Anacréon, Sapho, Bion et Moschus, traduction nouvelle en prose, suivie de La Veillée des fêtes de Vénus, et d'un choix de piéces de différens auteurs. Mar M. M*** C*** [J.J. Moutonnet de Clairfons]

£1,200 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

Jean Jacques MOUTONNET (1740-1813) was a French hellenist born in Le Mans, a friend of Rousseau, and for many years an employee of the French postal service. He was the author of a small number of works, including a history of philosophy, a work on the French navy, and a translation of Dante’s Inferno. One of his works is a highly entertaining poem (with notes) on cats ‘La Galéide, ou le Chat de la nature’ oublished in Galéopolis by Galéophile ‘rue des chats, a l’enseigne de Matou’ in l’an 6 (1798). The present work also contains an essay on the 16th-century Italian poet known as the Mantuan (Baptista Spagnuoli), as mentioned by Holofernes in Love’s Labours’s Lost’, whose pastoral poetry was widely read and printed. Moutonnet’s library was sold 21 September, 1813. The first work in addition to those works mentioned on the title contains also some prose translations from the Greek Anthology, Catullus, Horace, the Pervigilium Veneris, and other offerings by Sannazaro, Marullus, Guarini, Joannes Secundus and André-François [Bourreau] Deslandes (1690-1757), a civil servant in the French naval ministry, who was born in Pondichery and came to France as a child. He was the author of a number of works on the history of philosophy and the navy, as well as a ‘Pigmalion ou la statue animée.’ The text translated ‘Loisirs d’un poète à la campagne’ was published in Latin as ‘Poetae rusticantis litteratum otium’ by Lintot in London in 1713 (ed. 2da) and reprinted in 1752 (3rd ed.Paris?). He

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.