8vo. [32], 330pp, [14]. With extra-engraved title (A1v, included in the pagination). Contemporary gilt-tooled calf. Rubbed, cracking to joints, lacking lettering-piece and chipped to spine, with neat repair to upper board at foot. Small paper flaw to D1, with loss of catchword to recto and two words of text to verso. Philip Bliss' copy, with one line of manuscript notes (identifying the author of 'Address to the translator') to a blank-fly leaf, and his usual ownership marks (the addition of a manuscript initial 'P.' before the printer's register B to leaf B1, followed by '35' indicating his year of acquisition). Earlier inscription ('M. Cowper. Fellow of A: S: Coll. Oxon') to head of title, with partially erased note regarding ownership by his grandfather; later inscriptions of Robert and May Montagu to blank fly. With a manuscript note in an early hand to margin and foot of V7r, with repaired paper excision/cuts to margins of V7-8.

An interesting copy, with double Oxford provenance and a curious eighteenth- century manuscript note, of John Davies of Kidwelly's (1625-1693) English translation of L'art de connoistre les hommes (Paris, 1659), by French physician and philosopher Marin Cureau de la Chambre (1594-1669). A vaguely philosophical work on human character, with diversions into astrology, chiromancy, metroscopy, and physiognomy, the extra-engraved title depicts scholarly study of human heads, with both European and African examples displayed on a shelf.

Evidently acquired by Oxford University Registrar, antiquary and book collector Philip Bliss' (1787-1857) in 1835, this volume also bears the earlier inscription of 'M. Cowper', Fellow of All Souls Oxford. The curious inscription to the foot of pp.235, apparently in the same hand, relates, at a point of the text referring to weaknesses at times of eclipse, the annotators experience of being seized with a 'death like coldness' at the time of 'a great Eclipse of the Sun in the year 1753...or 54', which could not be cured until the said eclipse had passed.