Les Amours de Mirtil

First edition, at one time attributed to Bernard Le Bouyer de Fontenelle, on the loves of a shepherd of illustrious lineage: Mirtil, son of Venus and Adonis. Complete copy with its engraved title page by Louis Legrand and its six plates drawn by Hubert François Gravelot and engraved by Louis Legrand.

Half marbled calf binding, spine with five raised bands decorated with dotted gilt fillets, five compartments richly gilt with fillets and fleurons, pebble-pattern marbled paper boards, red edges, pastedowns and endpapers also in pebble-pattern marbled paper, pastiche binding in fine condition.

A few discreet marginal dampstains.

"Let no beauty trust in a lover's vows; let none flatter herself that truth dictates his words. A prose poem in six cantos in which, according to the anonymous author, 'only Love, Beauty and the Graces have been portrayed.' It opens thus: 'Venus still wept over the sad fate of the hunter Adonis...' Involuntarily, 'Calypso could not be consoled for the departure of Ulysses...' comes to mind. One might take it for an imitation of 'Télémaque.' It is rather a pastiche of the 'Temple de Gnide', on which most productions of this then so widespread genre were modelled." 

Jules Le Petit, Édouard Rouveyre, "Bibliographie raisonnée et pratique. Guide du libraire-antiquaire et du bibliophile," 1885

(our own translation)