TWO-VOLUME QUARTO CAMBRIDGE KING JAMES BIBLE, 1768, BEAUTIFULLY BOUND

(BIBLE). The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments. Cambridge: John Archdeacon, 1768. Two volumes. Tall quarto, contemporary full re morocco, raised bands, elaborately gilt-decorated spines and boards, black morocco spine labels, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. $7500.

Richly bound Cambridge King James Bible, illustrated with copper-engraved frontispieces by Francis Hayman, “the most proficient English illustrator of his time” (Ray, 5). Beautifully bound in contemporary full red morocco gilt.

The King James Bible, first published in 1611, is described as "the only literary masterpiece ever to be produced by a committee and was the work of nearly fifty translators… [who] lived at a period when the genius of the language was in full flower… [Macaulay praised it as] "a book, which if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power" (PMM 114). This 18th-century edition, with Apocrypha (bound here after the New Testament), contains a chronological Index and Tables, with a separate title page for the New Testament. Darlow & Moule 881. From the library of the British politician Sir Edward Winnington, 2nd Baronet of Stanford Court (1749-1805), with his armorial bookplates. The first volume is annotated in manuscript on an initial blank, very likely in Winnington's hand, copying a note that was originally "written by Sir William Jones in his Bible." An esteemed philologist and orientalist, Jones (1746-1794) was a contemporary of Winnington, and both studied at Oxford at around the same time. Jones is best known for his scholarly contributions on the relationship between European and Indo-Aryan languages; as with many other British imperial researches, he was concerned with the implications of Hindu literature for the European culture, including religion, and his essays contributed to the development of biblical criticism. The note that Jones wrote on his Bible, here copied, started to appear in journals and publications soon after his death. It is a paean to the Bible, which "contains more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, more pure morality, more important history, and finer strains both of poetry and eloquence, than can be collected from all other books, in whatever age or language they may have been composed. The two parts of which the scriptures consist are connected by a chain of compositions which bear no resemblance, in form or style, to any that can be produced from the stores of Grecian, Persian, or even Arabian learning. The antiquity of those compositions no man doubts; and the unstrained application of them to events long subsequent to their publication, is a solid ground of belief that they are genuine predictions, and consequently inspired."

Text fine, only minor wear to contemporary morocco. A beautiful 18th-century Bible.