DU VERDIER (Antoine).

Ɵ Les Omonimes, satire of the corrupted mores of this century. Lyon, Antoine Gryphe [From the Printer of Pierre Roussin], 1572. Booklet in-4, red morocco, double cold fillet, gilt title on the spine, inner lace, gilt edges (Duru 1850). First edition, very rare, of this satirical poem criticizing the morals of the time and the civil wars. The poet castigates religious men and accuses them of drunkenness, simony, betrayal of sacred texts, protests against the scandals of the Church, attacks judges, dissipated law students who become bad lawyers, denounces the brutalities of the nobility and soldiers, etc. The composition of this poem is remarkable, each pair of verses ending with homonymous rhymes, thus forming puns. A singular exercise of style to which the author assures to have delivered himself not without difficulty: Of first face (Reader) this Poem will seem to you badly polished & rough: but when you will have considered closely the difficulty of this kind of writing, I assure me that excusing the roughness, you will gratify the labor & the invention. For there has been no Poet before me, who has written so many verses of this kind, in which I have observed the masculine & feminine, & not to say twice a same Omonimus. Writer native of Forez, Antoine du Verdier (1544-1600) is the first French bibliographer with La Croix du Maine. He is also a former soldier: at the time he composed this poem, whose epistle is dated from the camp, February 10, 1569, he was still part - not for long - of a small company of men-at-arms gathered by a seneschal of Lyon, Guillaume de Gadagne, under whose banner he fought during the civil unrest. From the libraries of Thomas Powell (1888, no. 141) and Hector de Backer (I, 1926, no. 493). Note in pencil by J. P. Barbier-Mueller, at the end of the volume: Du Verdier's best known work in the field of poetry. I had trouble finding a copy. Angular staining, some freckling. Small rubs to the binding (corners, head and spine). Baudrier, vol. VIII, p. 359. - N. Ducimetière, Mignonne..., n°56. - Picot, Rothschild, n°749. - Diane Barbier-Mueller, Inventaire..., n°330.