The Philosophie, Commonlie Called, the Morals

London: Printed by Arnold Hatfield, 1603. First Edition. Very good. First complete edition in English, containing everything you’d ever want to know of what Romans thought about private (daily) life. An essential, balancing compendium for all the Roman history books (the historiographer’s question is always, what else was going on?). It’s a spectacular read, but you better wipe off your magnifying glasses because this book is 1,400 pages of well-spaced, but small type. Full mottled calf by Riviere & Son (signed on the verso of the front free endpaper), morocco labels, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt, woodcut initials and headpieces, rebacked, a few faint scratches, tiny chip (paper flaw?) from the title page’s edge, but fine, and complete with the errata. The condition is exceptional for this book. Ugly copies abound but no copy like ours has sold at auction or in the trade since this one sold at Sotheby’s, in 1989, for $4,675 (expensive then and expensive now, but the finest of copies usually are). Ex–James Hale Bates (1845–1901) the American travel writer, with his armorial bookplate upside down on the rear endpaper. Ex–The Garden Limited (see below), their bookplate also upside down next to Bates’ (the error in placement certainly made by Bates, The Garden owners intentionally followed suit). 4 p.l., 1363, [1] pp., [32] leaves. Ref: STC 20063. ESTC S115981. Harris, p. 116. Lowndes III, 1891. The exalted Elizabethan translator Philemon Holland (1552–1637) was a physician and Latinist whose love of the classics prompted his devotion to rendering ancient authors into the language of Shakespeare, and his output was prodigious. His first project was a translation of the Roman historian Livy, published in 1600. The next year, Holland tackled Pliny’s massive Natural History (he also translated significant historical works of Suetonius (1606) and Ammianus Marcellinus (1609). The contents of the Morals are amazing. They confront a wild range of topics, embracing fortune, exile, animal intelligence, health, advice for newlyweds, the education of children, benefitting from one’s enemies, the value of having few or many friends, how to recognize a flatterer, and 10 times as many more. And though Catullus’ neoteric poems, and some documents survive, the primary (only?) other source of the private details of Roman daily life beyond this book, is just graffiti on the walls of Roman ruins, like at Pompeii. Individual Plutarch treatises had been previously translated into English, some more liberally than others, but this is the first translation of the entire sequence of essays that make up the “Moralia.” Further, the value of the collection is enhanced because Plutarch borrows from lost Greek works, some of which would otherwise be unknown to us.

The modern provenance here is at the zenith. It’s no hyperbole to say that the collection of The Garden Ltd. was the most outstanding American library of notable books put together in the second half of the 20th century. It was comprised of high spots from all periods, breathtaking in their impeccable condition. It included the last 1st edition seen of Cervantes’ 1605 Don Quixote, and a set of Shakespeare’s 4 folios (bought by Dick Manney, and then bought by us from Sotheby’s by private treaty in 1991). Does this collection have a backstory? It does. Haven O’More, was a genial narcissist with an autobiography fattened on bombastic exaggeration. His oft asked question was, “Do you know who I am?” It should have been, “Do you know who I think I am?” He found a rich investor, Michael Davis, and with Davis’ loot he built a staggering library, in awe-inspiring condition, that he planned to place at the center of his zanily conceived, “new sacred city.” But O’More was holding aces and eights, and after a public confrontation at Christies over a Gutenberg Bible, Davis got bored with O’More’s antics and forced a 1989 sale at Sotheby’s, titled The Garden Ltd.