THE KENNETTS ON POLITICAL WISDOM
Politics In Select discourses of Monsieur balzac. Which he call'd his aristippus, or Wise Scholar. Done into English by Basil Kennett, Fellow of C.C.C. Oxford; now Chaplain in a British Factory abroad. To which are added, An Advertisement of the Translation; and an Account of the Life and Writings of the Author.
London.
Printed by J. Humfreys, for J. Philips, 1709.
First edition.
8vo.
xlviii, 172pp. Contemporary panelled calf, contrasting red morocco lettering-piece, spine richly gilt. Rubbed, a trifle marked, splitting to joints with, but with boards remaining firmly attached. The Macclesfield Library copy, with bookplate of 'South Library', Shirburn Castle, to FEP, and the usual blind-stamps to first three leaves, recent bookplate of Robert J. Hayhurst to recto of FFEP. Text-block unpressed, with some browning.
The Macclesfield copy of a selected translation into English of Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac's (1597-1654) Aristippe (Leiden, 1657), a treatise on courts and the duties of wise governance, by English antiquary and clergyman Basil Kennett (1674-1714), published whilst he served as the first Chaplain to the British trading factory at Leghorn.
Kennett's translation was to prove embarrassing to his brother, White Kennett (1660-1728), Bishop of Peterborough, who had contributed prefatory material to this work, when parts of the seventh discourse were excerpted in an 8pp satirical pamphlet (The French Favourites, London, 1709) examining the relationship of Queen Anne and Sarah Churchill, scurrilously attributed to the Bishop.
Kennett's translation was to prove embarrassing to his brother, White Kennett (1660-1728), Bishop of Peterborough, who had contributed prefatory material to this work, when parts of the seventh discourse were excerpted in an 8pp satirical pamphlet (The French Favourites, London, 1709) examining the relationship of Queen Anne and Sarah Churchill, scurrilously attributed to the Bishop.
ESTC T113022.
£ 450.00
Antiquates Ref: 16021
