A Spurious Censor
REYRAC, [François-Philippe de Laurens,] Abbé de.
Hymne au soleil, suivi de plusieurs morceaux du même genre … nouvelle édition. ‘Amsterdam’ [Paris], ‘aux dépens de la Compagnie’ [Cazin], 1781.
12mo, pp. xl, 138, [1, contents], [1, blank], with engraved frontispiece portrait; typographic ornament to title, woodcut and typographic head- and tailpieces; frontispiece foxed, a few very slight scattered stains; bound in contemporary red morocco, spine gilt in compartments with gilt green morocco lettering-piece, edges gilt, blue paste paper endpapers; extremities lightly rubbed; a very good copy.
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Hymne au soleil, suivi de plusieurs morceaux du même genre … nouvelle édition.
Sixth edition, published under a false Amsterdam imprint, of the Hymne au soleil by the French royal censor François-Philippe de Laurens de Reyrac.
The work of the French censor, cleric, and academician the Abbé de Reyrac (1734–1781), the Hymne au soleil was presented, when first published in Paris in 1777, as a translation from a Greek original. Subsequent editions acknowledged Reyrac’s authorship and added various other seasonal and pastoral pieces in both prose and verse, with a preface here justifying his efforts at imitating the style of ‘the golden age of Athens and Rome, which constitute the most brilliant epoch in the history of the human mind’ (p. viii, trans.).
Cohen, Guide de l’amateur de livres à vignettes du XVIIIe siècle (1876), p. 419; Quérard, p. 571. Not in Vicaire.