THE HISTORY OF THE CHEVALIER BAYARD.

Descripción

8vo, pp. [iv], 153, [1] errata; hole in centre of title where an attempt has been made to erase an inscription; else a fine copy in new quarter calf, plain spine. First and only London edition (there was a Dublin reprint the same year) of this account of the famous Chevalier Bayard (1473-1524), the 'perfect knight' from the Dauphiné who embodied all the virtues of the chivalric ideal: Sterling attempts to give the subject an air of authority by prefacing the work with a 'Dissertation on Chivalry', but in a sense the work is partly a novel, with passages of invented dialogue. Sterling was an Irishman educated at Trinity College Dublin in the mid-1760s who was one of the Augustan Spenserians in his poetical productions, which included a completion of Chaucer's unfinished Squire's Tale and an epic on Richard Coeur de Lion. The present work has a sonnet on Bayard by Sterling printed on the verso of the dedication, which is addressed to the Earl of Carlisle. A later owner has attempted to erase evidence of the book's having been owned at an early dated by Phil: Allen, by scratching away the inscription from the title page - but the name has been left untouched on pp. 1 and 37, so the efforts were in vain. Rare: ESTC records just two copies in the UK (BL and Cambridge) and seven elsewhere. N° de ref. del artículo 15661

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