[BILLARDON de SAUVIGNY (Edme-Louis)]. Oriental apologists, d - Lot 489

Lot 489
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300 - 350 EUR
[BILLARDON de SAUVIGNY (Edme-Louis)]. Oriental apologists, d - Lot 489
[BILLARDON de SAUVIGNY (Edme-Louis)]. Oriental apologists, dedicated to Monseigneur le Dauphin. Paris, Duchesne, 1764. In-12 of [12]-202-viii-[2] pp. Marbled calf, spine decorated with nerves, red tr. (contemporary binding). Small light spots on the first and last pages. Ex-libris of the Viscount de Noailles. Nice copy. Rare. "The reading of Herbelot's Dictionary & the taste of morality inspired to M. de Sauvigny (...) a work entitled Apologues Orientaux (...) I am going to put before your eyes the Warning which is very short but which will not enlighten you less on the level of this production: 'Amed Ben Mohamed, author of these Apologues, was Bacha under the last Sultan. We do not know the cause for which he was disgraced. He spent the last six years of his life in exile in the Islands of the Archipelago: it was there that he composed his Apologues. Although he was a great admirer of Locman & Pilpay, he thought he had to take a different route from them. It is certain that the title of Fable does not require that trees & plants, quadrupeds & birds always speak. Why shouldn't Apologists where men play the leading roles be as useful as others when such great truths result? (...) The great point is to render the action in a pungent way so that the moral goal is easily presented & can be deeply engraved in the memory. Aesop for the Greeks, Pilpay for the Indians, Phaedra for the Romans & the inimitable Fountain for us have by some of their Fables authorized the genre of the Apologists of Amed Ben Mohamed. (...) Mohamed wanted to give a plan followed by education to his children, many of whom had already reached the age of adolescence & who could aspire to become Bachas. (...) In order to throw a greater variety in his work, Mohamed came to draw sometimes among us his true or false examples, he often put down his Oriental stilts to imitate our style, something that we would not know how to condemn without injustice since
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