First edition of an early specialized and important study of the Irish language and typography by Jean Joseph Marcel (1776-1854), director of the Imprimerie de la République, the Republican successor to the Imprimerie Royale, which became the Imprimerie Impériale when Napoleon declared himself Emperor about four months after the present publication. Its Irish type, cut ca. 1638 for the Propaganda Fide but revised by Marcel for the present book, was the third ever made. The first section gives a short history of the Irish language. The longest section (pp. 43-88) presents the Irish alphabet with 18 letters shown in tables and clarified with lengthy notes. The next deals with abbreviations and their typography (pp. 66-75) along with the numbers and the names of the days and the months. McGuinne notes that the present Irish type is modelled on what he calls "the first truly Irish type", used for a Louvain catechism in 1611 (its only predecessor was a roman type adapted to Irish by the addition of a few characters), but he also notes that the present type introduced many improvements. The French text is set in the Imprimerie Royales famous romain du roi, the first size first used in 1699. The notes also include one word in runes, perhaps cut in wood, and German set in a fraktur type.
At least the present copy is printed on Royal laid paper watermarked: grapes above [script] "G Gaudin": whether there were also copies on paper of smaller format we do not know.
Half title with manuscript owner's inscription; small label with a shelfmark pasted on inside front cover. Last two leaves with small marginal water stain, but still in very good condition and untrimmed, with the deckles intact, giving generous margins. Bigmore & Wyman II, p.22; Sharpe & Hoyne, Clóliosta: printing in the Irish language 206; Dermot McGuinne, Irish type design, pp. 37-50, especially 40-44 (this chapter also slightly revised in Gutenberg-Jahrbuch, 1993, pp. 115-127 and Bulletin du bibliophile, 2000, pp. 157-165).