M. Didot had his reward. Among the books which were dragged out of some mouldy store-room was the very Aldine Homer of Francis I., with part of the original binding still clinging to the leaves. M. Didot purchased the precious relic, and sent it to what M. Fertiault (who has written a century of sonnets on bibliomania) calls the hospital for books.
Le dos humide, je l'eponge;
Ou manque un coin, vite une allonge, Pour tous j'ai maison de sante.
M. Didot, of course, did not practise this amateur surgery himself, but had the arms and devices of Francis I. restored by one of those famous binders who only work for dukes, millionnaires, and Rothschilds.
During the religious wars and the troubles of the Fronde, it is probable that few people gave much time to the collection of books.
The illustrious exceptions are Richelieu and Cardinal Mazarin, who possessed a "snuffy Davy" of his own, an indefatigable prowler among book-stalls and dingy purlieus, in Gabriel Naude. In 1664, Naude, who was a learned and ingenious writer, the apologist for "great men suspected of magic," published the second edition of his 'Avis pour dresser une Bibliotheque,' and proved himself to be a true lover of the chase, a mighty hunter (of books) before the Lord. Naude's advice to the collector is rather amusing. He pretends not to care much for bindings, and quotes Seneca's rebuke of the Roman bibliomaniacs, Quos voluminum suorum frontes maxime placent titulique,--who chiefly care for the backs and lettering of their volumes. The fact is that Naude had the wealth of Mazarin at his back, and we know very well, from the remains of the Cardinal's library which exist, that he liked as well as any man to see his cardinal's hat glittering on red or olive morocco in the midst of the beautiful tooling of the early seventeenth century. When once he got a book, he would not spare to give it a worthy jacket.
Naude's ideas about buying were peculiar. Perhaps he sailed rather nearer the wind than even Monkbarns would have cared to do. His favourite plan was to buy up whole libraries in the gross, "speculative lots" as the dealers call them. In the second place, he advised the book-lover to haunt the retreats of Libraires fripiers, et les vieux fonds et magasins. Here he truly observes that you may find rare books, broches,--that is, unbound and uncut,--just as Mr. Symonds bought two uncut copies of 'Laon and Cythna' in a Bristol stall for a crown. "You may get things for four or five crowns that would cost you forty or fifty elsewhere," says Naude.
Thus a few years ago M. Paul Lacroix bought for two francs, in a Paris shop, the very copy of 'Tartuffe' which had belonged to Louis XIV. The example may now be worth perhaps 200 pounds. But we are digressing into the pleasures of the modern sportsman.
It was not only in second-hand bookshops that Naude hunted, but among the dealers in waste paper. "Thus did Poggio find Quintilian on the counter of a wood-merchant, and Masson picked up 'Agobardus'
at the shop of a binder, who was going to use the MS. to patch his books withal." Rossi, who may have seen Naude at work, tells us how he would enter a shop with a yard-measure in his hand, buying books, we are sorry to say, by the ell. "The stalls where he had passed were like the towns through which Attila or the Tartars had swept, with ruin in their train,--ut non hominis unius sedulitas, sed calamitas quaedam per omnes bibliopolarum tabernas pervasisse videatur!" Naude had sorrows of his own. In 1652 the Parliament decreed the confiscation of the splendid library of Mazarin, which was perhaps the first free library in Europe,--the first that was open to all who were worthy of right of entrance. There is a painful description of the sale, from which the book-lover will avert his eyes. On Mazarin's return to power he managed to collect again and enrich his stores, which form the germ of the existing Bibliotheque Mazarine.
Among princes and popes it is pleasant to meet one man of letters, and he the greatest of the great age, who was a bibliophile. The enemies and rivals of Moliere--De Vise, De Villiers, and the rest--are always reproaching him--with his love of bouquins. There is some difference of opinion among philologists about the derivation of bouquin, but all book-hunters know the meaning of the word. The bouquin is the "small, rare volume, black with tarnished gold,"which lies among the wares of the stall-keeper, patient in rain and dust, till the hunter comes who can appreciate the quarry. We like to think of Moliere lounging through the narrow streets in the evening, returning, perhaps, from some noble house where he has been reading the proscribed 'Tartuffe,' or giving an imitation of the rival actors at the Hotel Bourgogne. Absent as the contemplateur is, a dingy book-stall wakens him from his reverie. His lace ruffles are soiled in a moment with the learned dust of ancient volumes. Perhaps he picks up the only work out of all his library that is known to exist,--un ravissant petit Elzevir, 'De Imperio Magni Mogolis' (Lugd. Bat. 1651). On the title-page of this tiny volume, one of the minute series of 'Republics' which the Elzevirs published, the poet has written his rare signature, "J. B. P.
