BRACH (Pierre de). Lot n° 3

Aminte, fable bocagere taken from the Italian of Torquatto Tasso. Plus, L'Olimpe, imitation of Ariosto. Bordeaux, Simon Millanges ; Paris, Abel L'Angelier, 1585. Small in-4, garnet morocco, double gilt fillet, smooth spine titled in long in a frame of double fillet, inner lace, gilt edges (Lortic fils). Extremely rare first edition of the first French translation of the Aminte du Tasse, work of the Bordeaux poet Pierre de Brach, a close friend of Montaigne. Copy of the third issue. The original edition was first printed in 1584 under the title Imitations de Pierre de Brach, addressed only to Simon Millanges, Montaigne's Bordeaux publisher, before being reissued the same year under the present title mentioning Tasso and Ariosto (to Millanges' address is added the mention Ils se vendent à Paris chez Abel L'Angelier), and the following year under the same title, only one year younger. These three issues, which differ only by the title leaf, are absolutely rare. The first (Imitations, 1584) is still the least rare, with four copies preserved in public institutions. Of the second (Aminte, 1584), one knows only one copy, preserved at the Arsenal, which is incomplete of all the second part. As for this one (Aminte, 1585), the USTC does not cite any copy and considers it to be a lost book. The pastoral of Aminta by Tasso (1544-1595) was a great success in France. The Italian text was printed in Paris, by Abel L'Angelier, in 1584, only four years after the Italian original. Pierre de Brach, its first French translator, followed it with the episode of Olympe, taken from Ariosto's Roland furieux (1474-1533), put into French verse by him. Lawyer and poet from Bordeaux, Pierre de Brach (1547-1604) counted among his friends Ronsard, Saluste du Bartas and especially Montaigne, of whom he was an intimate. (One remembers the famous Letter on the death of Montaigne that he wrote to Justus Lipsius on February 4, 1593: "Mr. de Montaigne is dead; it is a blow that I give all of a sudden in your soul, for what he gives well before in my heart..."). The favor of Marguerite of Navarre, to whom he dedicated the present work, had earned him, in 1577, the office of controller of the king in the chancery of Bordeaux. Montaigne, on his return from Italy, where he had undoubtedly met Tasso, was the first Frenchman to quote his verses, as early as 1582, in the second edition of the Essays. Marcel Tetel pointed out that "the author of the Jerusalem Delivered and the Aminta is the Italian poet most frequently quoted in the Essays". He owned the edition of the Rime e prose of Tasso published in Venice in 1581, the one that was used by his friend Pierre de Brach to establish his translation of the Aminta. A choice copy elegantly established by Marcellin Lortic. This is the only copy of this issue cited by Balsamo and Simonin, passed through the libraries of Tobie-Gustave Herpin (1903, no. 214), Ernest Labadie (1918, no. 1775), Édouard Moura (1923, no. 206) and Charles-Louis Fière (1937, II, no. 381), and then in a catalog of the Librairie Lardanchet (dec. 1951, no. 970). Spine uniformly faded, sporadic foxing. Balsamo & Simonin, n°131 (quoted copy) - Tchemerzine, II, 108 b - Arbour, n°187 - Lachèvre, I, 130 - Desgraves, Millanges, n°72 - Répertoire, I, 44, n°101 - Marcel Tetel, " Montaigne et le Tasse ", Cahiers de l'AIEF, n°33, 1981, p. 81