For a description of these two manuscripts[299] I cannot do better than transcribe in this place the interesting work of Comte Léon de Laborde. I print this work just as it was published several years ago, having no authority to modify it. But I think that I may venture to say that if it had been prepared since the publication of my book on Tory, it would contain a judgement in his favour. That seems to me to be the result of my conversations with M. de Laborde. My friend M. Jules Renouvier, whose death is so deeply to be deplored, and in whose company I examined the volume of the 'Commentaires' in the Bibliothèque Nationale, was entirely of my opinion. He spoke of the manuscript in question in these terms in a critical review of the first edition of my book on Tory, printed in the 'Revue Universelle des Arts' for September, 1857 (vol. v, no. 6, p. 511):—
'The point that we knew least about was Tory's début in the career of an artist. It was most brilliant if we agree with M. Bernard that he was the author of the miniatures found in two well-known manuscripts, the "Commentaires de César" in three volumes and the "Triomphes de Pétrarque," in which we find the signatures "G," and "Godefroy," and the dates 1519 and 1520. M. de Laborde has recently described them with all the care that they deserve, without discovering who this Godefroy was. He was no other than Geofroy Tory, says M. Bernard, and this opinion is plausible; for, if the subsequent work of the engraver on wood does not fulfil the promise of the miniaturist, the drawing is governed by identical characteristics, and the similarity of style is striking, especially when we consider the engravings that are nearest in point of time, as those of "Champ fleury," dated 1526. Considered from this point of view, Geofroy Tory is the most precocious of the artists of the Renaissance: before the masters of Fontainebleau, he introduced the stately, graceful and individualized figures, which aroused enthusiasm in the time of François I, to which Italy lent much of her style, and Germany a little of her force, but which were more thoroughly French than is generally admitted. It is well known, moreover, that these miniatures were originally, even in the "camaieu" process, heightened in effect by chatoyant tones, with subtleties of drawing which denote a hand more apt to handle the pencil than the brush, and altogether adapted to the tools of the engraver. The draughtsman loses a part of his distinction in passing from a privileged to a commonplace form of art; but so the progress of art willed.'
The work of M. Léon de Laborde follows:—
GODEFROY, PAINTER TO FRANÇOIS I.
Godefroy has left us, in four small volumes,—the first three entitled 'Commentaires de César,' the fourth 'Triomphes de Pétrarque'—the proof of a fruitful imagination, of a talent in portrait-painting no less flexible than varied, and of a superiority original with himself, and thoroughly French,—a very unusual combination of the qualities peculiar to our school prior to the formation of the school of Fontainebleau, and of the qualities—or, to speak more accurately, the defects—which that colony of foreign artists was soon to introduce in our midst.
These four volumes, after divers vicissitudes, repose at last, at the end of their journeyings and safe from the risk of destruction, the first in the British Museum at London, the second in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, the third in the collection of H. R. H. the Duc d'Aumale, and the fourth in the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal. I will describe first the 'Commentaires de César,' a beautiful manuscript, the three volumes of which I have had before me one by one. There are in this work three things worthy of remark, to which I shall direct the reader's attention for a brief space. First, the composition of the work; second, the painting of the decorations; and lastly, the portraits.
The author, a native of Flanders or Artois, transplanted to the Court of France, displays no overplus of wit or imagination. He supposes that King François I, in one of his excursions, or while hunting, meets Julius Cæsar, and that they converse. The subject of their dialogue is the Gallic war; it is a sort of commentary on Cæsar's Commentaries, with transparent allusions to the events of the reign of François I. It is in these allusions that we detect the author's predilection for the Belgæ,[300] with whose country he is familiar, and particularly for the city of Tournay,[301] which may well have been his native place. I do not propose to draw any inference from his hatred of the English[302]; although more violent in our northern provinces than elsewhere, that sentiment was then universal in France. It would seem, at least so far as the implements of war are concerned, that the painter who was employed to embellish the manuscript worked under the author's direction. We find in several places remarks like this: 'The tower is sufficiently described by the engines that I have caused to be drawn herein.'
For the rest, we feel that we have to do with a conscientious author; and simply by the extracts which follow, we may recognize the man who is uncertain and hesitates, the student who leaves every one in possession of his rights and who confides his doubts to the reader. On the eighth leaf of volume two he has instructed Godefroy, the painter, to reproduce an antique medallion; he writes in the margin: 'I fear that it is not that Cassius who was a conspirator in the death of Cæsar, for his name was Caius Cassius, and I find on the medallion Quintus Cassius.' As to one of the pictures of machines of war he makes this comment: 'Certain pictures of implements of war, as they are portrayed by Frère Jocunde in book x of Vitruvius.' Beside another, he says: 'I am not the inventor of the machines which follow, for I found them in a book that I secured long ago at Chastellerault, at the Lyon d'or.'
To this curious piece of information let us add another,[303] which tells us that the author of the book was in relations with an artist of Blois, a clock-maker and inventive genius: 'The two pictures that follow [two warlike machines] were taken from a book that Julian, clock-maker at Bloys, gave me.—Julian is a man of great wit and knows many things.'
A passage on folio xxii verso of the second volume seems to prove that the manuscript was written during the years 1519 and 1520: 'By the map