Histoire macaronique de Merlin Coccaie, prototype de Rablais [sic]. Où est traicté les ruses de Cingar, les tours de Boccal, les adventures de Léonard, les forces de Fracasse, enchantemens de Gelsore & Pandrague, & les rencontres heureuses de Balde, &c. Plus l'horrible bataille advenue entre les mousches et les fourmis.

2 vol., 12mo with continued pagination: [12]-1/464, 465/900 pp. (sl. age-toned).

Contemp. marbled calf, gilt ruled covers, flat spines entirely gilt orn., a.e.g. (rubbed, joints split, sm. lack to head of vol. I).

First French edition. Macaronic poetry was a kind of comic Latin verse mixed with vernacular words. The poem by T. Folengo (1491-1544), a defrocked monk, relates the adventures of a fictitious hero named Baldo, who suffers imprisonment, battles with local authorities, pirates, shepherds, witches, and demons, and takes a journey to the underworld, all the time accompanied by various companions, among them a giant, a centaur, a magician, and his good friend Cingar, a trickster. It is best remembered now for providing a model for Rabelais to whom it appealed by its, at times, gross, mockery of the clergy.
Ref. BGL II:565 ("Elle est fort rare"). - Delepierre "Macaroneana" 139. - Oberlé, Fastes, 342. - Not in Goldsmith, Oberlé, Poètes néo-latin (other ed.).
Prov. [Georges Petit].