Thomas Brewster Translator (2 results)
Published by London, Printed for A.Millar, 1751., 1751
- Hardcover
Seller: Bernard Quaritch Ltd ABA ILAB, London, United KingdomBernard Quaritch Ltd ABA ILAB
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£ 375.00
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Add to basket8vo, pp.[4], [iii]-xxiv, 154, [2]; short tear to [p]2; a very good copy in contemporary British calf, spine gilt-ruled in compartments, edges speckled red; a few scuffs, cracks to joints and endcaps chipped; ink inscription 'Jno James (1751.)' to title with notes and corrections in the same hand (seebelow).Second edition, with t…he addition of Bayle's life of Persius, with manuscript corrections. Our commentator, an unidentified John James, is unusually strident in his annotations, adding to the title not only his name but an additional epigraph adapting Persius 5:28-29 ('Totumque hoc verba resignent / Quod latet arcana (vix) enarrabile fibra') and changing 'and the Original Text corrected' to read 'and the Latin Original subjoin'd & corrected'. In the preface he identifies the translator, 'Dr Brewster of St Jns Oxfd', and in the Life continues as confidently as before, correctly noting that Persius was born in the reign of Tiberius, not Nero, changing his native town of 'Volterra' towards a more Roman form 'Volterræ', and making seemingly trivial additions to the text, e.g.'the famous Grammarian Palemon', 'the Orator Verginius Flaccus', or 'Italian Genealogists vainly alledge'. James on occasion engages critically with the notes, for example changing 'Trowses' to 'Breeches' and noting that they were worn not only by Medes but also by 'some Gauls in that Age' (p.67), but beyond implementing the errata and a few minor changes he appears to pay relatively little attention to the translation itself. ESTC T143345.
Published by London: printed by J. Bettenham etc, 1742
Seller: Christopher Edwards ABA ILAB, Henley-on-Thames, OXON, United KingdomChristopher Edwards ABA ILAB
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Add to basketTogether six vols. in one, 4to, pp. [iv], 28; 16; [iv], 30; 34; 20; disbound. A complete set of first editions. The anonymous translator was Thomas Brewster (b. 1705), a physician at Bath. While a student at Oxford he had published a version of the second satire (1733); the present text has been substantially revised. 'Henry Fie…lding paid his compliments in his 1743 Miscellanies, both to the physician, whom he terms the 'glory of his art' ('To Miss Hand at Bath') and to the translator. In his 'Essay on conversation' in that volume, Fielding quotes from Brewster's translation of Persius, which he describes as 'thus excellently rendered by the late ingenious translator of that obscure author'. Despite the ambiguous phrasing, it seems that Brewster was still alive: he was one of the subscribers to Miscellanies, and it is very probable that he was the Dr Brewster mentioned at the end of Tom Jones (1749) as being in attendance on the philosopher Square during his last illness at Bath It is not known when Brewster died, although the phrasing of the address to the second edition of Persius in 1751 suggests that he was still alive then, and in 1757 his name is found in the list of subscribers to Sarah Fielding's Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia' (Oxford DNB). The poems of Persius do present significant difficulties; the most famous early English version is that of Dryden (along with the satires of Juvenal), first printed in 1694. Quite uncommon: these translatons were sold at sixpence a satire, separately, over a period of a year or more, and not inevitably found in complete sets. Foxon B432-B436.
