Essay on Bibliography 
 
 and on the 
 Attainments of a Librarian 
 
 By 
 Parent, the Elder 
 
 Translated by 
 Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer 
 
 The Librarian's Series 
 
 Edited by 
 John Cotton Dana and Henry W. Kent 
 
 Number Four 
 
 Woodstock Vermont The Elm Tree Press 
 1914 
 
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INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
 
 All we know about the author of the following 
 address is what we may gather from the essay, and 
 that is little enough. He was a teacher of history in 
 some college or school, probably in the École Cen- 
 trale du Département de la Nièvre, whose professors 
 he addresses as colleagues. We might be led to guess 
 that he was a librarian, as well, because only a phil- 
 osopher, or a bookseller, or a librarian would take 
 the trouble to arrange in a neat little chart so much 
 of human knowledge as is found here; and only 
 a French librarian of the early nineteenth century, 
 when the whole social fabric was mad over systems 
 of every kind, would have had enthusiasm enough 
 to address a group of students of history on such 
 a subject. Indeed there is no biographical ref- 
 erence to Parent l'aîné anywhere, so far as we 
 know, except a brief note which may be construed 
 into one, in Peignot's article Système bibliograph- 
 ique, in his Dictionnaire raisonné de bibliogie; and 
 this would not be worth mentioning except that it 
 
 298970 
 
iv Essay on Bibliography 
 
 shows that there really was such a person. No one 
 would have doubted the fact if Barbier in his Dic- 
 tionnaire des ouvrages anonymes had not treated the 
 work as anonymous, and had not boldly ascribed it 
 to one Jean-Félicissime Adry, a quite forgotten libra- 
 rian of the Oratory in Paris, the editor of a long list 
 of books, and writer of several volumes. Peignot 
 says: 
 
 "Ce que je viens de citer est tiré d'une petite 
 brochure très intéressante que le citoyen Parent 
 vient de publier, sous le titre Essai sur la Biblio- 
 graphie et sur les talens du bibliothécaire. Je l'ai 
 déjà citée à l'article Bibliothécaire." 
 
 This would seem to show that Peignot knew 
 Parent, and had communication with him about the 
 classification, thus giving the lie to Barbier, who at 
 once becomes a lesson to the careful cataloguer. It 
 must be said in his extenuation, however, that Bar- 
 bier may not have seen la petite brochure, because, 
 rarissima today, it may have been rare enough not 
 to have fallen into his hands. 
 
 Parent would seem to us to have been a librarian, 
 not alone because of his absorption in bibliography, 
 as witnessed by this book, and the nota bene, at the 
 end of it : " Cet essai sera suivi de l'histoire char- 
 actéristique de la Bibliographie chez toutes les 
 nations ; dupuis les quipos de l'Amérique, jusqu'à 
 
Introductory Note 
 
 l'immortelle collection de l'Encyclopédie " — a prom- 
 ise unluckily never fulfilled — but also because of his 
 wise counsel on the duties of the members of this 
 profession, and his multitudinous, superficial refer- 
 ences to authors and personages, which few, except 
 those who have easy references to books, would 
 know. His knowledge is of the librarian kind. 
 
 So much, or so little for our author. 
 
 And the value of the book, it may be asked, 
 wherein does it lie ? How does his " new " system 
 of Classification, as Peignot calls it, differ from the 
 many books of the time, by Citoyen Ameilhon, 
 Citoyen Butenschoen, Citoyen Daunou, and Citoy- 
 ens Camus, Coste, and Arsenne Thiébaut ; and from 
 the more distinguished contributions to the science 
 by Gesner, Treffer, Schott, Naudé, Morhoff, 
 Leibnitz and the immortal Bacon? These are 
 questions whose answers would require a volume, 
 and not an introductory note, so we will content 
 ourselves with mentioning the important point in 
 Parent's scheme. Edwards states it well in his 
 Memoirs of Libraries, although, by the way, he 
 seemed to have had some hesitation in speaking of 
 the work at all. "Another scheme of this date", 
 says he, " may, perhaps, deserve a word of remark 
 in passing on ", putting his pen on the vital spot, in 
 the following words : 
 
vi Essay on Bibliography 
 
 " Not the least curious thing connected with this 
 essay is, that it includes a separate scheme for divid- 
 ing literary history into fourteen great epochs, each 
 of them connected with a predominating name. Its 
 own epoch is sufficiently marked by the last three 
 of these : ' 12th Epoch : Voltaire sketching on the 
 walls of the Bastille the rough draft of the Henri- 
 ade. 13th Epoch: Voltaire crowned at Paris. 14th 
 Epoch: Bonaparte, the friend of the arts and of 
 learning, consolidating the French Republic, and 
 giving peace to Europe.' " 
 
