2 works in one volume, 8vo, 126, [xx], 459 pp. (189-192 misnumbered 199-202), contemporary half vellum, rubbed, modern ownership inscription on front pastedown, second title-page with a small hole at foot, uniform light browning, very good copies.
Rare first German edition of the famous early biography of Spinoza by the Lutheran minister Johannes Nicolaus Colerus, first published in Dutch in 1705 and translated into French the following year. Van der Linde 92. The anonymous translator and commentator was Johann Faccius (1695-1775), an obscure Lutheran priest from Weißenbrunn vorm Wald in Bavaria who, according to some sources, also published under the name Johann Baptista Silvester. Faccius’s footnotes are extensive and hostile; in the foreword he feels the need to give five separate justifications for undertaking the translation of so very outlandish and abominable (sehr seltsame und abscheuliche) an atheist as Spinoza. Bound second is the equally scarce first German edition of the life of Pierre Bayle by his friend and fellow Hugenot, Pierre des Maizeaux.