VERDIER (Antoine, du). Les Omonimes, satire des moeurs corro - Lot 295

VERDIER (Antoine, du). Les Omonimes, satire des moeurs corrompues de ce siecle. [with] La Prosopographie ou Description des personnes insignes, enrichie de plusieurs effigies, & réduite en quatre livres. A precious copy that belonged to Anatole France, bringing together two rare and sought-after works by Antoine du Verdier (1544-1600). Lyon, Antoine Gryphius, 1572, 1573. Two works in one volume, In-4 (245 x 180 mm), in a fine 18th-century binding in full red morocco, spine ribbed, mute, decorated with a rich gilded small-iron decoration, triple fillet framing. Lovely rhombus floret in the center of the boards, all edges gilt. Two works: 1. of 12 leaves [following] ; 24 pp.n.ch., 520 (i.e. 528) pp., 16 pp. Headcap a little damaged, rubbed, some marks on first board, paper a little browned in title margin and portrait, some marginal marks, remainder fresh and clean. Unique first edition of "Les Omonimes", a remarkable poem in which each pair of verses ends with homonymous rhymes, thus forming a punning game, in which the author delivers a bitter satire of the mores of his time and deplores the civil wars dividing the kingdom. In an epistle dated Camp, February 10, 1569, Verdier emphasizes the singularity of his verse: "De prime face (Lecteur) ce Poëme te semblera mal poli & rude: mais quand tu auras considéré de près la difficulté de ce genre d'escrire, je m'assure que, excusant la rudesse, tu gratifieras le travail et l'invention. For there has been no poet before me who has written so many verses of this kind in succession, in which I have observed the masculine and feminine forms, & not to say the same Omonimus twice". Bound with : First edition of "La Prosopographie", illustrated with a portrait of the author accompanied by his Latin motto Et Marti et Minervae, as well as numerous woodcuts in the text, mostly presented in the form of oval medallions. A veritable "chronicle of the world", the work embraces a vast panorama of historical and mythological figures: patriarchs, gods (including Jesus Christ, p. 247), emperors, kings, poets, inventors and great men of letters, including Étienne Dolet, Sébastien Gryphe, Thomas More, Erasmus and Albert Dürer. Verdier's text is distinguished by its many erudite digressions, touching on subjects as varied as the invention of banking in Lyon (p. 491), the definition of comedy and tragedy in the article "Sophocles", and the invention of printing, which he rightly attributes to Gutenberg (p. 469). Antoine du Verdier (1544-1600), King's Counselor in Lyon, humanist scholar and bibliographer, is best remembered for his Bibliothèque françoise (1585), considered the second major national bibliography, following that of La Croix du Maine, published a year earlier, in 1584. Provenance: Ex-libris of Anatole France with the Motto "Quid quid erit" (cf. Anatole France bibliophile. Sale of his private library on June 9, 1939). A splendid copy in red morocco.