Earliest obtainable edition of the Dutch poet, actor, and man-of-mystery Robert Hennebo's tongue-in-cheek paean to jenever, the national drink of the Netherlands. Probably first written in 1716, following Hennebo's failed military career, and printed in abbreviated form in 1718, when Hennebo had traded in his avocation as an actor for that of innkeeper, the paradoxical encomium on the various libations distilled from the juniper berry appeared in this second edition while Hennebo ran Het gulden vlies van Jason, a public house in Amsterdam. The first part, in 243 verses, is dedicated to the purveyors, distillers, and drinkers in the five main centers for jenever: Schiedam, Cologne, Weesp, Amsterdam, and Rheinberg. The second part, in 262 verses, is dedicated to the Amstel River, and describes the effects of jenever—medical, physical, and amatory. In the final part Hennebo thanks everyone he forgot in the first: porters in the shipyards, piledrivers, haberdashers, peatcutters, and anyone else whose vocation touches on the production or consumption of jenever in any way. The pamphlet is illustrated with a line-engraved portrait of Hennebo at age 35, as well as a depiction of the imaginary Mount Juniper, from which a stream of jenever lands in a fellow's eye and the Fluvius Juniperius flows forever bountiful below. Hennebo thought that jenever gave soldiers courage, and presumably drank a good deal of it during his own stint in the army. He was a coward, by his own admission, having "insulted the lining of his trousers hundreds of times in the name of the Fatherland." Hennebo's poem is a standout among encomia to drink that go back to Erasmus, and to the Italian Humanists. But most of their works were about wine—this is the first such work on jenever, which Hennebo elevated far above wine, because it could be brewed year round; wine had but a single harvest month. De Lof der Jenever went through at least 15 editions, including a critical edition in 2005, and a wartime edition, in 1945, which bore a "1939" imprint date to fool the enemy. No copies of this edition located outside the Low Countries.

8vo in 16s (nested gatherings), 161 x 101 x 5 mm. A¹⁶ (A₁+χ¹); (1-5) pp, [1] f, 6-32 pp. Bound in French-shell marbled wrappers. Interior: leaves toned; occasional foxing; second engraving trimmed at fore-edge.

Waller 702; Forbes, A Short History of the Art of Distillation #295; Bostoen, Karel, “Robert Hennebo's lof van de jenever. Een. Nederlandse eigenaardigheid?” Digitale bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse letteren, 2005, intro and passim.

Item #370