The Complete Italian Master; containing the best and easiest Rules for attaining that Language Newly translated into English from the last Dutch Edition, revised and improved from that of Basil, with considerable Additions and Improvements by the Translator

8vo, pp.[8], 462, [206]; a fine copy in contemporary sprinkled calf, spine gilt in compartments with gilt-lettered red morocco label, very slight cracking to joints; armorial bookplate of Sir Edmund Antrobus to front pastedown (Franks 625).First edition thus, revising an earlier translation of Le maitre italien of 1711, which was not only 'out of print' but 'in many respects inaccurate' (Preface). The translator's preface acknowledges the work of foreign editors since the second edition of 1729 and describes some of the 'great improvements', including modern orthography. Signor Veneroni (1642–1708) was a French linguist, a native of Verdun, who Italianized his name and became Italian secretary and interpreter to the French king. He published an Italian–French dictionary in 1681 and a grammar in 1710, both of which were reprinted throughout the eighteenth century. As well as the more conventional chapters on grammar and syntax, the present edition includes notes on pronunciation, lists 'Of the poetical licences, and the divers synonymous names of the [Roman] gods', 'Of improper and obsolete words', 'Familiar dialogues' ('The gentleman and the taylor', 'Of the weather', 'Of the charms of a young lady', 'To reckon with the landlord', &c.), 'A collection of jests', 'A collection of Italian proverbs', 'A short introduction to the Italian poetry', and some sample business letters, 'Lettere mercantili'. The long unpaginated section at the end comprises Italian–English and English–Italian dictionaries, which were 'shamefully incorrect in the last English edition, and stuffed with … a multitude of barbarous words'. Provenance: Sir Edmund Antrobus, second Baronet (1792–1870), educated at Eton and St John's College Cambridge, and subsequently a banker at Coutts. He served as trustee for George Watson Taylor for several slave-owning plantations and as executor of Tully Higgins for the Blenheim estate in British Guiana, in which roles he was involved in claiming £57,536/-/11 in 1835 and 1836 as compensation for the emancipation of enslaved people (see UCL Legacies of British Slavery). He inherited in 1826 the Amesbury estate, including Stonehenge, purchased the previous year by his uncle Sir Edmund Antrobus, first Baronet, FRS FSA. The book was likely bound for Antrobus, as two of the tools used on the spine appear also on his copy of Baretti's Introduction to the Italian Language (Quaritch, New Acquisitions March 2022, no.3). Alston XII (2), 42. ESTC locates copies at BL, Bodley, Harvard, and Chicago, to which Alston adds Biblioteca Nazionale in Rome. Language: English.…