BERTAUT (Jean).

Collection of poetic works. Seconde édition. Paris, Pour Lucas Breyel [sic], 1605. - Recueil de quelques vers amoureux. Paris, Philippe Patisson, 1606. 2 works in an in-8 volume, marbled glazed calf, triple gilt fillet, ornate smooth spine, red title-piece, interior roulette, red edges (18th century binding). Second collective edition, partly original, of Jean Bertaut's Œuvres poétiques, containing a total of 75 pieces of circumstantial and religious inspiration. The Recueil de quelques vers amoureux, first published anonymously in 1602, is also in a second edition, augmented by 15 previously unpublished pieces. A Norman poet from Caen, Jean Bertaut (1552-1611) was tutor to the young Charles de Valois, Count of Auvergne, bastard son of Charles IX, then secretary to Henri III for thirteen years. In poetry, he was a disciple of Desportes, but it was the work of the great Ronsard that awakened his senses: Je n'avois pas seize ans quand la première flame / Dont ta Muse m'éprit, s'allume dans mon âme," he sings in his long funeral elegy on the death of the Vendômois (p. 146). A well-bound 18th-century copy. Some light foxing, pale wetness on several leaves. J. P. Barbier-Mueller, IV-1, n°31-32. - Diane Barbier-Mueller, Inventaire..., n°66 and 65.