[Rarebooks] Hobhouse's Notes to Childe Harold, 1818

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Hobhouse, John. Historical Illustrations of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold: Containing Dissertations on the Ruins of Rome; and an Essay on Italian Literature. Second Edition, Revised and Corrected. London: John Murray, 1818. viii, 576 pp., including illustrations of sepulchral vases and a facsimile of Torquato Tasso’s handwriting. 8vo, contemporary three-quarter olive straight-grained morocco and marbled boards, fine blind-tooling in the panels, black lettering labels. Boards scuffed, corners worn; some foxing, more prominent to the prelims and terminal leaves. A good copy. Lowndes II, p. 1078. 



While attending Cambridge Hobhouse (1786-1869) became the close and intimate friend of Byron, serving as best man at Byron’s wedding in 1815. In the Autumn of 1816 he visited Byron at Villa Diodati, near Geneva, and they visited Venice and Rome together, during which period Hobhouse wrote the notes for the fourth canto of Childe Harold (which was dedicated to him). At Venice Hobhouse had access to the Ducal Library, and the notes “grew to such an extent that they had to be divided into two parts, one part being published with the poem, and the other in a separate volume” (DNB). 



The extended notes in this work include “Attachment of the Italians to their distinguished Fellow-citizens,” “Essay on the Imprisonment of Tasso,” “Anecdotes of Alfieri,” “A Dissertation on the Destroyers of the City of Rome, and an Account of the gradual disappearance of the Ruins,” “The Column and Forum of Trajan,” etc. There is also a long “Essay on the Present Literature of Italy, and a general Character of the Lives and Writings of Cesarotti, Parini, Alfieri, Pindemonte, Monti, and Foscolo.” 



$150 




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