138 - DEVÉRIA, Eugène, and NODIER, Charles. A Menippean Satire on the Virtue of the Catholicon of Spain and the Conduct of the Estates of Paris.

DEVÉRIA, Eugène, and NODIER, Charles. A Menippean Satire on the Virtue of the Catholicon of Spain and the Conduct of the Estates of Paris. A beautiful, illustrated first edition featuring a frontispiece and seven plates engraved after Devéria, in magnificent cathedral-style bindings crafted by Joseph Thouvenin, the great champion of this 19th-century decorative style. Paris, N. Delangle, 1824. 2 in-8 volumes, navy blue long-grain half-maroquin with corner pieces, smooth spine adorned with a cathedral-style design in blind-stamped and gilt decoration, gilt title and volume numbers, marbled paper linings and endpapers (contemporary binding, signed by Thouvenin). CLXXXIX and 194 pp.; 405 pp., 1 frontispiece and 7 plates on separate sheets with serpentine borders, engraved after Devéria and mounted on China paper. Slight rubbing, scattered foxing, transfer of the engravings onto the endpapers. First edition of Charles Nodier’s commentary and first printing of the frontispiece and the 7 plates (out of 8) engraved by various artists (Lefèvre, Konig, and Johannot, among others) after Eugène Devéria. *La Satyre ménippée* is a scathing critique of *La Ligue catholique*, first published in 1594 by a group of Parisian bourgeois and scholars sympathetic to Henry IV, nicknamed the “Politiques ” (Pierre le Roy, Jacques Gillot, Florent Chrestien, Nicolas Rapin, Pierre Pithou, and Jean Passerat). This edition is supplemented by notes by Victor Verger drawn from the editions by Pierre Dupuy and Jacob Le Duchat, as well as a historical, literary, and philological commentary by Charles Nodier. One engraving is missing from Volume 2. A remarkable copy with wide margins, bound in bindings signed by Joseph Thouvenin (1791–1834), a leading figure in 19th-century bookbinding, who here demonstrates his mastery of the “cathedral” style that he himself had popularized.