LE DIGNE (Nicolas). Lot n° 75

Les Fleurettes du premier meslange. Gathered by A. de La Forest, Esquire, Sieur du Plessis. Paris, Jeremie Périer, 1601. In-12, midnight blue morocco, gilt trim, ornate spine, interior roulette, gilt edges (Duru 1847). First edition of these love poems by Nicolas Le Digne, sieur de L'Espine-Fontenay, including some 220 sonnets, stanzas, pastorelles, odes, an elegy and more. These include the poem À un rossignol, verses for a Mascarade de six fous, a Mascarade rustique and a Mascarade des mariniers, and Eaux des fontaines de Pougues. A native of Champagne, born in the mid-16th century and dying in 1611, Le Digne's friends included Béroalde de Verville, Durant de La Bergerie and painter-poet Daniel du Monstier, whose "wise hand" he praises in the first poem. Le Digne bore arms for several years early in his life, and is even said to have been wounded by a cannonball, an event he no doubt recounts in sonnet LI (f. 38): Au bruict tout foudroyant d'un canonnier tonnerre / [...] Au plus fort de la charge il tire contre moy. A fine copy, with fine provenance: Duplessis (1856, no. 391), Chaponay (1863, no. 356), Turquety (1868, no. 273), Bancel (1882, no. 359) and Herpin (1903, no. 255). Lachèvre, Recueils collectifs de poésies libres et satiriques, pp. 265-267. - Diane Barbier-Mueller, Inventaire..., n°466.