Quarto of 338 leaves, plus one unnumbered leaf, on which are the words: 'Parisiis, excudebat Matthæus David, prid. calend. nov. [October 31] 1551.
On the title-page is David's mark, with the Lorraine cross. On the verso, a portrait of Le Duaren, in the shape of a medallion, also signed with the Lorraine cross. Encircling it, the legend: 'francisc. dvarenvs. jvrisc.[407]
The work opens with an epistle to Marguerite, Duchesse de Berry, and sister of François I. This letter, dated Paris, the Ides of June, 1550, is more properly a dedication, for in it Le Duaren mentions the death of Marguerite, which took place in 1549. He tells us, further, in the title of this epistle, that it was written before his return to Bourges, which he had been obliged to leave in 1547, as the result of a love-affair ('antequam Lutetia Parisiorum Avaricum Biturigum migrasset').[408]
II. CICERO'S WORKS (in Latin), published by Charles Estienne, from 1551 to 1555, in four folio volumes, usually bound in two.
This important work is embellished with a frieze engraved for Robert Estienne, and signed with the Lorraine cross,—a frieze which appears in the second volume of the works of Eusebius of 1544.[409] We also find therein several floriated letters signed with the Lorraine cross.[410] These are the E, the O, and the S of the medium alphabet,—for there are three alphabets of different sizes, all three formed by Renaissance arabesques. The largest is the one used in the folio Eusebius of 1544, which, consequently, was engraved for Robert Estienne; but it has no signature. The medium alphabet was, doubtless, engraved for Charles Estienne in this same year 1551, in which he began to conduct a printing-office. I cannot say whether any other letters of this medium alphabet bore the Lorraine cross, for they do not all appear in the book, but I am sure that the G has none. Of course, after Tory died, the artists employed in the establishment carried on by his widow had no reason to select the G rather than another letter.
I give some details concerning this valuable edition, of which M. Didot owned a copy annotated by Henri Estienne. The text of the first volume, printed in 1551, as stated in an imprint at the end (dated the 3d of the Nones of September), exhibits one of the letters mentioned above—the S (on folios 56 and 298). This volume received later a large title-page dated 1555, and a dedication, to the Cardinal de Lorraine, also dated 1555 (the 6th of the Kalends of March), on which we find the frieze of the Eusebius of 1544, signed, and bearing on a medallion Fame distributing wreaths.[411] The text of the second volume, also of 1551, as I discovered from an incomplete copy in the library at Montbrison (it has no final imprint, but on the title-page some one has added III by hand to the original numerals M. D. LI, so that it might correspond with the other copies), contains the three floriated letters signed with the Lorraine cross (folios 47, 122, 230, 313, 388, 398); we find also, on the title-page, dated 1554, Charles Estienne's small mark described later.[412] The text of the third volume was probably printed in 1552, but it has no final imprint. The title-page is dated 1555; it has the small mark with the Lorraine cross. The fourth bears on the title-page the date 1554, but it was not finished until 1555, as is shown by the final imprint (3d of the Kalends of March, 1555); the vignette of the title-page is unlike that in the second and third volumes, although of the same size, and has not the cross. The work did not appear until 1555, as is shown by the date on the title-page of the first volume, on which there is another larger mark, also without the cross.[413]
1552
I. HEURES PARIS [sic], CONTENANT PLUSIEURS ORAISONS DEVOTES, EN FRANÇOIS ET EN LATIN ET CONFESSION GENERALE. (Here the mark of Thielman Kerver, with the Lorraine cross.) Imprimé à Paris par Thielman Kerver, demourant rue Sainct Jaques, à l'enseigne du Gril.—1552.