The Abbé Boisot was another of the scholars who lived entirely for books. While quite a young man he acquired a considerable library in his travels through Spain and Italy; and in 1664, during an official visit to Besançon, he was so fortunate as to acquire the mss. of the Cardinal de Granvelle, who had been the confidential minister of the Emperor Charles v. Boisot wrote a delightful account of the adventures through which this collection had passed. 'At first,' he says, 'the servants used what they pleased, and then the neighbours' children helped themselves; when some packing-cases were wanted, the butler, to show his economy, sold the records contained in them to a grocer.' At last they were all tired of these 'useless old papers,' and determined to throw them away. Jules Chifflet, according to Guigard, was the means of saving the remainder. He examined a number of the documents and recognised their importance, though they were mostly in cipher; but he died before they could be sorted out. Boisot bought what he could from the heirs, and found a good many more mss. in the neighbourhood. They passed with the rest of Boisot's books to the Abbey of St. Vincent at Besançon; and during the Revolution the whole collection became the property of the citizens and was transferred to the public library.
The hereditary treasures of the Bouhier family were dispersed in the same way through several provincial libraries. The collection had begun in the reign of Louis xii., and something had been done in each generation afterwards by way of adding fine books and manuscripts. Étienne Bouhier had collected in all parts of Italy. Jean Bouhier in 1642 bought the accumulations of Pontus de Thyard, the learned Bishop of Châlons. His father's own library had been dispersed among his children; but Jean Bouhier succeeded in getting it together again, and added a large number of mss. which he had gathered for the illustration of the history of Burgundy. The library became still more famous in the time of his grandson the President Jean Bouhier, who has been admired as the type of the true bibliophile. The bibliomaniac heaps up books from avarice or some animal instinct; he is a collector, it is said, 'without intelligent curiosity.' Bouhier used to read his books and make notes upon them; and it is said that he carried the practice to such excess as to deface with marginal scribblings the finest work of Henri Estienne and Antoine Vérard. A visitor to his library described the sober magnificence of the rosewood shelves with silken hangings in which the rare editions and long rows of manuscripts were ranged. In the next generation there was a startling change. The library had been left to Bouhier's son-in-law, Chartraire de Bourbonne: the grave offspring of Aldus and Gryphius found themselves in company with poets of the talon rouge and muses of the Opéra bouffe. When the gay De Bourbonne died, the ill-assorted crowd passed to his son-in-law in his turn, and was transferred in 1784 to the Abbey of Clairvaux.
We cannot name or classify the bibliophiles of the eighteenth century. It would be endless to describe them with the briefest of personal notes; how M. Barré loved out-of-the-way books and fugitive pieces, or Lambert de Thorigny a good history, or how Gabriel de Sartines, the policeman of the Parc aux Cerfs, had a marvellous collection about Paris. When Count Macarthy sold his books at Toulouse his catalogue contained a list of about ninety others, issued in the same century, from which his riches were derived. We can point to a few of the mightiest Nimrods. We see the serene Gaignat pass, and the bustling La Vallière; the Duc d'Estrées is recognised as a busy book-hunter, and there are the physicians Hyacinthe Baron and Falconnet whose keenness no prey could escape. We can distinguish the forms of the elegant 'bibliomanes' to whom their books were as pictures or as jewels to be enclosed in a shrine; there is Count d'Hoym with a house full of treasures, and Boisset and Girardot de Préfond with their cabinets of marvels. If the crowds in the old-fashioned libraries are like the multitude at Babel, these tall volumes in crushed morocco and 'triple gold bands' remind us of what our antiquaries have said of books glimmering in their wire cases 'like eastern beauties peering through their jalousies.' We ought to say something of M. de Chamillard, best known in his public capacity as a good match for the King at billiards and as the minister who proposed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In private life Michael de Chamillard was a virtuoso with well-filled galleries and portfolios; and he had assembled a large company of books of fashionable appearance. But our real interest is not so much with the Minister of Billiards, as M. Uzanne described him, but rather with his wife and three daughters, who were all true female bibliophiles. The eldest daughter, the Marquise de Dreux, was wife of the Grand Master of the Ceremonies; but though his collection was gay and polite the Marquise insisted on a separate establishment for the books that she had discovered and bought and bound. The Duchesse de la Feuillade and the Duchesse de Lorges insisted, like their elder sister, on having libraries for their separate use. The minister's wife was celebrated for the splendour of her books, and marvellous prices have been paid for specimens of her earlier style. But 'little Madame de Chamillard' attached herself in all things to the Maintenon, and followed the uncrowned queen in abandoning the paths of vanity; she gave up the world, so far as gilt arabesques and crushed morocco were concerned, and dressed all her later acquisitions à la Janséniste, in plain leather with perhaps the thinnest line of blind-tooling for an ornament.
