An All-Round Education
[CULANT-CIRÉ, René Alexandre, Marquis de.]
Recueil de fables, contes, epigrammes & pensées diverses de Monsieur le M. de C… C…, avec le symbole raisonné du philosophe, un discours sur la cavalerie & la comédie de l’impudent piece en vers & en cinq actes. Le tout mis au jour par ***. ‘The Hague’ [Paris?], 1767.
12mo, pp. [5], ‘2’, 7–42, [viii (part-title, contents, preface)], [3]–72, 8 (Remarques), 34 (Discours), 126 (L’impudent), with 2 copper-engraved folding plates; part-titles to Remarques and Discours with the imprints ‘Imprimé à Paris, pour la premiere fois, ches [– chez] Ch. Ant. Jombert … 1757 [– en 1761] … Réimprimé en MDCCLVII [sic] [– en 1767]’ (see below), typographic ornaments to title, woodcut ornaments to part-titles, typographic head- and tailpieces, woodcut illustration; a very good copy in contemporary French mottled calf, spine gilt in compartments with gilt green glazed paper lettering-piece, edges stained red, marbled endpapers, blue ribbon place-marker, sewn on 3 sunken cords; very lightly rubbed, lettering-piece chipped; engraved armorial bookplate of Auguste Desains ‘notaire a St Quentin’ to front pastedown.
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Recueil de fables, contes, epigrammes & pensées diverses de Monsieur le M. de C… C…, avec le symbole raisonné du philosophe, un discours sur la cavalerie & la comédie de l’impudent piece en vers & en cinq actes. Le tout mis au jour par ***.
First collected edition, very rare, of various writings on diverse subjects by Culant-Ciré, including the first appearance of several of his works, including Symbole raisonné du philosophe, a satirical attempt at proving the necessity of the existence of God, and the comedy L’impudent.
The pieces by René Alexandre de Culant-Ciré (1718–1788), marquis de Culant, a cavalry officer, literary writer, and musicologist, here include fables, poetry, philosophy, and a comic play in verse, L’impudent. Although some fables are evidently inspired by La Fontaine’s, such as’ Les fourmis’, ‘Le rat et l’elephant’, and ‘Le sanglier et le jeune renard’, others are more original, such as ‘Le Monarque et ses courtisans’, ‘Les cornes’, and ‘Le laboureaur, le geometre, et le charlatan’.
Alongside the literary works are two treatises on military tactics – Remarques sur quelques evolutions de la cavalerie et des dragons and Discours sur la cavalerie – illustrated with folding copper-engraved plates showing battle formations. Although some parts had been published previously, with their previous imprints given on the part-titles, this seems to be the first appearance of several works.
Not on Library Hub. OCLC finds a single copy in the US, at the University of California, San Diego, seemingly incomplete.
See Mennessier de La Lance, Essai de bibliographie hippique (1912) I, p. 335.