515d Lucian of Samosata. (A.D. 120-180); trans. Jasper Mayne (1604-1672). Part of Lucian made English from the originall. In the yeare 1638. By Iasper Mayne then Master of Arts, and one of the students of ChristChurch. To which are adjoyned those other dialogues of Lucian as they were formerly translated by Mr Francis Hicks.
[bound with] Certain select dialogues of Lucian: together with his true history, translated from the Greek into English. By Mr. Francis Hickes. Whereunto is added the life of Lucian, gathered out of his own writings, with brief notes and illustrations upon each dialogue and book, by T.H. Mr. of Arts of Christ-Church in Oxford.

Oxford: Printed by H. Hall. for R. Davis, 1664
Oxford: Printed for Richard Davis, Bookseller in Oxford, 1663

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Folio, 6.3 x 3.9 in. Second editions. A8, B-Z4, Aa-Zz4, Aaa-Eee4; A-Z4, Aa-Dd4. This copy has some light browning and occassional spotting throughout; dampstaining and very fine worming are confined to the first few pages of the text. The engraved frontispiece of Lucian by W. Faithorne is bound opposite the title page. The Friedsam Memorial Library plate for their T.E. Hanley Collection is pasted inside the front cover. The copy is bound in its original seventeenth century calfskin. It is showing some wear with rubbing and scuffing, but the spine is intact and the boards are still held firmly by the cords.

This translation of Lucian’s Dialogues was executed by archdeacon of Chichester and occasional writer, Jasper Mayne. He “had much literary taste, and was soon known in the university [Oxford] as ‘a quaint preacher and noted poet.’” Mayne “contributed commendatory verses to the collected edition of Cartwight’s plays and poems, wrote ‘to the memory of Ben Jonson’ in ‘Jonsonus Virbius’ and he is also, very doubtfully, credited with the admirable elegy superscribed ‘I.M.S.’ [John Mayne, Student] and prefixed to the 1632 folio of Shakespeare’s Works.” Mayne’s original attempts at the dramatic came with lackluster plays such as ‘City March’ and ‘The Amorous War.’ Despite his shortcomings as a playwright, Mayne shone with his academic studies and writings. He undertook the translation of Lucian’s Dialogues starting in “1638 for the entertainment of a distinguished patron, William Cavendish, marquis of Newcastle.” This copy contains Mayne’s dedication to William Cavendish, of Newcastle, a knight of the Order of the Garter. The translation, however, was put aside during the civil war and was never resumed. It was published, incomplete, until 1664 when Mayne’s work was accompanied by the remainder of the translation done by Francis Hickes. (DNB)

“As a satirist and a wit Lucian occupies in prose literature the unique position which Aristophanes holds in Greek poetry. But whether he is a mere satirist, who laughs while he lashes, or a misanthrope, who hates while he derides, is not very clear.” “He lashes them all alike, the Cynics, perhaps, being the chief object of his derision. Lucian was not only a sceptic; he was a scoffer and a downright unbeliever. He felt that men’s actions and conduct always fall far short of their professions and therefore he concluded that the professions themselves were worthless, and a mere guise to secure popularity or respect.” A master of rhetoric—striving always to ‘expatiate and declaim’—“Lucian evinces a perfect mastery over language as wonderful in its inflections as in its immense and varied vocabulary.”

This edition contains English translations of his famous dialogues ‘Toxaris,’ ‘Prometheus,’ and ‘The King’s Fisher,’ along with many others. Also included is Lucian’s True History—“one of the best written and most amusing treatises of antiquity.” It forms “a rather long narrative in two books, which suggested Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Rabelais’s Voyage of Pantagruel and Cyrano de Bergerac’s Journey to the Moon. […] The only true statement in his History, he wittily says, is that it contains nothing but lies from beginning to end.” (EB)

Wing L-3435; Wing L-3452; Moss II 268; Hoffmann II 564; Schweiger I 198.