Fabulas de Phedro, escravo forro de Augusto Cesar, traduzidas em verso dramatico; augmentadas com cinco fabulas que não vem em outras muitas edições; e illustradas com varias notas.…

Lisbon, Na Officina Patr. de Francisco Luiz Ameno, 1785.. FIRST EDITION. 8°, contemporary mottled sheep (some binding wear, lacking rear free endleaf), smooth spine with gilt fillets and crimson leather lettering piece, gilt letter. Woodcut frontispiece (depicting Aesop, Phaedrus and Augustus?), usually found facing the title page, but in this copy bound after the preliminaries. Woodcut vignette headpiece on leaf *ii, smaller woodcut vignette at top of p. [1]. Woodcut tailpiece on verso of final leaf. One hundred six charming, rather primitive woodcuts in text (ca. 2" x 2.5" each). Overall in very good condition. Contemporary ink signature of Britto Lobbato [?] on title page. Number 1:521 in upper outer corner of front free endleaf recto and vertically at lower inner margin of title page. Woodcut frontispiece, (3 ll.), x, 378 pp., (2 ll. advertisement). *** FIRST EDITION thus. A second edition appeared in Lisbon, 1805. The book contains the Fables of Aesop, translated by Phaedrus into Latin verse, with a Portuguese verse translation on the facing page and extensive footnotes. Moraes Soares says that most of the notes were taken from an edition of the Fables done in Paris in 1776, and that he has added some of his own. He also included five fables found by Marquando Gudio, a professor at Utrecht, which had been included in the Paris 1776 edition (according to the preface, p. vi; we were unable to locate the 1776 edition in NUC or BMC).Moraes Soares (1727-ca. 1800) shows a good understanding of the original, and his work is respected by scholars more for its accuracy than for its poetic style. He was a physician to Queen Maria I, and wrote a work on smallpox inoculation. We also have an unpublished manuscript history of medical education by him*** Innocencio VI, 67 (never having seen a copy of this edition, dating it tentatively to 1786; without mention of the frontispiece, the 3 preliminary leaves, or the 2 advertisement leaves). Porbase locates two copies, both in the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal (one lacking the title page). Jisc repeats British Library only. NUC: DLC only.