"PUBLIC AFFAIRS ARE OFTEN FOUL AND FULL OF ORDURE, WHEREBY WITH THE LEAST TOUCH A MAN CONTAMINATES HIMSELF": BALZAC'S ARISTIPPUS, 1659 FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH

BALZAC, Jean-Louis Guez de. Aristippus, or, Monsr. de Balsac's Masterpiece. Being a Discourse Concerning the Court… Englished by R.W. London: Printed by Tho. Newcomb, for Nat. Eakins… and Tho. Johnson, 1659. 12mo, 18th-century full speckled calf sympathetically rebacked; pp. [16], 159, [17]. $2600.

First edition in English of Aristippe, a treatise on wisdom in political administration, a collection of "sound, if somewhat pessimistic opinions (some of them commonplaces from ancient authors) on ethics, politics, and literature" (Harvey & Heseltine).

Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac "retired to his estate of Balzac in 1624, where he spent the greater part of the remainder of his life in affectation of antique wisdom" (Harvey & Heseltine, 46). In the present treatise, Aristippus is presented as the fount of wisdom, a "learned wise man… a gentleman of an exquisite judgment and of a consummate experience of the Catholic Religion, a French man by birth, and originally from Germany, of fifty-give years of age or thereabouts." "Dubbed 'the hermit of Charent' or 'the great letter writer of France' by his contemporaries, repaired to his manor near Angoulême when his Parisian ambitions were disappointed, and from there he sent to Paris and throughout Europe eloquent letters in which the models of modern prose were forged… heir to all the philosophical knowledge of the humanist age, [he] kept strong ties with the salon of the Hôtel de Rambouillet and the poet Vincent Voiture, and through his correspondence his opinions influenced the formation of French classical style in Paris" (Hollier, A New History of French Literature, 296). First published posthumously in French in 1658. Wing B612. Early owner ink signature to title page.

Tiny chip to lower margin of title page, the occasional spot of foxing to text. A nicely rebacked, extremely good copy.