Lot n° 138
Estimation :
120 - 150
EUR
FONTENELLE (Bernard Le Bovier de). Poésies pastorales. Avec - Lot 138
FONTENELLE (Bernard Le Bovier de). Poésies pastorales. Avec un Traité sur la Nature de l'Eglogue, & une Digression sur les Anciens & les Modernes. Seconde Édition, augmentée. Paris, Michel Brunet, 1698.
In-12 red morocco, ribbed spine richly decorated with small irons, gilt title, triple gilt fillet framing the covers, gilt edges (period binding). Small loss at head cap. A very fine copy.
Handwritten bookplate in ink by SAINTE-BEUVE on title page, with numerous underlining and handwritten annotations in pencil in the margins in his own hand. A handwritten note in ink on the flyleaf by Gustave Delangre (1850-1935) states: "I bought this book at the sale of Ste Beuve's library on March 23, 1870. The catalog number of the copy was 421. [...] In a small book that belonged to S.B. and that I was able to leaf through at my leisure, I read this note in pencil: "Fontenelle offers me a glimpse of what Goethe will one day be. But Goethe is a luminous Fontenelle, clothed in poetry and crowned; a Spirit that has genius and creation, not very passionate, but understanding passion, of incessant curiosity, feeling (what Fontenelle did not feel) air, poetry, ancient beauty, oriental beauty, all kinds of beauty; a genius and a critical Spirit far more dense and fleshed out; but look closely... deep down, there is a Fontenelle in Goethe. Which makes him not so much a great man as a great being in his own right. It is the soul, too, that is at fault in both. "
Ex-libris J.M. Ex-libris mss scratched at the top of the title.
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