COMMYNES (Philippe de) : Memoirs of Messire Philippe... Lot 63

COMMYNES (Philippe de) : Memoirs of Messire Philippe de Comines, lord of Argenton, where one finds the history of the kings of France Louis XI, & Charles VIII. New edition, revised on several manuscripts of the time, enriched with notes & figures, with a collection of treaties, letters, contracts & instructions, useful for history, & necessary for the study of public law & the law of nations. By Messire Godefroy. Augmented by M. l'Abbé Lenglet du Fresnoy. London, and is in Paris, Rollin, Fils, 1747. 4 volumes. 19 by 25 cm. 1 frontispiece-(4)-CXVIII-632 pages and 1 folding table and 4 out-of-text portraits; (4)-X-660; (4)-XIX-(1)-650 and (4)-VIII-432-215 pages with a folding table. Full 19th century red morocco, spine with five raised bands, ornamented boards, triple fillet on the boards, double fillet on the spine, large inner border, all edges gilt. A small (discreet) epidermure on the second plate of volume 2. Very good condition inside (let us point out, however, a restoration in the margin of the last leaf of volumes 3 and 4, very well executed, and some rare scattered spotting). An unsigned binding, but of very high quality. Only a few very rare copies contain a portrait of the Marshal of Saxony and a dedication to him. Our copy contains the dedication but not the portrait. But it contains the 4 portraits in medallions, which is not frequent. The most complete and beautiful early edition, with the additions of corpus of pieces by Théodore and Denis Godefroy, then those of Lenglet du Fresnoy. "An intimate of Louis XI whom he admired for his finesse, Commynes is the first modern political historian."