Anecdotes galantes, ou Le moraliste a la mode.

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12mo, pp. xxiv, 120; early nineteenth-century red glazed paper boards, gilt-lettered spine label; a little chipped; armorial bookplate of C ver Heyden de Lancey to front pastedown; author's name in ink to front pastedown. Scarce impression of this French moralist doctrine. This treatise addresses what the author perceives as common failings in eighteenth-century French society. He feels that passion has trumped reason, and that in their endless quest for pleasure people have abandoned their moral and intellectual duties. A collection of essays on various moral scenarios, many of the attacks are framed around fictional figures with names common to French drama. Through this device, Hacot is able to evoke generic aristocratic and middle-class traits, and attack his fictional characters for their wanton behaviour. Women are the root of much of the trouble, and he opens with a castigation of beautiful but wanton Elvire. Men are roundly exhorted to ignore temptations of the flesh, and become acquainted instead with scientific enquiry and asceticism, and to abandon false pleasures which sooner or later cause bitter remorse. In doing so he hopes that politeness and sincerity will preside over criticism. The work is rather obsequiously dedicated to Charles-Claude-Florent de Thorel de Campigneulles, a Lyonnais treasurer self-styled man of letters. Two issues appeared the same year, one printed in Frankfurt and Leipzig, and this decidedly less common one printed in Amsterdam. Conlon 60:816; Gay-Lemmonyer I, c. 213; STCN (1 copy, London, erroneously listed as 8vo); Weller, p. 150. N° de ref. del artículo 4867

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