SAINTE-BEUVE (Charles-Augustin). Historical and critical table of the French poetry and the French theatre in the sixteenth century. - Selected works of Pierre de Ronsard, with notice, notes and comments. Paris : A. Sautelet et compie, Alexandre Mesnier, 1828. - 2 volumes in-8, half white parchment in the bradel style, smooth spine decorated in the grotesque style, gilt head, not trimmed, cover preserved (Alquié). First editions. The "Tableau historique et critique de la poésie française et du théâtre français au seizième siècle" is "the first book in which the complex history of the Pléiade was unravelled, and how the passage from Marot to Ronsard, then from Ronsard to Malherbe, was made. It is of capital importance for the history of Romanticism; not that Sainte-Beuve undertook this study, as is too often said, in order to seek and find literary forebears for the school of 1825; it was the Académie Française which, in August 1826, had put out to competition a "Discourse on the history of the French language and literature from the beginning of the fifteenth century to 1610. But Sainte-Beuve (who, moreover, gave up the competition) lost no opportunity of linking these studies of the sixteenth century to the literary and political questions which were agitating around him. So that, especially if one refers to the conclusion, this picture quickly takes on the appearance of a manifesto, which doubles, as it were, the famous Preface to Cromwell, of which it is, moreover, an exact contemporary" (Escoffier, "Le mouvement romantique", n° 708). EXAMPLE OF PIERRE LOUŸS, bearing his red stamp imitating his signature on the first white cover of the first volume. A fine copy. Scattered foxing.