A generation after Spitzel, J. F. Reimann (1668-1743), a theologian and the author of several very curious surveys of the history of learning, showed his full appreciation of Labbé's Bibliotheca bibliothecarum. His praise is significant because he was not accustomed to stint himself in condemning books that he did not like. In the Versuch einer Einleitung in die Historiam Litterariam, so wohl insgemein, als auch in die Historiam Litterariam derer Teutschen (Halle, 1708-1713), he writes: "Let this book of Labbé's be commended to you for diligent study above all others, for (disregarding the obscenities, which are scattered about in it like mouse dirt in pepper) it is one of the very best works in the field [of general bibliography]." He concludes his remarks on this field by recommending it a second time, when he mentions along with it the anonymous Bibliographia Historico-politico-philologica curiosa as a meritorious work.[81] After this, Labbé's book ceases to be mentioned because it was replaced by a new edition, to which we now turn.
In 1686 Antoine Teissier (1632-1715), a Frenchman who became historiographer at the court of Frederick I of Prussia, published a revised and enlarged edition of Labbé's Bibliotheca bibliothecarum and gave it a new title: Catalogus auctorum, qui librorum catalogos, indices, bibliothecas, virorum literatorum elogia, vitas, aut orationes funebres, scriptis consignarunt. This new title, which he signs "By Antoine Teissier (Ab Antonio Teisserio)," obscures the fact that the Catalogus is essentially a new edition of Labbé's bibliography. The title page gives credit to Labbé only for an appendix entitled Bibliotheca nummaria. Teissier could, to be sure, claim that his emphasis on eulogies, biographies, and funeral orations representing a category of biographical writings that Labbé had not included amounted to a sufficiently large alteration to justify a claim to authorship. We can at least say that he did not treat his predecessor generously. In a preface addressed to the reader he says that he has doubled the number of bibliographies cited and has added twelve hundred biographical works.[82] He has made the Catalogus both an index to biographies and a bibliography of bibliographies. He could scarcely have added the biographies if he had fully perceived the nature and usefulness of a bibliography of bibliographies.
Teissier was a diligent collector and a good organizer. Although he has corrected errors and has filled in gaps in the Bibliotheca bibliothecarum, he was not always as careful as he should have been. He added two new indexes: Index V (Catalogus, pp. 353-355), listing writers of biobibliographies of miscellaneous scope (i.e., works that were not restricted to men of a particular country or profession), and Index X (Catalogus, pp. 364-400), listing the men who were the subjects of biographies. These indexes show that Teissier was chiefly interested in biography. He transferred an index of last names that Labbé had given in the preliminary pages to the end of the Catalogus and made it Index XI. He showed bibliographical sense in perceiving and remedying the serious difficulties that the references to "Anonymus" in Labbé's indexes had caused. In order to run them down in the Bibliotheca bibliothecarum one must read the entire book. Teissier assembled all anonymous works in a single place ("Auctores anonymi," pp. 319-332) and thus made it possible to identify a reference rather easily. He removed the brief account of fictitious libraries to a new place (Catalogus, p. 363) and added to it a short but very interesting list of sixteen seventeenth-century catalogues of private libraries.
Teissier did not learn from Labbé's experience that titles should be cited in the original languages. Consequently, the Catalogus offers the same mixture of Latin titles translated from the vernacular and vernacular titles as we found in the Bibliotheca bibliothecarum. Probably he could not have achieved any substantial improvement in this regard. He could not see many books that he cited and the sources from which he took the titles usually gave them in Latin translation. Like Labbé, he cited bibliographical sections of non-bibliographical works.[83] He made some mistakes and corrected some that Labbé had made.[84] His most serious fault is his failure to verify his references. In the seventeen pages devoted to authors whose first names begin with "H" (Catalogus, pp. 121-138) Teissier cited eight books with the remark "He is said to have written—(scripsisse dicitur)." This number is much larger than it should be. Since he usually neglects to cite his source (Labbé is more careful in this regard), search for the title may be difficult. He is often careless in details.[85]
Teissier did not improve his technique in the Auctuarium, a supplement published in 1705. This book of 388 pages contains many new bibliographies and substantial additions to the indexes.[86] He has turned up some new bibliographers of classical times that had escaped Labbé and were not included in his revision of 1686. For example, he cites Xenocrates as the writer of a list of geometricians and Varro as the writer of a list of poets. He has brought up to date the list of English bibliographers by adding Henry Holland, who is the H. H. of the Herwologia,[87] Richard Smith, whose library was the subject of an early catalogue; and William Winstanley, who wrote on English poets. He knows "Rossus Warwicensus" from John Pits's biobibliographical dictionary of English authors, but of course has not seen Thomas Hearne's edition, which came out a few years later.[88] He is as neglectful as he had been in the Catalogus about giving dates and places of publication and citing authorities for titles that he has not seen and works in manuscript.
