One of the many plates of which the engraver is not known is that of Franz Ludwig Anton Freiherr von Lerchenfeld-Prennberg. The shield is borne on two flags crossing one another. At the foot of the plate is engraved “Ex Libris, Francisci Ludovici,” etc., giving all the owner’s titles. He was Chamberlain of the Munich High Court of Appeal.

A well-known plate is that of Pierre Daniel Huet, Bishop of Avranches, and probably the best-remembered holder of that ancient See, and tenant of the famous Bishop’s Palace. He was Bishop of Avranches from 1689 to 1699, but, born at Caen in 1630, he was already, in 1650, a renowned savant, and twelve years later founded the Academy of Sciences at Caen. He did not become a priest until he was forty-six years old; but all his life he was an enormous reader, and gifted with a wondrous memory. Of course he wrote books as well as reading the lore of others.

At Avranches visitors, calling for advice from their bishop, were told “He cannot see you, he is studying”; and in vain they claimed that they wanted to see a diocesan who had finished his studies.

The plate was engraved in four sizes for the Jesuits’ College in Paris, to which he gave his library in 1692. As he spent the latter years of his long life with the Paris Jesuits he was not long separated from his books, and lived ninety-two years, so that none might say that in him much study had produced a weariness of the flesh.

In 1692 another library, left this time by will, and accordingly, too, another ex libris, came to the Jesuits of Paris, and from a friend of Huet, Gilles Ménage. Like Huet, his appetite for study was vast and his memory unfailing. Born at Angers in 1613, he died in Paris in 1692. Thus he spent some eighty years among the shrewd litterateurs of that day, and the following conversation need not be taken as a sign of want of veracity on his part. Angers seems, like Crete of old, to have had a lying reputation. He, asking a lady to define untruthfulness, received for reply, that as for defining lying she did not quite know, but liar she would define as “Monsieur Ménage!”

It will be seen how little it had yet become the custom for bibliophiles to have bookplates. Neither Huet nor Ménage used ex libris for themselves, and to this day no bookplate of Molière, or Racine, or La Fontaine, or of many other leaders of that age has been found.

After about 1650 a change is seen in the styles of French ex libris. Helmets go out of use, and, for lack of better ideas, coronets are assumed, often by those who had not the faintest right to them. The square shield, in time, gives place to the oval form.

CHAPTER V
BOOKPLATES CHRONOLOGICALLY

Some French and some German plates—The cap of liberty—Buonaparte—Alsace and Lorraine.

AS a date is always a signal advantage, the bookplate “Petri Antonii Convers Laudonensis. L Monnier Divione. 1762” may be mentioned. It is, of course, topped by the irrepressible coronet. Louis Gabriel Monnier was born at Besançon in 1733, and died at Dijon in 1804. The Convers plate is wholly Rococo; but taking from Walter Hamilton another French ex libris engraved but nine years later, we see that with some artists the heavy brigade is already on duty. Here we have a big gun, an armorial shield flanked by three flags on each side, but without any graceful design. Still the inevitable coronet, and below all, the inscription: “Le Chᵉʳ. Dé Bellehache officier de Cavalerie au Regᵗ D’artois / 1771.” Here, after all, there is no possibility of mistaking for whom this plate was engraved,