SALEL (Hugues). - HOMÈRE.

Les Dix premiers livres de l'Iliade d'Homère [...]. Paris, Pour Vincent Sertenas, 1555. - Les Unzième, & douzième livres de l'Iliade. Paris, Pour Vincent Sertenas, 1554. 2 works in one volume in-8, fawn calf, gilt fillet, gilt cartouche in center, spine decorated, gilt edges (period binding). Famous translation in decasyllables of the first eleven chants of the Iliad by Hugues Salel (1504-1553), poet and valet de chambre to François I. The translation of the first ten songs had first appeared in folio format in 1545. Among the introductory pieces are the Epistre de Dame Poésie, dedicated to King François I, sponsor of this glorious literary undertaking, and Ronsard's epitaph Aux mânes de Salel, which appears here for the first time: in this eulogistic piece, reprinted a few months later in Le Bocage, the Vendôme native salutes the translator of Homer, the humanist poet and protégé of the great French king. Fine copy, in contemporary calf, from the Am. Berton library (bookplate). Old handwritten bookplate at the top of the title and at the end of the volume. Bottom of title restored. Heads and shoulders restored, spine rebound. J. P. Barbier-Mueller, II, n°67. - Diane Barbier-Mueller, Inventaire..., n°800-801.