ESTIENNE EDITION OF MAIOR'S COLLECTION OF PROVERBS TAKEN FROM ANCIENT POEMS
THE ROBERT FINCH COPY WITH HIS INSCRIPTION

Major, Georg (editor)-Mancinelli, Antonio. Sententiae veterum poetarum, per Georgium Maiorem in locos communes digestae, ac tandem post authoris supremam manum, multum auctae ac locupletae; Antonii Mancinelli De poetica virtute libellus. Index sententiarum & prouerbiorum.. Lutetiae (Paris): ex officina Roberti Stephani typographi regij (Robert Estienne), 1551.

8vo (153x105 mm), 18th century amateur stiff vellum ivoire by Kalthoeber (his orange label at verso of first fly-leaf), blue labels and gilt-lettered titles at spine, blue carrè on both covers, yellow edges ff. 240, [4].
Printer's device at title page.

Uncommon Parisian edition printed by Estienne of Maior's collection of aphorisms taken from the ancient Latin authors.The work includes a Mancinelli's treatise on poetical virtue.

Provenances:
1. A long Latin autograph dedicace by the great English antiquarian Robert Finch (1783-1830), dated 1802, to the young scholar J. Wilson (his autograph signature at recto of fly-leaf). Finch lived in Italy for many years, where he was on the periphery of the Shelley circle and was a friend and patron to a number of British expatriate artists. He left his library, pictures, coins, and medals to the to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Mary Shelley met Finch in Rome in April 1819 while he was affecting the persona of his retired British colonel and dubbed him "Colonel Calicot Finch". He considered himself debonair and extended friendship and patronage to expatriate British artists in Italy, including Joseph Severn, Sir Charles Eastlake, William Etty and in later in his life Crabb Robinson. Although Finch was on the periphery of the Shelley circle his journals have proved useful to scholars as a source of information on the circle's continental acquaintances.
2. John Wilson, with his signature and the note that he received the book by Finch as a gift.

References: IT\ICCU\MO1E\001199. Not in Adams. E. Nitchie, The Reverend Colonel Finch. Columbia University Press, 1940. OCLC, 11985509.

Minor traces of use, but a fine copy.