LAUDUN (Pierre de).

L'Art poétique. Divisé en cinq livres. Paris, Pour Anthoine du Brueil, 1598. In-12, contemporary soft vellum. First edition of this theoretical discourse on poetry, in the vein of those by Sébillet (1548), Claude de Boissière (1554), Peletier du Mans (1555) and Ronsard (1565), poets from whom Pierre de Laudun drew much of the material for his work. Copy dated 1598 (not 1597). Born in 1575 in the duchy of Uzès, Pierre de Laudun, sieur d'Aigaliers, was a lawyer at the parliament of Toulouse, then a prosecutor at the college of Narbonne in Paris. He died of the plague in 1629. On the front cover, in yellowed ink, is a handwritten note about the author signed Rodolphe Ernest de Rossel-Fontarèches and dated 1821. Handwritten anagram on first flyleaf: nottaire royal tire à toy Larron. Small marginal wetness to a few leaves. Volume slightly detached from spine. J. P. Barbier-Mueller, IV-3, n°28. - Diane Barbier-Mueller, Inventaire..., n°451.