Rare books, manuscripts and ephemera from five centuries

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LEMAIRE, Nicolas-Éloi. CARMEN IN PROXIMUM ET AUSPICATISSIMUM AUGUSTAE PRAEGNANTIS PARTUM scribebat N.E. Lemaire... Kalendis Januariis, MDCCCXI. POËME SUR L’HEUREUSE GROSSESSE DE S.M. MARIE-LOUISE, impératrice des français et reine d’Italie, traduit en vers français par M. Legouvé... Janvier 1811. Paris: Fain, Imprimeur de l’Université impériale, [1811]. £385

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FIRST EDITION. 4to, pp. 25, [1] blank; Latin text on versos, French text on rectos; clean and fresh throughout; in contemporary blue wrappers, slightly loose; some light wear to extremities.

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This ode, printed in Latin with a parallel French translation by Gabriel-Marie Legouvé (1764-1812), celebrates the impending birth of Napoleon’s son and heir, Napoleon II, to be baptised as the King of Rome. 

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The author, Nicolas-Éloi Lemaire (1767-1832) was one of the leading French latinists of the period, and became professor at the newly established Paris faculty of letters in 1810. His poem puts Napoleon in his place among the great history of European rulers, praises his ‘bonheur nuptial’, and rejoices in the new links between France and Austria which resulted from Napoleon’s marriage to the daughter of the Emperor Francis II, albeit waspishly observing that Austria’s armies on their own could not have done much to protect the country from the invading French. Rather, peace, established the previous year, was achieved through the charms of Marie-Louise:

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Un regard de MARIE a changé tes destins;

Devant NAPOLÉON il déploya ses charmes,

Et le VAINQUEUR se plut à lui rendre les armes.

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The poem then turns to Marie-Louise’s pregnancy, through which ‘elle avance pour toi cette heureuse journée’, and contemplates Rome’s wait for its new monarch.

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The poem appeared in two versions: the present one, with its French verse translation, and a Turin printing with the French version replaced by an Italian translation, by Paolo Luigi Raby. 

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Outside Continental Europe, OCLC records copies at Harvard, Wesleyan, and Florida State. 

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