Les Œuvres

Two 12mo volumes, red morocco, cold-tooled dotted fillet borders on covers, gilt armorials in the center, raised bands on spine decorated with armorial pieces, decorated edges, inner roll-tooling, gilt edges. Armorial binding of the period.

163 x 92 mm.

Nicole, Pierre. The Works of President Nicole, containing various selected pieces translated into French verse from Ovid, Horace, Martial, Anacreon, Catullus, Propertius, the Satires of Juvenal & Persius. The Loves of Aeneas & Dido, from Virgil. Proserpine, Poem by Clodian, & The Loves of Adonis, Poem by Cavalier Matin.
Paris, Charles de Sercy, 1693.

Very rare edition and sought-after text of Pierre Nicole.

Born an educator, Nicole was one of the five masters of Port-Royal in Paris, then taught at the École des Granges, at Port-Royal-des-Champs. He is credited with the Port-Royal Logic or Art of Thinking, composed with Arnaud. He founded girls' schools in Chartres, Troyes and Beauvais. Nicole, hungry for solitude, was, in the midst of the Jansenist conflict, thrown into action by the Great Arnauld, and several times compelled to hide in the provinces or the Netherlands. And when, after denouncing (for once imprudently), in a Latin letter to Innocent XI, the “monstrous errors of the casuists” (1677), he submitted to the Archbishop of Paris, he unleashed an outcry among his friends. However, important as his role was in the history of Port-Royal, it is as a moralist, the subtle and penetrating psychologist of the *Essais de morale* (1671–1714), that Pierre Nicole is solely assured of a discreet survival today. From Mme de Sévigné to Henri Bremond, his deep pessimism steeped in Christian gentleness and his keen insight into the unsuspected recesses of the self where self-love hides have found admirers. The *Essais de morale*, which comprise six volumes (two published posthumously), contain many nuanced reflections on the difficulty of establishing peace among men, self-knowledge and its illusions, a Treatise on the Education of a Prince, etc., which make Nicole, in his best pages, a master of Christian civility. The following reflection gives its tone: “Man wants to see himself because he is vain. He avoids seeing himself because, being vain, he cannot endure the sight of his defects and miseries.” During his last eight years, Nicole, never ceasing to write, was finally able to experience that tranquility he longed for. His correspondence (three volumes) was published in the 18th century by his biographer Abbé Goujet.” Henri le Breton Grandmaison.

Precious and beautiful copy bound in contemporary morocco with the arms and devices of Louis-Joseph d’Albert de Luynes, Prince of Grimberghen and of the Holy Roman Empire, son of Louis-Charles, Duke of Luynes, Grand Falconer of France and Governor of Picardy, and of Anne de Rohan, his second wife, and grandson of the Constable. He was born on April 1, 1672, and joined the army where he became mestre de camp in 1703; he attached himself to the Elector of Bavaria, who became Emperor of Germany under the name Charles VII; the latter made him Imperial State Councillor, intimate, actual and private, Colonel of the Foot Guards, Field Marshal, Extraordinary Ambassador to the French Court and Prince of the Holy Roman Empire in 1742. Louis-Joseph d’Albert de Luynes died in Paris on November 20, 1758. He married on March 17, 1715, Madeleine-Marie-Honorine-Charlotte, Princess of Berghes, who brought him the land of Grimberghen; they had two sons who died young and a daughter.