‘The Hound and the Hedgehog’
[COTIN, Charles, Abbé.]
‘Enigmes du temps.’ [France, c. 1750.]
Manuscript on paper, oblong 4to (c. 165 x 215 mm), pp. 82; in French, neatly written in brown ink in a single page, two columns per page, c. 25 lines per column, watermark dated 1749; a few marks, occasional slight damp-staining to upper margins; bound in nineteenth-century half vellum with orange speckled paper sides, marbled endpapers; extremities rubbed.
A manuscript compendium of 237 French enigmas, largely drawn from Charles Cotin’s pioneering and popular Recueil des énigmes de ce temps, first published in 1646.
A prolific poet and translator, Cotin (1604–1681) regularly frequented the literary salons of Paris, particularly the Hôtel de Rambouillet, and it was here that he popularised the enigma among the French aristocracy, collecting a series of amusing riddles which could be asked and answered aloud.
Our anonymous compiler provides the answers to the first few puzzles in Latin (e.g. ‘Tempus’, ‘Triticum’, ‘Margarita’), and thereafter in alphanumeric cipher. At the end of the volume come ten French fables, from ‘L’origine du balon’ to ‘Le palmier, les bergers et Jupiter’ and ‘Le dogue et le herisson’, the last apparently sourced from Suite de la clef, ou journal historique sur les matières du tems (1745).