Charles du Fay was a captain in the Guards, compelled by his misfortunes to confine himself to the battles of the book-sale. He lost a leg at the bombardment of Brussels in 1695; and though he was promoted to a company in the Guards, it became at last apparent that he could not serve on horseback. Du Fay, we are told, was fortunately fond of literature; and he devoted himself with eagerness to the task of collecting a magnificent library. History and Latin poetry had always been his favourite subjects, and it appears that he was already collecting fine examples in this department during his campaigns in Germany and Flanders.
M. de Lincy commemorates the good taste that impelled Du Fay to buy several of Grolier's books, and records the industry with which he sought to remedy his defects of education. Professor Brochard, he says, was a learned man, with a good library of his own, who went to inspect the books gathered by Du Fay from all parts of Europe. The visitor expressed surprise that out of nearly four thousand volumes there should hardly be any in Greek. 'I have hardly retained a word of the language,' said Du Fay. 'Cato in his old age,' replied the Professor, 'did not hesitate for a moment to learn it; and a person quite ignorant of Greek can never know Latin well.' Du Fay was an easy good-natured man, and at once followed his friend's advice, beginning from that day to buy Greek books and to work at the language so as to be able to read them. His object, however, in forming a library was not so much to gather useful information as to set up a museum of literary rarities. The idea is in accordance with our modern taste, and perhaps with the common sense of mankind; but some of the old-fashioned collectors were angry with the poor epicure of learning. The Président Bouhier writes to Marais in 1725 on seeing a catalogue of the library: 'This savours more of bibliomania than scholarship.' Marais at once replied: 'Your judgment on Du Fay's catalogue is most excellent: it is not a library, but a shop full of curious book-specimens, made to sell and not to keep for one's self.'
Many of Du Fay's books were bought by Count d'Hoym, who lived for many years at Paris as ambassador from Augustus of Poland and Saxony. The Count has been accused of showing bad manners at Court, and of bad faith in giving the trade secrets of Dresden to the factory at Sèvres; in bibliography at any rate, he was supreme among the amateurs, and his White Eagle of Poland appears upon no volume that is not among the best of its kind. He sat at one time at the feet of the Abbé de Rothelin; but he soon became his master's equal in matters of taste, and was accepted until his exile at Nancy as the arbiter of elegance among the Parisians. M. Guigard quotes from the dedication of a 'treasury' of French poetry a passage that indicates his high position: 'To the poets in this assemblage, whoever they be, it is a glory, Monseigneur, to enter your Excellency's library, so full, so magnificent, so well chosen, that it is justly accounted the prodigy of learning.'
Charles d'Orléans, Abbé de Rothelin, had died in 1744, when most of his books became the property of the nation. In some respects he was the most distinguished of the book-collectors. His learning and wealth enabled him to make a collection of theology that has never been surpassed; and he had the good fortune to acquire the vast series of State Papers and the priceless mediæval mss. collected by Nicolas Foucault. His special taste was for immaculate editions in splendid bindings; but nothing escaped his notice that was in any way remarkable or interesting.
Paul Girardot de Préfond was a timber-merchant who fell into an apathetic state on retiring from active business. His physician, Hyacinthe Baron, was an eminent book-collector, and he advised the patient to take up the task of forming a library. So successful was the prescription that the merchant became renowned during the next half century for his superb bindings, his specimens from Grolier's stores, and the Delphin and Variorum classics which he procured from the library of Gascq de la Lande. On two occasions the sale of his surplus treasures made an excitement for the literary world. Some of his rarest books were sold in 1757, and twelve years afterwards his Delphin series and the greater part of his general collection were purchased by Count Macarthy.
Mérard de St. Just was another collector, whose exquisite taste is still gratefully remembered, though his small library has long been dispersed, and was indeed almost destroyed by a series of accidents before the outbreak of the great Revolution. 'My library,' he said, 'is very small, but it is too large for me to fill it with good books.' He would not have the first editions of the classics, because they were generally printed on bad paper which it was disagreeable to touch, with the exception of works produced by the Aldine Press. Nor would he buy mere curiosities, says Guigard, but left them to persons who cared for empty display, 'like one who proudly exhibits his patents of nobility without being able to point to any distinguished action of his ancestors.' He was the owner of many choice books that had belonged to Gaignat and Charron de Ménars, or had been bound for Madame de Pompadour, or to the undiscriminating Du Barry. In 1782, we are told, he despatched the best part of his library to America, but had the grief of learning soon afterwards that they had been captured at sea by the English. His philosophical temper was shown in his reply to the bad news: 'I have but one wish upon the subject; I hope that the person who gets this part of the booty will be able to comprehend the value of the treasure that has come to his hands.'
The elder Mirabeau was a collector of another type. The 'friend of mankind' intended to gather together the best and largest library in the world. He cared nothing for the scarcity or the external adornments of a volume; but he had a huge appetite for knowledge, and he longed to have the means of referring to all that could illustrate the progress of the race. He did not live to attain any marked success in his gigantic design; but his library had at least the distinction of containing all the books of the Comte de Buffon, enriched with marginal notes in the naturalist's handwriting.