LA NOUE (Odet de).

Paradoxe, que les adversités sont plus nécessaires que les prosperites: et qu'entre toutes, l'estat d'une estroitte prison est le plus doux et le plus proffitable. By the Seigneur de Teligny. S.l. [Genève], Par Jean de Tournes, Imp. du Roy, à Lyon, 1588. In-8, brown jansenist morocco, interior lace, gilt edges (Trautz-Bauzonnet). Very rare first edition of this long poem of 1200 alexandrines. An edition was also published the same year in La Rochelle, by Haultin. An astonishing apology for prison, written by the soldier-poet Odet de La Noue during his captivity at Tournai Castle. The poem is dedicated to his father, François de La Noue, a famous captain nicknamed the Huguenot Bayard or Bras-de-Fer. Odet, who remained imprisoned in Flanders for four or five years under the Spanish yoke, endeavors to demonstrate that the good Christian can paradoxically live with the deprivation of freedom; this ascetic life has some advantages, according to him, in particular that of keeping oneself away from all forms of temptation, thus avoiding molding in laziness in the midst of delights or "rotting" from the filth of vice: On estime aujourd'huy le comble de misère / Une estroitte prison. I maintain the opposite. [...] Puis que, quoy que des maux, dont on a tant de crainte, / La prison soit celuy dont on fait plus de plainte, / C'est neantmoins l'estat plus comblé de plaisir, / Et plus utile encor que lon puisse choisir. The title is framed in arabesques and bears the typographical mark of Jean de Tournes, who used civil type to print part of the title and the two dedication pages. From the libraries of Comte de Lignerolles (1894, n°996), Édouard Moura (1923, n°298) and Albert-Louis Natural (1987, n°87). J. P. Barbier-Mueller, IV-3, n°7. - Cartier, no. 677. - GLN-3323 (10 examples listed, including this one, the others in institutions). - Picot, Rothschild, n°3276. - Diane Barbier-Mueller, Inventaire..., n°425.