First edition. 8vo. 990, [50, Register] pp., engraved frontispiece, woodcut head- and tail-pieces. Contemporary polished calf, spine with five single raised bands outlined in gilt, second panel lettered in gilt on brown morocco label, the rest richly decorated in gilt, covers with blind fillet borders, paste-paper endpapers, red edges (small worm traces at foot of spine affecting also rear endpapers and gutters of final two leaves, Viennese library shelf sticker on upper cover and stamp on title-page, light shelf-wear to extremities, internally fresh with only isolated spotting, internally fresh with only isolated spotting, a nice copy). Maynz, Benjamin Weyland, 1767.
A textbook on literature by the schoolmaster J.H. Faber (1722-1791), the term ‘schönen Wissenschaften’ being the eighteenth-century German analogue for ‘Belles-lettres’. The frontispiece, engraved by Cöntgen after the author’s own design, depicts Horace reciting his Ars Poetica. In the background is a view of the city of Mainz, where Faber died in 1791.
