EPISTRE DU BON FRERE QUI REND LES ARMES DAMOURS to his sister damoyselle in Syonnoys. Et le dit des pays. Small booklet in-8, red jansenist maroquin, 5 ribbed spine, inner lace, gilt edges (Trautz-Bauzonnet). Bechtel, 267/E-147 // Brunet, Supplément II-455 // USTC, 53688. (8f.) // A8 / 28 lines, gothic car / 89 x 135 mm. Unique edition of this versified lament, one of only three known copies. Composed of 263 lines in decasyllables, this long poem is the despairing song of a good brother who, tired of suffering for love, chooses not to devote himself to it any longer: Que tay ie faict ; en quoy ay ie failly Mon cueur, ou langue, ont ilz point defailly, I hope not... Convinced of the dangers of love : Pour ung que en ce trouveres contentz / En cognoistres mille de malcontentz, he tries to warn his friends and if, as proof of what he is saying, he summons the great biblical female figures (Jezabel, Dalila and Jael), he is only after the object of his own love: Lon holds the woman so dangerous beast Whoever haunts her never returns without temptation We say what is the plain of iniquity Inconstancy and fallacy. Quoy que lon die, ne vouldrois faire blasme (...) If Bocaccio, Petrarch and (...) Quant à moi : ia ne plainctz ni mesdictz Si non de toy ou diriges mes dictz The publisher, who has remained anonymous, chose to follow this courtly lament with a piece in a completely different register. Le Dit des pays, which begins on the reverse of folio A6, is a facetious composition of 92 verses in octosyllables about the charms of all countries. Local culinary specialities and industries are interwoven with the supposed qualities of the inhabitants of all these places in a tasty, gently saucy, even vulgar language. We reproduce below a sober extract from this poem and refrain from transcribing what the censor would have condemned: The good pastes are in Paris Ordes trippes a sainct Denis (...) A londres escarlates fines Et bons draps vermeilz malines (...) A bourges sont les fourteresses At saint quantin les grosses fesse (...) Good salt comes from Salins Women well made has prouvins... The Epistre du bon frère is known only from this Gothic edition, of which only the BnF (RES. YE-3972) and the Biblioteca Capitular Y Colombina in Seville possess another copy. It was on the BnF copy that Anatole de Montaiglon was able to reprint it in 1855 in his Recueil de poésies françoises des XVe et XVIe siècles (t. XI, p.207 et seq.). A very fine copy of this bibliographical rarity. 3 corners skilfully restored. Provenance: Count Raoul de Lignerolles (II, 5-17 March 1894, no. 1125) and Baron Jérôme Pichon (I, 3-14 May 1897, no. 784).