Labbé's original plan survived without substantial change in Teissier's revision of 1686 and supplement of 1705. In the Auctuarium, the fourth index, "Writers on Various Subjects (De variis argumentis scriptores)," has grown enormously. If Teissier had given any attention to remaking the structure of the book, it might have suggested to him the idea of an alphabetical subject index. He has no longer adhered strictly to listing bibliographies in terms of men who specialized in various subjects but shifted somewhat in the direction of an emphasis on the subject. He could have introduced many practitioners of various arts and sciences into the first index, but his decision to put them into the fourth index shows a breaking down of the scheme that Labbé had invented. When he says (Auctuarium, p. 398) that the seventh index will supplement the list of library catalogues, which are in the eighth index, he is confessing to uncertainty about the scheme. Wavering of this sort is evidence that he did not fully understand the scheme or did not choose to adhere to it.
Although scholars no longer remember Antoine Teissier and his bibliographies, the Catalogus and the Auctuarium offer a uniquely useful summary of seventeenth-century scholarship. In them we find such bibliographies as a list of twenty-two medical bibliographers (Auctuarium, p. 288), fifteen writers (Catalogus, p. 349) on academies and universities (these authors are scarcely bibliographers, but contemporary practice did not separate them sharply from bibliographers), twenty compilers of catalogues of manuscripts (Catalogus, p. 352), twenty authors of lists of famous women (Catalogus, p. 352), and four bibliographers of dictionaries (Auctuarium, p. 298).[89] There is even a reference to a bibliographer of books of anagrams.[90]
The reception of Labbé's and Teissier's books shows that the world was not ready for a bibliography of bibliographies. We can see additional evidence to this effect in the announcement in 1680 of a bibliography of bibliographies that did not get into print. Cornelius a Beughem (fl. 1678-1710), a Dutch bookseller who compiled and published several bibliographies, borrowed the title Bibliotheca bibliothecarum from Labbé and the title Bibliothecariographia from Dudinck for books that never got into print. Presumably the Bibliothecariographia was a treatise on library science. In his subtitle Beughem makes clear what he intended to include in the Bibliotheca bibliothecarum. It was to be An Account and Fuller Listing of all Books and Works that Have Appeared up till now under the Titles Bibliotheca (Bibliography), Catalogus, Index, Athenae, etc.[91] We can perhaps infer that he did not include bibliographies published in non-bibliographical works. His bibliographies of incunabula and of medical, juridical, and historical writings as well as his survey of articles in journals (a Poole's Index at the end of the seventeenth century!) show him to have been a most diligent worker.[92] We can only regret his failure to print his two books on bibliography and library science.
With Cornelius a Beughem's unfulfilled promise of a Bibliotheca bibliothecarum, Antoine Teissier's Catalogus and Auctuarium, and Charles Moëtte's lost manuscript bibliography of bibliographies that I shall mention in Chapter IV, the making of bibliographies of bibliographies came to a temporary end shortly after 1700. Scholars do not seem to have esteemed Teissier's books very highly then or later and Teissier himself concealed their nature by including a large number of biographies. The tentative efforts to write lists of books entitled Bibliotheca that might have developed into bibliographies of bibliographies are the subject of the next chapter, but it may be said in advance that they had no important result.
Explanations for the disappearance of bibliographies of bibliographies around 1700 are readily found. Even a casual reading of the subject indexes to Labbé or Teissier reveals few themes to attract eighteenth-century scholars, who were studying theological, political, economic, historical, literary, and scientific problems in new ways. The great encyclopedias, of which Moréri's Le Grand dictionnaire, first published at Lyons in 1674 and revised, enlarged, and supplemented down to 1759, is typical, gave scholars information that they might otherwise have sought in bibliographies. The changes in the intellectual climate around 1700 are too varied and numerous to discuss here. It is enough to note that they included the disappearance of bibliographies of bibliographies from the list of scholarly tools.