Aristotle
£4,800
Rare Books, Manuscripts & Photographs
Auction: Rare Books, Manuscripts & Photographss | 10 May 2007
Description
[The works of Aristotle, translated from the Greek: with copious elucidations from the best of his Greek commentators… by Thomas Taylor] London: for the translator, 1807-12. First edition, 8 volumes of 9, 4to., 2 folding. plates (one at the end of the Metaphysics, the other at the end of the Heavens, etc. original vellum, red morocco lettering pieces, fore-edges uncut, bindings a little spotted and dusty, some titles, the folding plates and other leaves foxed, with Taylor's signature at the end of five volumes. [and] The metaphysics. London: for the author, 1801. First edition, 4to., later paper boards, quarter cloth, fore-edges uncut, slight paper discolouration
Note: Lowndes 68: Schwab 417, Raine & Mills Taylor, p. 526. Present of The Works are: The organon, 1807: On the heavens, 1807, On the soul, etc., 1808; History of animals, 1809; Parts & progressive motions of animals, etc., 1810; Ethics, 1811; Rhetoric, 1811; Metaphysics, 1812 and not including the Disseration on the philosophy sometimes found. Publication was limited to fifty sets. The 1801 edition of the Metaphysics contains material not reprinted in the collected works.
Plato
The works of Plato, viz his fifty-five dialogues, and twelve epistles, tanslated from the Greek; nine of the dialogues by the late Flower Sydenham, and the remainder by Thomas Taylor. London: printed for Thomas Taylor, 1804. First edition, 5 volumes, 4to., with half titles, 1 plate in volume 1, original cloth, a little rubbed, inner joints of volume 1 splitting, a little foxing but chielfly of half titles
Note: Lownders 1877; Raine & Mills Taylor, p. 525
The first complete translations of the works of Aristotle and Plato into English, they are two of the most influential works of Thomas Taylor (1750-1835), who, by these and by making available in translation a vast body of Neo-Platonic metaphysical works, exerted a considerable influence on the mystical philosophical tendencies of the Romantic Movement. He marks the break with the Augustan age.
Indebtedness to his works has been discerned in Coleridge, Shelly, Peacock, Worsworth, Samuel Palmer, Flaxman and Southey, and it has also been argued that Taylor constitutes one of the most important sources of the transcendtal stream in America as represented by Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Thomas M. Johnson, the Plato Club and the American Akademe of Jacksonville.
But of all the poets and artists of the Romantic Movement, it has been suggested that Taylor most strongly influenced William Blake, where considerable claims for the relationship have been put forward by the works of Kathleen Raine and George Mills Harper. Certainly they knew each other, had friends in common and Taylor is recorded as having given Blake lessons in mathematics. Ther are also many instances of linguistic and philosophical parallels that could be attributed to a knowledge of Taylor's works by Blake (14)