Others. Newly done into English. With an Application to each Fable. Illustrated with Cutts. S.[amuel] Croxall. Cuts by Elisha Kirkall. First edition. London: Printed for J. Tonson at Shakespear's Head in the Strand, and J. Watts at the Printing Office in Wild-Court, near Lincolns-Inn Fields. $950 from Scott Ellis, Oct., '00.

At last I have arrived at a first edition of Croxall! And it is a good copy. Bodemann #107.1. Croxall is first mentioned at the end of the dedication to Halifax. At the beginning, what is labeled "The Contents of the Fables" is an AI. Use that to find a fable by one of its characters. This is a larger-format book (5¼" x 8¼") than any of its later editions or imitations that I know of. The Kirkall illustrations are the same size as, e.g., in the 1731 Third Edition, but the print and the margins are both larger here. It is such a pleasure to see the engravings distinct! Some that are especially clear and strong include FC (16), TMCM (63), GGE (101), "The Tunny and the Dolphin" (111), FWT (115), "The Thief and the Dog" (185), "The Thief and the Boy" (189), DM (223), "The Envious Man and the Covetous" (232), WSC (275), "The Fox in the Well" (285), and "The Ape and Her Two Young Ones" (316). I believe that I do not have Kirkall's frontispiece -- a statue of of Aesop proclaiming "panta mythos" -- in any other edition. Bodemann comments that about half of the visual motifs are taken from Barlow. 196 fables, 344 pages. Croxall gives at the end an "index" especially to qualities and persons.

1723 Selectiores Aesopi Phrygis Fabulae et Luciani Samosatensis Dialogi, Isocratis Orationes duae, Cebetis Thebani Tabula. Graece et Latine. In usum Juventutis Scoticae Graecarum literarum studiosae. Edinburgi: In Aedibus Tho. Ruddimanni, Sumptibus Geo. Stewart. $25.65 at B.D. McCutcheon "Bookshop," Stirling, Scotland, July, '92.

A typical early-18th century bilingual textbook for learning Greek, presumably from the already known Latin. 62 fables. AI by Latin names on 63-4. It was very nice to find something old done in Scotland to bring back with me. A real find in a bookshop where I was told several times "There is nothing here for you!"

1723/2018 Aesop's Fables in English & Latin, Interlineary, for the Benefit of those who not having a Master, Would Learn Either of these Tongues.  (John Locke).  Hardbound.  Eighteenth Century Collections Online: Literature and Language:  A.Bettesworth/Creative Media Partners: Gale: Cengage.  $27.95 from Amazon, July, '18.

Here is a second reprint of Locke, distinct from the Kessinger reprint of 2010.  It comes from an American publisher and is a copy of the second edition, not the first, and so is a helpful supplement to the 2010 reprint.  It is also hardbound.  The copy used for this Xeroxed version has many handwritten marginalia.  Apparently there were not significant changes from the 1703 original to the 1723 second edition.  I will include several comments from that reprint, since they also apply here.   I closed my remark on my original copy of this book with this comment: "I wonder why no one has ever reprinted this book."  Here is my answer.  This copy, manufactured at request, provides a good supplement to the original edition.  First of all, it contains the illustrations that are missing in that copy.  Secondly, it provides a book that can be used without harming that fragile copy over 300 years old.  There are 337 pages for two-hundred-and-thirty fables.  I think I laughed at Locke's project when I first read of it.  It makes more sense to me now.  He is trying to help people who cannot get to school to learn Latin, and he wisely conjectures that his book can also help those who already know Latin but need to learn English.  He admits in his preface that the English here will not be stellar.  But it will clearly reflect the Latin.  The printer does a good job of varying the typeface, so that a reader can easily see which Latin and English words correspond to each other.  While I am still not a fan of this method of learning, I admire the project and the practical working of Locke's mind to offer a method for learning Latin.  There is a page of errata just before the illustrations.