CHAPTER IX.
FRANCE: EARLY BOOKMEN—ROYAL COLLECTORS.
We shall take Budæus as our first example of the French bookmen in the period that followed the invention of printing. Of Guillaume Budé, to give him his original name, it was said that he knew Greek as minutely as the orators of the age of Demosthenes. If there was any real foundation for the compliment it must have consisted in the fact that the Frenchman had more acquaintance with the language than his instructor George of Sparta. Budæus is said to have paid a very large sum for a course of lectures on Homer, and to have been not a pennyworth the wiser at the end. Erasmus, who also learned of the Spartan, confessed that his tutor only 'stammered in Greek,' and that he seemed to have neither the desire nor the capacity for teaching. It is interesting to see how these students made the best of their bad materials. 'I have given my whole soul to Greek,' wrote Erasmus, 'and as soon as I get any money I shall buy books first, and then some clothes.' Budæus was known as 'the prodigy of France,' and even Scaliger allowed that his country would never see such a scholar again; and it is rather surprising that Erasmus should have compared his style unfavourably with that of Badius, the printer from Brabant.
Budæus was the first to apply the historical method to the explanation of the Civil Law: with the assistance of Jean Grolier he brought out a very learned treatise on ancient weights and measures; and in publishing his commentaries on the Greek language he was said to have raised himself to 'a pinnacle of philological glory.' One of the stories about his devotion to books may have been told of others, but is certainly characteristic of the man. A servant rushes in to say that the house is on fire; but the scholar answers, 'Tell my wife: you know that I never interfere with the household.' He was married twice over, he used to say, to the Muse of philology as well as to a mortal wife; but he confessed that he would never have got far with the first, if the second had not commanded in the library, always ready to look out passages and to hand down the necessary books.
When Charles viii. seized the royal library at Naples, a few of the best mss. escaped his scrutiny, and these were sold by the dispossessed King to the Cardinal D'Amboise. A new school of illuminators at Rouen provided the Cardinal with a number of other splendid volumes. He lived till the year 1510, and was able to collect a second library of printed books. He divided the whole into two portions at his death, the French books passing to a relation and afterwards to the family of La Rochefoucauld, and the rest forming the foundation of a fine library long possessed by the Archbishops of Rouen.
The Archbishop Juvenal des Ursins died in the middle of the fifteenth century. He is celebrated as a lover of good books, though only a single example of his choice survived into the present generation. It was a magnificent missal on vellum, filled with the choicest miniatures, and known as the best specimen of its class in the possession of Prince Soltikoff. It is only a few years ago that it entered the collection of M. Firmin-Didot, who paid 36,000 francs for it at the Prince's sale: in the year 1861 he gave it up to the City of Paris; but like so many of the great books of France it perished in the fires of the Commune.
Jacques de Pars, the physician to Charles vii., bequeathed his scientific mss. to the College of Medicine at Paris: and the value of his gift was manifested when the powerful Louis xi. was forbidden to take out a medical treatise for transcription unless he would pledge his silver plate and find collateral security for its safe return. Étienne Chevalier was one of the few servants of King Charles who were tolerated by King Louis. He became Chief Treasurer to Louis xi., and built a great mansion in the Rue de la Verrerie in Paris. The walls and ceilings were decorated with allegorical designs in honour of his friend Agnès Sorel, whose courage had led to the expulsion of the English invaders. The library was filled with choice mss., illuminated for the most part by Jehan Foucquet, the famous miniaturist from Tours. Nicholas Chevalier, his descendant in the sixteenth century, was also illustrious as a bibliophile, and amidst his own printed folios and pedigrees rolled in blue velvet could still show the marvellous Livre d'Heures, of which all that now remains is a set of paintings hacked out from the text. M. Le Roux de Lincy has compiled a long and interesting list of the French bibliophiles who preceded the age of Grolier. We can only mention a few out of the number. Of the poets we have Charles, Duke of Orléans, the owner of eighty magnificent volumes preserved in the Castle of Blois, and Pierre Ronsard; and we may add the Abbé Philippe Desportes, renowned not less for a rivalry with Ronsard than for his sumptuous mode of living and the fortune expended on his library. To the statesmen may be added Florimond Robertet, the first of a long line of bibliophiles. Among the learned ladies of the sixteenth century we may choose Louise Labé, surnamed 'La Belle Cordière,' who made a collection of a new kind, composed entirely of works in French, Spanish, and Italian, and Charlotte Guillard, a printer as well as a book-collector, who published at her own expense a volume of the Commentaries of St. Jerome.
The most important of the private collectors in this period was Arthur Gouffier, Seigneur de Boissy, another of the faithful followers of Charles vii. who were so fortunate as to gain the confidence of his jealous successor.