The Kloss copy: with marginal notes formerly described as the handwriting of Philipp Melanchthon

Persius Flaccus, Aulus / Murmellius, Johann (ed.). Nova co[m]me[n]taria in Persium. A. Persii Flacci satyrae co[m]plusculis, quibus scateba[n]t, mendis repurgate, cum ecphrasi et scholiis Joa[n]nis Murmellii Kuremu[n]densis. M[a]rtialis sepius in libro memoratur persius uno quam totus magna Marsus Amazonide.

€ 7,500.00

First edition thus of the satires of Persius, published but a month before the death of the editor, Murmellius. The work is preceded by a short biography of Persius, taken from Petrus Crinitus. Finely printed in a small "lettre bâtarde", including some Greek type, with legenda in the margins for the comments, and the main text printed in a slightly larger type, with the lines set widely apart. Georg Kloß copy, with his bookplate on the front pastedown and the relevant catalogue clipping from his sale (described as bound with an additional work) pasted above. The Frankfurt physician Georg Franz Burkhard Kloß (1787-1854) was also a noted historian of freemasonry. His rather notorious sale was held at Sotheby's in London in 1835. This volume contains long 18th c. notations on the title-page about the rarity of this edition as well as a contemporary humanist's extensive marginalia in Latin from fol. C1v to D2r, then again on D5v and D6v (slightly trimmed at rebinding), mostly pertaining to the text, but also to the commentary. These early handwritten annotations were boldly attributed to Melanchthon by Samuel L. Sotheby in his 1835 catalogue of the Kloß library, an unsustainable notion against which the collector himself spoke out clearly (cf. G. Kloß, Ueber Melanchthons angebliche Handschriften, welche in dem Catalogue of the Library of Dr. Kloss verzeichnet sind, in: Serapeum 2 [1841], no. 24, p. 369-377). In his monumental account of Melanchthon research throughout the centuries, Wilhelm Hammer provided similarly critical reviews of Sotheby's relevant publications: "[Wimmelt] von Sach- und Druckfehlern [...] Die hier zusammengestellten 'Privatexemplare' [Melanchthons] entsprechen nicht den Tatsachen [...] Eine höchst unsinnige Veröffentlichung" ("Abounds with factual and setting errors [...] The 'private copies of Melanchthon' here assembled are not in accordance with fact [...] A deeply misguided publication", cf. Die Melanchthonforschung im Wandel der Jahrhunderte 36 [1968], pp. 96 & 110). Subsequently in the collection of Cosmo (Cosmas) Nevill, Esq. of Holt, Leicestershire, with his 19th century engraved bookplate. Nevill would have acquired the book from the Kloß sale.

Some browning and minor dampstains. Pasteboards rubbed, extremeties bumped, spine professionally restored, as is a tear in the title page. Final index leaf H3 repaired by an early owner with loss of text (colophon on verso preserved). A slight wormtrack in top margin of H1 and H2 repaired (with slight text loss to H2). Very rare; only two copies located in North America (at Ann Arbor & Columbia); none in Britain.