The History of the Conspiracy of the Spaniards Against the Republic of Venice.

Small 8vo, pp. [ii], 232, [12], [2, advertisements]; marginal offsetting from the size of the paste-down to title, waterstaining to a few leaves, evenly lightly browned; contemporary sheep, spine with gilt-stamped red morocco lettering-piece, spine ruled in gilt; extremities a little worn.

After an appearance in a 1729 ^gSelect collection of novels and histories^g and a Glasgow Foulis edition of 1752, this fine Urie printing in a rather large type has a preliminary leaf of Voltaire's appraisal of the historical essay, written by the French novelist and historiographer César Vichard de Saint-Réal (1639–1692). It had been published first in 1674 and was highly esteemed as a model for good historiographic prose up to the end of the 18^sth^s century. Voltaire called the work a 'masterpiece' and compared the author to Sallust.

The Glasgow printer and bookseller Robert Urie (c. 1731-1771) competed in quality of type design and uncluttered layout with Foulis, without challenging his competitor's folios of classical text editions. Urie embraced the French Enlightenment and disseminated their texts in good English editions, but at a cheaper price.