Quintilianus, Marcus Fabius. De institutione oratoria libri duodecim. Collatione codicis Gothani et Iensonianae editionis aliorumque librorum ac perpertuo commentario illustrati a Io. Matthia Gesnero. 18 Bl., 640 pp., 95 Bl. Title in red and black. 25 x 20 cm. Parchment i.e. with hs. Title. Göttingen, Abraham Vandenhoeck, 1738. Silencer II, 845. Ebert 18471. – First edition of the Edition of the Göttingen Philologist and librarian Johann Matthias Gesner (1691-1761), edited and commented on in detail after the Gotha manuscript and the Jenson editions. "A very useful and admirable edition" (Dibdin II, 370). Quintilian's instruction in the art of speech is the most important and detailed representation of the ancient art of speaking. With the famous praise of the editor on Johann Sebastian Bach (p. 61, ed. 3): "Haec omnia, Fabi, paucissima esse diceres, si videre ab inferis excitato contingeret, Bachium". Albert Schweitzer comments: "Bach was most pleased with the monument which his former rector Gesner built in friendship and love in the shadow of a Latin note to the institutions of Mariae Quintilian, which he published in 1738. To a place where the artist is mentioned, who accompanies himself while singing on the zither and treads the beat with his feet, he notes: 'All this, Fabius, would you consider small if you could rise from the dead and see Bach playing with both hands and all fingers the piano, which grasps the notes of many tremblings or the instrument of the instruments'". Exemplary from the possession of the Leipzig philology professor and university director August Wilhelm Ernesti (1733-1801), nephew of the rector of the Thomas School Johann August Ernesti 1707-1781, who carried out the so-called prefect dispute with Bach between the years 1736 and 1738. – A little tanned or brown-spotted, title with faded stamp. A well-preserved copy of the wide-edge quart print.