RONSARD (Pierre de).

The first four books of the Odes. Ensemble son Bocage. Paris, Guillaume Cavellart [sic], 1550. In-8, fawn calf, double framed with three cold-stamped fillets, gilt fleuron in center and small fleuron at corners, ribbed spine, modern box (period binding). First edition of the first collection of poems by Ronsard (1524-1585). First state copy, without the 2 suravertissement leaves but containing the 2 errata leaves. The collection contains only unpublished poems, with the exception of three pieces. The publication of Ronsard's Odes sounded like a thunderclap in the 16th-century world of letters, turning the landscape of poetry in France upside down. Nourished by the works of Pindar and Horace, Ronsard, who makes no secret of his disdain for the old school, proudly presents himself as the first Lirique François author, and boasts that he was the first to enrich the French language with the term "ode", an old poetic genre prized by the authors of Antiquity: "Quand tu m'appelleras le premier auteur Lirique François, et celui qui a guidé les autres au chemin de si honneste labeur, lors tu me rendras ce que tu me dois [....]. I went to see foreigners, & made myself familiar with Horace, counterfeiting his naive sweetness, in the same way that Clement Marot (the only light in his years of vulgar poetry) labored in the pursuit of his Psalter, & dared, the first of our kind, to enrich my language with the name Ode. The work provoked the strongest reaction from the Marotiques: a literary battle, known as the "Querelle du Louvre", began between the Ancients and the Moderns, represented on one side by Mellin de Saint-Gelais, poet laureate at the court of Henri II, and the young Ronsard. We have bound the sequel: - L'Hymne de France. Paris, De l'Imprimerie de Michel Vascosan, 1549. First edition of this poem exalting national sentiment, in 224 flat-rhymed decasyllabic verses; this is the first hymn composed by the poet, who claims the glory of being the first to celebrate France. (J. P. Barbier-Mueller, II-1, n°2. - Ronsard : la trompette et la lyre, n°19). - Ode de la paix. Paris, Guillaume Cavellat, 1550. First edition, known from only 7 copies according to J. P. Barbier-Mueller. Ode belonging to the pindaric genre, in which Ronsard sings in 500 verses of the peace signed with England in 1550: France paid 400,000 gold écus and the English surrendered Boulogne. In addition, they evacuated Scotland (J. P. Barbier-Mueller, II-1, no. 8). A precious volume of three early works by Ronsard, preserved in a Parisian binding strictly contemporary with the editions. From the libraries of Eugène Piot (1891, no. 482), Tobie Gustave Herpin (1903, no. 107), Robert Hoe (1912, no. 2929), William Augustus White and F. M. Weld. Light foxing, small light wetness on a few leaves. Binding restored at corners, spine redone. J. P. Barbier-Mueller, II-1, n°5. - N. Ducimetière, Mignonne..., n°3. - Ronsard : la trompette et la lyre, n°46. - Diane Barbier-Mueller, Inventaire..., n°673, 670 and 676.