BALLANCHE Pierre Simon. Du Sentiment considéré dans ses rapports avec la littérature et les arts. Lyon, Ballanche et Barret ; Paris, Calixte Volland, 1801 ; 1n-8 paperback of [4]-344-[4] pp. in blue dust jacket with printed label, modern taupe half-calf limp slipcase. A very rare first edition, published by a young man of twenty-four. "Published in Lyon on the presses of the author's family bookshop and distributed confidentially by a single Parisian sales outlet, the essay went almost unnoticed. The noise of Germaine de Staël's book, De la littérature, and the brilliance of the Génie du Christianisme caught him in a vice. Yet the young author, as resolutely as Chateaubriand a few months later, was using sentiment as a means of returning to the two great forgotten aspects of the Enlightenment: the Christian religion and poetry". (Fumaroli, Chateaubriand, Poésie et Terreur, p. 502). An interesting copy preserved in its original state of publication. Monglond, V, 503; Quérard, I, 161, mentions only the 1802 edition.