Odes of Pindar With several other Pieces in Prose and Verse, Translated from the Greek. To which is prefixed a Dissertation on the Olympick Games. By Gilbert West, Esq. LL.D. by Pindar, Gilbert West, Olympic Games - 1749

Odes of Pindar. With several other Pieces in Prose and Verse, Translated from the Greek. To which is prefixed a Dissertation on the Olympick Games. By Gilbert West, Esq. LL. D. London: Printed for R. Dodsley, 1749. First edition of West's translation. Quarto (10 1/16 x 8 3/16 inches; 255 x 207 mm). [6], [22], ccvi, [1, errata], [1, contents], 315, [1, blank], [2, ads] pp. Contemporary full speckled calf, with armorial decoration to front and rear. Original red morocco spine label, lettered in gilt. Spine stamped in gilt. Title printed in red and black. Edges speckled in blue. Outer front hinge cracked and loose, but holding. Outer back hinge cracked but firm. Head and tale of the spine chipped. Good condition with scattered foxing. In addition to Pindar's "A Dissertation on the Olympick Games" and the "Odes of Pindar", this work includes translations of Horace, Euripides, Lucian, and other classical poets. Including The Fourth Odes of the Fourth Book of Horace, Iphigenia in Tauris. A Tragedy. Translated from the Greek of Euripides, The Triumphs of the Gout. Translated from the Greek of Lucian, Translations from the Argonauticks of Apollonius Rhodius, The Hymn of Cleanthes, and Menexenus. A Dialogue of Plate. Though Gilbert West's Odes of Pindar is only the third version of these poems to have been translated into English (the first by Sternhold and Hopkins in 1713), his translation was arguably the most popular version in the eighteenth century. Just several months after West's publication, poet Joseph Warton wrote "An ode, Occasioned by reading Mr. West's Translation of Pindar"; and some scholars have suggested that Thomas Gray's Pindaric Odes, written at the beginning of the 1750s, are to some extent in conversation with West's translation. In Lives of the English Poets (1779), Dr. Johnson bestowed rare praise on West, and specifically on West's Pindar: "Of his translations I have only compared the first Olympick ode with the original, and found my expectation surpassed, both by its elegance and its exactness. A work of this kind must, in a minute examination, discover many imperfections; but West's version, so far as I have considered it, appears to be the product of great labour and great abilities."