THE TABLE-TALK OF JOHN SELDEN ESQ.

London : William Pickering, 1847. First Pickering edition. "The not distinguishing where things should be distinguished, and the not confounding, where things should be confounded, is the cause of all the mistakes in the world" and other majestic thinking from the "glory of the English nation", the jurist and scholar John Selden. Collections of Selden's table-talk had appeared since the seventeenth century, but are here introduced by a long "biographical preface" from Samuel Weller Singer (1783-1858) - "There are few volumes of its size so pregnant with sense, combined with the most profound learning; it is impossible to open it without finding some important fact ... something practically useful and applicable to the business of life". Printed by Charles Whittingham at Chiswick. Foolscap 8vo (164 x 100mm). cxxxiv,[2],(258)pp. Portrait frontispiece. Bound in an elegant later (mid twentieth-century) half tan crushed morocco; all edges gilt; marbled sides and endpapers; just a hint of sunning, a few faint spots to binder's blanks, but overall a very good, sound and clean copy. Dated 1957 ownership inscription of David Fyfe Anderson (1904-1988), the Scottish obstetrician.