La bruyere

1694 · elala1452 — Paris: Estienne Michallet 1694. 1694. 12mo. pp. 16 p.l. 716 xliv 8table & privilege. title in red & black with woodcut vignette. engraved portrait. woodcut ornaments & initials. 19th century quarter calf gilt back scattered light foxing repaired tears in Cc7-8 with no loss of text. Eighth Enlarged Edition: the first complete edition of the text containing a total of 1120 characters 46 more than the previous edition. Also included here for the first time is La Bruyère’s discourse of admission to the l’Académie Française’ in 1693 preceded by an apologetic preface. This is the second issue with corrected text and the added portrait of Theophrastus. La Bruyère’s scarcely veiled sarcastic portraits of his contemporaries brought him many readers and many enemies. "The short paragraphs of which his chapters consist are made up of maxims proper of criticisms literary and ethical and above all of the celebrated sketches of individuals baptized with names taken from the plays and romances of the time. These last are the great feature of the work and that which gave it its immediate if not its enduring popularity. They are wonderfully piquant extraordinarily life-like in a certain sense and must have given great pleasure or more frequently exquisite pain to the originals who were in many cases unmistakable and in most recognizable…His abundant wit and his personal "malice" have done much to give him his rank in French literature but much must also be allowed to his purely literary merits. With Racine and Massillon he is probably the very best writer of what is somewhat arbitarily styled classical French." Encyc. Britann. 11th Edn. Brunet III 720. Cioranescu 37514. Goldsmith BM STC French T275 vide THEOPHRASTUS. Tchemerzine VI 322-24. cfQuérard IV 381. 1st Edition. Paris: Estienne Michallet, 1694. unknown