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KAMES (HENRY HOME), LORD: Sketches of the History of Man. Considerably Improved in a Second Edition.
Edinburgh: Printed for W. Strahan, and T. Cadell...and for W. Creech, Edinburgh, 1778. 4 volumes. 8vo, pp. xii, 498 [499 adverts, 500 blank]; [iv], 461 [462 blank, 463 adverts, 464 blank]; [iv], 428; iv, 480, no half-titles, contemporary tree calf, spines ornately gilt in compartments; some browning of text, tops and bases of spines chipped, front joints cracked with volumes 1 and 3 tender, lacks labels. Kames's Sketches was first published in 1774, prompting James Boswell, in a letter to Bennet Langton, to comment that he thought the volumes "very dear [two guineas], from what I have read of them. He has a prodigious quantity of Quotation, and there seems to be little of what he gives as his own that is just, or that has not been better said by others." Boswell's jejune assessment can be contrasted with that of the reviewer in the Edinburgh Magazine and Review: "There is not perhaps in the English Language a book which furnishes so great a variety of materials, and so much ingenious remark and conjecture, as the work before us. The philosopher, the statesman, the man of taste, the naturalist, will here find views and observations of the highest importance to their several departments." A Dublin edition appeared in 1775, and there was one further edition (1779) in Kames's lifetime.
Offered for GBP 385.00 = appr. US$ 613.30 by: John Price Antiquarian Books - Book number: 2571
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