FORCADEL (Étienne).

Ɵ Poetry. Lyon, Jean de Tournes, 1551. In-8, midnight blue morocco, double cold fillet, small inner lace, gilt edges (H. Duru). Third edition of the poems of Étienne Forcadel, poet born in Béziers around 1520 and died in the 1570s. The edition contains 190 pieces, including 100 unpublished ones, grouped in Opuscules, Chants divers, Encomies, Elégies, Epigrams, Complaintes, Epitaphs, Epistles, Eclogues and Translations. Le Chant des seraines, inspired by the Homeric episode, featuring a sailor bewitched by the song of the daughters of the river Achelous and the Muse Calliope, these three Ladies are the Seraines, / Three sisters in sovereign beauty, begins on p. 48: it is under the title of this piece that the first collection of poetry by the author had appeared in 1548, of which we know of two editions in the same year, one in Lyon and the other in Paris. Son of a merchant in precious stones, Forcadel settled in Toulouse where he became a brilliant law student. Marcel Raymond, in his study L'Influence de Ronsard sur la poésie française, t. I, p. 52, ranks Forcadel first among the immediate predecessors of the Pléiade, who grew up in the cult of Marot, but who knew the price of knowledge, and began to plunder methodically, if not Thebes, at least Apulia, Virgil, Ovid, Theocritus, Petrarch. From the Yemeniz library (1867, n°1831). Freckles on a few leaves. Without the last leaf, blank. J. P. Barbier-Mueller, IV-2, n°41 ("It is an extremely rare volume"). - Cartier, n°192. - N. Ducimetière, Mignonne..., p. 168. - Diane Barbier-Mueller, Inventaire..., n°354.