Opera Omnia, Ad optimorum Codicum fidem sumno studio recognita & castigata ...

Hardback. Very Good. Robert Freebairn, Edinburgh, 1715, first edition of the works; large folio, two volumes well bound in one in appropriate quarter tan pigskin with brown cloth sides, spine gilt; pp [ii], xxii, 26, [8], 466, 37, [3], 41, [1], 30, 5, [2], 13-18; [iv], 104, [6], 34, 4, 241, 36, 38, 16; engraved decorative publisher's frontispiece by Andrew Johnston engraved by M Van der Gucht and three title pages in red and black (volume 1, volume 2, and Poematum, this last dated 1714); a little browning, occasionally severe and with some old water staining and fragility of the top margins towards the end but otherwise a very good, crisp, clean copy sensitively rebound. NOTE: as this volume weighs approach 5kg there may be a need for additional carriage charges beyond the default shown, this depending on ultimate location and method of carriage. Buchanan, 1506-1582, the Scottish historian and humanist scholar was, according to historian Keith Brown "the most profound intellectual sixteenth century Scotland produced". Educated partly at the Scots College in Paris he also worked there and later in Bordeaux. He was imprisoned in Lisbon, charged with Lutheran and Judaistic practices but later became tutor to Mary, Queen of Scots and subsequently to the young James VI. Although of Highland stock and with Gaelic as his native language he became a fluent and subtle writer in Latin and considered by Hugh Trevor-Roper the greatest Latin writer, whether in prose or verse, of his time in Europe. This edition, edited by Thomas Ruddiman, 1674-1757, is the first edition of Buchan's collected works. Ruddiman, a Jacobite, disagreed with his subject's views hostile to hereditary monarchy and wrote a dissenting introduction to the work.