La Fontaine's fables. Now first translated from the French; by Robert Thomson

4 volumes, 8vo, pp. [4], 32,105, [3]; [4], 139, [1]; [4], 147, [1]; [4], 128; uncut and partially unopened; numerous decorative woodcut cul-de-lampe tailpieces throughout all four volumes (I: 41; II: 49; III: 58; IV: 46), many used more than once, and including tiny abstract designs, floral arrangements, and outdoor scenes; some gatherings printed on tinted paper; original blue paper-covered boards, brown paper shelfback, printed paper labels on spines; label on volume III largely perished; cracks and minor loss of paper at the joints and spines, moderate foxing; a good copy or better, and rare in boards. Preserved in a blue cloth dropback box. Another issue (edition?), decidedly later, contains a portrait and 15 plates by Perdoux and has a varying imprint. In that, the title is expanded to read: La Fontaine's fables. Now first translated from the French, with elegant engraved figures. First edition of this verse translation. Includes "A sketch of La Fontaine's Life and Character," La Fontaine's original preface here translated into English, and Thomson's translator's preface. In volume II is added "A sketch of Æsop's life from Croxall." "Although Jean de la Fontaine (1621-95) is the author of a rich and varied body of writing, he is known in English for one masterwork only. The Fables (1668-93), a subtle, varied, witty reworking of Aesop and other fabulists, seem quintessentially French, but in their freedom offer a wonderful opportunity to the poet-translator . Early renderings by John Dennis (in his Miscellanies of 1693) and particularly by the author of The Fable of the Bees, Bernard de Mandeville, recast a few fables in jolly octosyllables in the manner of Butler's Hudibras . [but] the first more or less complete translation was published over a century later by Robert Thomson (fl. 1790-1810). His verse lacks the terseness and subtly of the original, but gives a truer idea of it than the cavalier version of John Matthews [published in London in 1820]" (Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation). In his preface, Thomson admits the difficulty of translating the Fables ("I have heard it urged by gentlemen . that a La Fontaine only could translate La Fontaine.") but he wanted to free a text which has "remained locked up in its own language for near a century and a half, or known only in English by some wretched translations in prose . In all the performances I have seen, wearing the mask of his name, I see nothing but La Fontaine wholly misunderstood, mangled, or murdered" (Thomson's preface).…