Le theatre moral de la vie humaine, representée en plus de cent tableaux divers, tirez du poëte Horace ... et expliquez en autant de discours moraux par le sieur de Gomberville. Avec la table du philosophe cebes. Brussels, François Foppens, 1672. Folio. With engraved illustration on title-page, engraved author’s portrait, 103 engraved emblems by Pierre Daret after Otto Vaenius, and an engraved folding plate. 18th-century gold-tooled tree calf.

XI, [5], 211, [1] pp.Attractive copy of a splendidly illustrated edition combining Otto Vaenius's Quinti Horatii Flacci Emblemata and Le Roy Sieur de Gomberville's La doctrine des Moeurs, tiree de la philosophie des Stoiques..... Pierre Daret had made the emblems in De Gomberville’s work based on Vaenius's, enlarging and slightly improving them after the latest fashion. The Brussels publisher had probably acquired Daret's plates, and used them again in the present edition, returning the authorship to Vaenius, while also retaining De Gomberville's instructive comments. In this perfect combination of Vaenius' educational emblems and Gomberville's moral doctrine based on stoic philosophers and explained for the instruction of youth, the quotations from Horace made into emblems became popular again.Slightly browned with some marginal thumbing. In very good condition.l Landwehr, Romanic emblem books, 479; Praz, pp. 402-403 & 523-524.