Author: TASSO (Torquato):
Title: Godfrey of Bulloigne, or Jerusalem Delivered. By Torquato Tasso. Translated by Edward Fairefax, Gent.
Description: London: Printed by Bensley and Son... For R. Triphook..., and J. Major..., 1817. 2 volumes. Large 8vo, 240 x 140 mms., pp. []ii, [vii] viii - lix [lx blank], [xxiv] [3] 4 - 248; [iv], [3] 4 - 299 [300 colophon], including half-titles, engraved portrait frontispiece in volume 1, facsimile of title-page of 1600 edition, engraved vignettes on title-pages, 20 engraved hed-pieces, after Thurston (one for each book), handsomely bound in hard-grain olive morocco, gilt borders on covers, spines richly gilt in compartments, all edges gilt. A fine set. The translator and scholar Edward Fairfax (1568?–1632 - 1635?) translated Godfrey of Bulloigne, or, The Recoverie of Jerusalem, a translation of Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata modelling his work on Thomas Carew's translation of the first five books in 1594. John Dryden famously remarked that that it was from Fairfax's translation that he learned "the Harmony of his Numbers." After this edition was published, John Payne Collier observed, in 1846, that "Lamb gave it as his opinion that it was the very best, yet the very worst translation in English; and, being asked for an explanation of his apparent paradox, he stammered a little, and then went on, pretty flowingly, to say that it was the best for the air of originality and ease, which marked so many of the stanzas, and the worst, as far as he was able to judge (and he had been told the same by competent Italians) for literalness, and want of adherence to the text. Nothing could be more wanton than Fairfax's deviations, excepting some of those in Sir John Harrington's version of Ariosto." One of 50 large-paper copies.

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