Apologie Pour Les Grandes Hommes soupconnez de Magie.

Amsterdam:: Jean Frederic Bernard,, 1712.. 8vo.. *7,**2, A-2F8, 2G4. Modern antique speckled calf with blind rules to covers spine with decorative floral gilt and lines black title label. Bookplate and blind-stamps of Earls of Macclesfield. Title in red and black. Frontispiece by J. Lamsveld. Light dampstains to lower margin of last few leaves, else a very nice copy with wide margins. Engraved frontispiece of figures in an allegorical setting by J. Lamsveld with globes and star-gazing equipment, a unicorn and a smiling sun. NaudŽ (1600-53) father of French bibliography, physician, librarian to Richelieu and to Mazarin, wrote this defense of great men of the past who were falsely accused of magic. He separates magic into four categories; Divine which is beyond human control, White which includes which is under the aegis of religion, Black which includes witchcraft and is illicit, and Natural which includes astronomy, astrology, chemistry, alchemy, geomancy, and other arts which are unobjectionable. NaudŽ defends, among others, Agrippa, Merlin,Nostradamus, Roger Bacon, Michael Scot, and Paracelsus. The Earls of Macclesfield bookplate and stamps are presumably that of the 6th Earl, Thomas Augustus Parker, as the bookplate is dated 1860, though the stamps could be older. STCN 171208 (var. imprint) . Caillet 7923. Ouvaroff 1686. Guaita 755/ 1648. Graesse IV,650. Brunet VI,22. Cornell 407. Yves-Plessis 1647. Blake 320. Rosenthal 3004. Robbins 748. Engel 31. Coumont N5.7. Cantamessa 3096.