From John Buchan's Library, Presented by Him to Lucan’s Translator Edward Ridley
LUCAN, Marcus Annaeus; Frans van OUDENDORP (editor). Pharsalia. Sive Belli Civilis Libri Decem Cum scholiaste, hucusque inedito, et notis integris H. Glareani, J. Micylli, J. Camerarii, H. Grotii etc. … Curante Fr. Oudendorpio, qui suas etiam adnotationes, et copiosos indices adjecit. Leiden: Samuel Luchtmans. 1728.
Two volumes, large 4to. Full late eighteenth-century red crushed morocco, boards with a gilt border of pinhead dots, smooth spines with gilt pinhead rules and lettered in gilt, turn-ins with gilt rolled border, all edges gilt, marbled endpapers, blue silk place markers; pp. [74], 505, [1 (blank)]; [1 (half-title)], 506-966, [194 (index)], with an engraved additional title-page by Frans van Bleyswyck after Herman van der Mijn, title in red and black with woodcut printer's device, initials and tailpieces, engraved folding map (sometime supplied from another smaller paper copy), and 4 engraved diagrams in the text; spines a little darkened, boards on volume II also with some darkening, some browning internally, but generally very good; Syston Park bookplate and John Buchan’s bookplate to front pastedowns in each volume; presentation inscription ‘Sir Edward Ridley from John Buchan in memory of many happy days at Crabbet 30 March 1908’ to front free endpaper of vol. I (see below).
First edition of Lucan’s Pharsalia edited by Frans van Oudendorp, with commentary by Glareanus, Micyllus, and Grotius, along with Thomas May’s seventeenth-century continuation of Lucan; a finely bound large paper copy from the Syston Park library of Sir John Thorold, later in the library of John Buchan who presented it to the noted Lucan's translator Sir Edward Ridley.
Frans van Oudendorp (1696-1761), a professor of Eloquence and History at Leyden, was celebrated as ‘the last of the great Latinists of the third age of scholarship in the Netherlands’ (Sandys). He was known for his editions of Roman authors such as Caesar, Frontinus and Suetonius, as well as the early imperial poet Lucan. For his edition of the Pharsalia, Lucan’s unfinished epic poem chronicling the struggle between Caesar and Pompey, Oudendorp drew upon the text of Hugo Grotius’ earlier edition (1614), supplementing it with a substantial apparatus of notes.
Sir John Thorold, ninth baronet (1734-1815), was one of the leading figures of the ‘bibliomania’ of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when bibliophiles such as William Beckford, the third duke of Roxburghe, and the second Earl Spencer vied to outbid one another in the sale rooms. He began collecting about 1775; the pace of acquisitions is believed to have slackened somewhat round about 1800. He died on 25 February 1815.
Thorold was succeeded by his eldest son, Sir John Hayford Thorold, tenth baronet (1773-1831), who continued in his father’s collecting habits, and commissioned the architect Lewis Vulliamy to build a new library for him at Syston between 1822 and 1824. This was visited by T. F. Dibdin and described by him as ‘perhaps one of the most splendid and taking book repositories in Europe’ (Picturesque tour, vol. I). It is possible that Dibdin’s note of the existence of large paper copies of this book derives from seeing this copy at Syston Park.
The Syston Park collection was sold by Sotheby’s in 1884, 1899, and 1923. This set appears in the first sale as lot 1179 where the binding is attributed to Roger Payne (1739-1797). Bernard Quaritch in Contributions towards a Dictionary of English book-collectors however issued a caveat that ‘the auction catalogue ignored the circumstance and set the name of Roger Payne to bindings that drunken artist would have refused to acknowledge’. In light of this and because of the lack of distinguishing tools it is difficult to substantiate the attribution to Payne.
At some stage after the Sotheby’s sale, where the set sold for £4 to a Mr Buckley, the set was acquired by John Buchan (1875-1940). As Thorold before him, Buchan had a fine book collection, including many finely printed classical books. His interest and knowledge of this period of Roman history is manifest in his biography of Julius Caesar (1932). John Buchan’s private library was acquired in 1955 by Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario, and so books from his library are rarely seen on the market.
This set, however, did not end up at Queen’s University as Buchan had given it in 1908 to Sir Edward Ridley. This is a particularly apposite present as Sir Edward Ridley (1843-1928) had published a very successful translation of Lucan’s Pharsalia in 1896. Crabbet Park was the home of Sir Wilfrid and Lady Anne Blunt, famed for its Arabian horse stud, where Ridley and Buchan had clearly met as house guests.
Brunet III, 1200: ‘edition estimee’; Dibdin II, 186: ‘a very excellent edition’; Schweiger II, 564. See also Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship.
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