[Half-t., add. engr. t.pl., t.p., dedic.] - Vita Q. Horatii Flacci Auctore C. Suetonio Tranquillo - Praefatio Ad Lectorem - [Text of Horace's poems] - [Divisional t.p., 'Q. Horatius Flaccus Ex Recensione Richard Bentleii'] - [T.p., 'Q. Horatius Flaccus, Ex Recensione & cum Notis Atque Emendationibus Richardi Bentleii. Cantabrigiæ, MDCCXI.'] - [Text of Bentley's notes]; Addenda; Errata - Index Scriptorum, qui in his Notis obiter emendantur; Index Verborum; Epigramma Vetus - Eadem Metra Horatiana, Archilochi, Alcaei, Et Sapphus Versibus expressa - Lectori.
Responsibility Note
The added engraved title-plate is signed as drawn by J. Goeree and engraved by Bernards.
The work is dedicated by Richard Bentley to Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer.
References
ESTC, N68516
A.T. Bartholomew and J.W. Clark, Richard Bentley, D.D.: a bibliography (1908).
C.O. Brink, English classical scholarship: reflections on Bentley, Porson and Housman (1986).
Summary Note
The two title-pages may well be bound in in reverse order, for the first, 'In Q. Horatium Flaccum Notæ ... Bentleii' is followed by the text of Horace's poems, while the second, 'Q. Horatius Flaccus, Ex Recensione ... Bentleii', is followed by Bentley's notes.
Bentley's text is full of emendations, always learnedly advanced and sometimes supported by manuscript authority. He famously comments on the text of Odes 3: 27 line 15, 'To us reason and common sense are better than a hundred codices' - but adds, 'especially with the added testimony of the old Vatican codex'.
Horace's poems, lyric, satiric or didactic, never provided as much stimulus to visual artists as the narrative poems of Ovid and Vergil; but a number of the Odes engage with heroic themes.
The added engraved title plate carries the title, 'Q. Horatius Flaccus ex Recensione R. Bentleii MDCCVIII' within an elaborate allegoric plate showing a bust of Horace being crowned with laurel.
Provenance
Prince Hoare's Bequest (1835). The front free-endpaper is inscribed in ink, 'Henry Hoare Jun' and 'HH Mar 18 1760'; and in pencil by the Academy's Librarian George Jones, 'Recd Augt 3. 1835 GJ'. The inclusion of this volume in the Bequest is rather odd in that Hoare's will had stipulated that only 'engravings & books of engravings wholly disconnected with any literary productions' were to come to the Academy.
Copy Note
Rear pastedown inscribed in pencil, 'Repaired by R. Paling 2/92'.
Binding Note
18th-century calf; rebacked in 1992 retaining gilt-decorated spine-piece, red morocco spine-label lettered 'Horatius Bentleii'.