12mo (14.5 x 9cm). [4];48 pp; [6].  Mottled calf binding.  Title in red and black. This copy from the collection of Arnold Dolmetsch, with the Dolmetsch Library stamp and pencil shelfmark ("II B 29") to verso of title.  Earlier ownership inscription ("W Danby – Montpelier Jan...9th 1788") to front pastedown.  Splitting at joints, scuffing to covers, loss of leather along spine, repair to foot of spine with translucent adhesive tape.  Overall in fine condition.  Approx. 10 x 15 inches (25 x 38 cm.). RISM Écrits, p.488. 

Le Blanc wrote Défense de la basse de viole in an attempt to bring the instrument back into fashion.  He regarded the growing popularity of the violin to be the main culprit, writing critically of its "high-pitched shriek...unable to rival the viol's delicate touch and fine harmony of sound."  A viol player himself, Le Blanc was also a doctor of law and an abbé, and he was regarded by all who knew him as an eccentric.  His only biographer François-Joseph Fétis wrote that Le Blanc, upon learning that his book was to be published in Amsterdam, set off for the Netherlands immediately, without bothering even to change out of the bathrobe, slippers, and nightcap he was wearing at the time.

Arnold Dolmetsch was an important force in the 20th-century revival of interest in early music.  His scholarship and performances with his family helped to resurrect forgotten instruments such as the viola da gamba, and as an expert instrument maker he crafted a psaltery for Yeats and a lute for Joyce.  Dolmetsch is even mentioned briefly in a passage from the "Eumaeus" episode of Ulysses, and the George Moore novel Evelyn Innes was based on his life.  He accumulated an impressive circle of important and influential friends as well as a legendary library of manuscript and print scores.