A book by Sambucus ''Emblemata, et Aliquot Nummi Antiqui Operis'', first published in 1564, this being the 1599 edition Leiden, includes well known wo

A book by Sambucus ''Emblemata, et Aliquot Nummi Antiqui Operis'', first published in 1564, this being the 1599 edition Leiden, includes well known woodcut of tennis scene, 16mo, 352 pages, illustrated with portrait of the author, 222 woodcuts of emblems, and 90 figures of ancient medals, Emblem book by the Hungarian humanist J?nos Zs?mboky, the emblem on page 121 is titled ''Temporis iactura'' (time wasted), the accompanying epigram is addressed to the tennis ball (''Ad Pilulam'') which Sambucus blames for wasting the young players' time and money, the image includes a '''tun'' of balls, referring to the six dozen real tennis balls that were needed for a game at the time, which made jeu de paume a very costly and elite pastime, the woodcut is familiar to students of tennis history having been reproduced in Royal Game (1989, p.57) Gillmeister (1990, p.69) de Bondt (1993, p.128) Morgan (1995, p.89), Catalogue Fontainebleau (2001, p.71), also Whitman (1932, fp), Clerici (1975, p24) etc., in 19th century half leather binding with gilt title and decorations, wear to binding and separated but text block firm, internally generally a very good, clean copy, containing one of the earliest illustrations that shows the tennis court divided by a cord, at a later date in tennis tassels would be added to the cord, and still later this would evolve into the net as we now know it, other details of interest are the wooden boarded penthouse roof, and the ''lune'', the rounded architectural feature, into which a ball struck scores a point, the player on the left unusually holds two rackets, one in each hand, and this has lead Clerici to describe this as ''the first tennis lesson''