Jules BARBEY D'AUREVILLY.

The Prophets of the Past. Caen, Imprimerie de A. Hardel [on the cover: Paris Louis Hervé], 1851. In-12 square of XXXVI, 160 pp. in paperback, blue paper cover printed and decorated. Red half-maroquin cover, slipcase. First edition: it was published in a small number by Trebutien. Copy printed on vellum paper with full margins. Literary and political essays on Joseph de Maistre, Bonald, Chateaubriand and Lammenais, by the flamboyant Constable of Letters. Important autograph letter on the title page: hommage d'admiration, de respect, de reconnaissance, à monsieur Ste Beuve par son affectionné et dévoué Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly Several pencil strokes in the text, possibly by Sainte-Beuve. The origin of the critic, author of Les Lundis, is piquant, and Barbey would tear it apart a few years later in his Quarante médaillons de l'Académie: "He has done some pretty and small things, and even too much, but he has never done anything big or strong! he does not have the first qualities. As a critic, he lacks impassivity, conscience and justice. He is always between infatuation and resentment. [...] Originally, he was gifted, however, M. Sainte-Beuve. But he has spilled over his natural imagination, which he had poetic, a whole rag of literature, which has covered everything, swallowed everything and extinguished everything! The professorial and academic spirit invaded him. He was then only a professor, an anecdotalist, a literary talker in his own name; - since he does not believe in an Absolute, in a Truth! I have kept him for the last of these Medallions, as a salutary example. It is good that the youth takes the disgust of the Academies and their spirit, by seeing how they shrivel the talent, of the men of talent!" Copy preserved as published. Spine browned, small tears and cracks on the cover. (Rahir, Bibliothèque de l'amateur, p. 308.- Clouzot, 1996, p. 37: "Very rare.")