“25 Février, 1733. Laurent-Ignace Joubert, Chevalier, cy-devant Syndic Général de la Province de Languedoc.”
It thus appears that Joubert was alive in 1749, and still holding the high office in the provincial treasury to which he was appointed in 1733; the date of his plate may therefore be assumed to have been not earlier than 1733, and in all probability it was not much later.
In this entry he is called Chevalier, which accounts for the De on the book-plate. This is an instance of the difficulties a collector has to contend with in deciding the period of undated plates, especially where the artist has not signed his work.
Mons. Gueulette was a French novelist and dramatist, who enjoyed considerable fame in the first half of the last century. He died in December, 1766, at the ripe old age of eighty-three years, and his writings have since sunk into undeserved oblivion, although, it is true, Messrs. Nichols published a translation of his “Contes Tartares” (an imitation of the “Arabian Nights”) in 1893, but of this only a small edition was printed. His book-plate, signed H. Becat, is inscribed “Ex libris Thomae Gueulette et Amicorum.” It represents the Gueulette arms, with two supporters on each side, namely, an Italian Arlequin, a Tartar, a Chinese Mandarin, and a Cyclops holding an infant in his arms. Each of these figures has some reference to the works of the owner of the plate; thus, the Arlequin is in allusion to the numberless farces he wrote for the Théâtre Italien and the Théâtre des Boulevards; the other works alluded to are his “Contes Tartares” and “Les Aventures du Mandarin Fum Hoam.” The design is surmounted by a graceful little Cupid bearing aloft a scroll, on which is inscribed the epicurean motto “Dulce est desipere in loco,” which has been thus happily translated by a distinguished member of the Sette of Odd Volumes:
“Dulce—Delightful, says the poet,
Est—is it, and right well we know it,
Desipere—to play the fool
In loco—when we’re out of school.”
M. Gueulette was a worthy disciple of Horace, for more than eighty years he enjoyed the work, the pleasures, and the success of life; he accumulated a large and valuable library, and his books were probably the first to be decorated with a book-plate bearing not only the arms of their owner, but also allegorical allusions to his tastes and literary labours.
M. Gueulette had a second and smaller plate, signed Bellanger; this was similar in its general features, but different in many of its details to the above.
The Abbé Joseph-Marie Terray, Controller-General of Finance under Louis XV., was one of those men who, by their cruel exactions, dissolute living, and reckless expenditure, were directly responsible for the ruin of French credit and for the great Revolution which ensued. Terray was born at Boen in 1715, and died in Paris in February, 1778, almost universally hated and despised. It is true that he had collected a handsome library, that his books were sumptuously bound, and that he had a reputation as a patron of art and letters. But holding many highly paid sinecure offices, and being the proprietor of rich ecclesiastical livings (not to mention the gross jobbery he exercised in the state finances), he could well afford to buy expensive books and to employ a few bookbinders. History records no other good trait in the character of this priestly financier, who was both physically and morally ugly, depraved, and rapacious.
