NOBILI (Giacinto)
The Vagabond or the History... Lot 47
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[NOBILI (Giacinto)]
The Vagabond or the History and character of the malice and deceit of those who run the world at the expense of others. With several facetious tales on this subject to appease the simple. Paris, Gervais Aliot, 1644. 2 parts in one volume in-12 of (4) ff., 192 and 144 pp. marbled calf, gilt coat of arms in the centre, spine gilt, red title page, gilt edges on marbled boards (binding circa 1700).
Very rare first edition of the French translation of Il Vagabondo, by the Dominican monk Giacinto Nobili, published in 1627 under the pseudonym of Rafaele Frianoro.
Some copies are addressed to Jacques Villery.
Curious work describing and classifying the various categories of vagabonds in the 17th century.
The author, who groups together under the term vagabond a multitude of "charlatans, vagabond beggars & other entertainers of the simple", sets out above all to describe their artifices and their tricks of mischief with the aim of "keeping us in check" and "preventing [us] from being surprised by good pretexts or by beautiful appearances". The list is long: blissful, deceitful, hooded, false friars, pilgrims without devotion, bell-ringers, redeemers or slaves, counselors to childbirth, ulcers, weepers, testators, miraculous, apostolites, usurers, leaders of beggars (protobianti), imageurs, mordus, rascals, tremblers, enfarinez, sellers of relics, shameful poor, or again the tellers of tales who "put all their care into making us laugh, & who by their good words charm all the evils of life".
The second part of the volume is the work of the translator, Desfontaines: entitled Entretien des bonnes compagnies, it contains a series of one hundred and eighty-four facetious anecdotes.
A fine copy bearing the arms of Le Fèvre de Caumartin, Marquis de Saint-Ange.
From the library of Jules Bobin, friend and executor of Huysmans' will, with his handwritten ex-libris on a flyleaf.
Some freckling, marginal repairs to three leaves, one of which with the loss of a few letters.
(Alexandre Vexliard, Le Clochard, study of social psychology, no. 217 - Gay-Lemonnyer, III, col. 1298 - Viollet-le-Duc, p. 215.)
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