JEAN BAPTISTE COLBERT
After Mignard
Should a bookseller want something more serious, I have a precious collection of letters, proclamations, mémoires, edicts, lists of troops, etc., illustrating the reigns of Francis i., Henri ii., Henri iii., Charles ix., the whole copied from the original letters of those princes, Queen Catherine, constables, Secretaries of State, generals of armies. Among the papers are also to be found documents instructing the ambassadors and the letters wherein they render account of their negotiations, what France then did at the Court of Rome, and what she did in England regarding the trial of the Queen of Scotland under Queen Elizabeth. There is also such a fine series of letters from Duc de Guise that they might be entitled Mémoires. Two members of the Academy of Belles-lettres in Paris have urged me to print all this with two quarto volumes that they are publishing on the history of France, but as there are some pieces that they allege may prevent them from obtaining the privilege, and must therefore be suppressed, I have declined the proposal.
I have besides a manuscript entitled An Abridgment of Civil, Criminal, and Ecclesiastical Law and of the Principles of Government,[305] written in 1710 by a minister for M. the Dauphin Duc de Bourgogne. The treatise is extremely lucid, instructive, and it is the original work, the sole possessor of which I am.
I have other manuscripts. But it is enough to begin with. I shall send them to you with all my heart, and you will be master, Monsieur, to dispose of them. The long experience I have made of your kindness, gives me the assurance that I cannot trust anything to better hands.
If you honour me with an answer, I beg of you to give me news of M. des Maizeaux, whom I love and honour, and from whom, however, I have not heard for the last ten years. Content to love one another, we do not trouble to tell each other so, and I do not like to make him pay postage. I shall receive your commands at M. Neungheer, at Sluys in Flanders. I am, Monsieur, and shall ever be respectfully and gratefully your most humble and obedient servant,
Saint-Hyacinthe.