This book of poems is titled "Lays of Ancient Rome", by Thomas Babington Macaulay, and the rest of the title page read" With Illustrations, Original And From The Antique, Drawn On Wood By George Scharf, Jun.," it was published in London by Longman, Brown, Green, And Longmans in 1847 and printed in London by S. Spittiswoode, and it's in a fine binding by Zaehnsdorf dated 1894. The book has five raised bands, six gilt-ruled compartments with gilt lettering, gilt devices and "London 1847" on the spine, with full best French crushed levant, gilt dentelles and gilt tooling on the covers, textured gray endpapers with gilt tooling and gilt devices on the front paste-down and "Bound By Zaehnsdorf 1894" stamped in gilt at the bottom of the paste-down, then the title page, a page with the printer's information, a drawing, a Preface that runs from page 5 to 34, there's 205 pages of text followed by an engraving titled "Consecratio", a four-page list of Illustrations at the rear, and all the edges are gilt. We believe there is a fore-edge painting depicting a Roman arch on the right side of the gilt, but we're not 100 percent sure, so we have not added that onto the price. (We know that there was fore-edge painting on an 1846 copy of this book, but we can't say for sure there is one here, even though the Roman arch seems to show up on the right side of the gilt.) Lord Macaulay (1800 - 1859) was the son of Zachary Macaulay, a colonial governor and abolitionist; this collection of narrative poems, or lays, were first published by Longman in 1842 and were standard reading in British public schools for more than a century; the poems portrayed heroic episodes in early Roman history. He composed the ballads "Ivry" and "The Armada" when he was young and which he included in the "Lays of Ancient Rome"; he began the poems in India and continued working on them in Rome, finishing up in 1842. The book measures 8 1/2 x 7 in. wide, with a tight binding and pretty clean pages and illustrations, there's some faint browning on a few pages in the margins, and you have to look to find it, light rubbing near the heel and crown and at the tips, and that's about it, in a fine binding by Zaehsndorf, and the covers and gilt are dazzling. #82 #1677