 In other words. Parent introduced what librarians 
 call a time division, hifalutin and sentimental, if 
 you will, but not so unlike the fundamental princi- 
 ples which guided the modifiers of Bacon's scheme, 
 wherein all human knowledge is regarded as issuing 
 from three sources, — Memory, Imagination, and 
 Reason. He added a human note characteristic of 
 his day and generation, when all hearts were aflame 
 for philosophic research, and the maxims of the 
 Encyclopedists were watchwords which lived, des- 
 pite the hostility of conservative censors and timid 
 printers. We may see their influence, shorn of all 
 the personal note and the enthusiasm which marked 
 their birth, in the systems of classifications in use 
 today. 
 
 For the translation of this essay, the Editors of the 
 
Introductory Note vii 
 
 Librarian's Series are indebted to Mrs. Schuyler 
 Van Rensselaer, who, with humor and ready sym- 
 pathy, has finely caught and exactly reproduced in 
 English the grandiloquence of our author. 
 
 H. W. K. 
 
ESSAY 
 
 ON BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 AND ON THE ATTAINMENTS 
 OF A LIBRARIAN 
 
 " Asinii Pollionis hoc Romae inventum, 
 qui primus bibliothecam dicando, ingenio 
 hominum rem publicam fecit." Plin. Maj. 
 
 Asinius Pollio was the first who, consecrat- 
 ing a library in Rome, made the riches of the 
 mind public property. 
 
 Price, 75 centimes. 
 
 FOR SALE 
 
 AT Paris, at the Printing and Publishing House of 
 
 Chrétienne, rue Saint-Jacques, No. 278. 
 
 And by the Author, rue Jacob, No. 1198. 
 
 ANNO IX REP. FR. 
 
To THE Professors of the Ecole Centrale 
 OF THE Department of Nièvre. 
 
 Citizens and former Colleagues, 
 
 If the Essay on Bibliography, which I offer the 
 Public, is so fortunate as to win its suffrages, permit 
 me to resign to you the chief part of the credit It was 
 in our conferences, where fraternity and the love of 
 lettters presided, that I conceived the project of ar- 
 ranging, in clear and methodical order, the riches 
 acquired by the human mind during the long course 
 of the lettered centuries. 
 
 Happy I shall be if your pupils and yourselves. 
 Citizen Colleagues, recognize in this Essay the un- 
 failing desire, which has always inspired me, to de- 
 serve your esteem and to be serviceable to the young. 
 
 Greeting and Friendship, 
 
 PARENT, the Elder, Professor 
 of History and Geography. 
 
ESSAY 
 
 ON BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 AND ON THE ATTAINMENTS 
 
 OF A LIBRARIAN 
 
 THE scythe of time, reaping the great among 
 men, has too often extended its ravages to 
 the rare products of their genius. 
 
 Doubtless, the earUest childhood of the world was 
 not that epoch in which, according to the records of 
 an uncertain history, we see the savage and scattered 
 Greeks receiving, like tutelary gods, those who 
 taught them the first forms of government, and 
 showed them those shapeless essays in the arts and 
 sciences which, later on, the descendants of these 
 same Greeks brought so brilliantly to perfection. 
 
 Doubtless, there were peoples being born, for us, 
 when celebrated and populous nations had already 
 shone out and been eclipsed by the revolution of 
 the centuries. The art of monument building had 
 not yet taught men how to contend successfully 
 
(4) 
 against the efforts of destructive time. During how 
 many centuries was the earth employed in contem- 
 plating, in nourishing, in renewing, the many gen- 
 erations of Chinese and Indians, of Chaldaeans and 
 Egyptians, of Titans, Scythians, Phœnicians, and 
 Hebrews ! And yet a few pages suffice to contain 
 all the well-established knowledge that has been 
 wrested from time with regard to these diverse 
 peoples, antecedent to the epochs when the career 
 of the known world began. 
 
 Let us not flatter ourselves that we are safe from 
 the moral and physical revolutions of the globe that 
 we inhabit ; but let us dare, nevertheless, to assert 
 that the history of mankind now rests upon found- 
 ations so vast, so solid, that it is hardly possible for 
 revolutions of any sort to devour its essential pages. 
 
 Although great masters have preceded me in 
 treating of the methods through which mankind, by 
 dint of experiments, of inventions, and of genius, has 
 succeeded in creating for itself a veritable immor- 
 tality, I venture to mingle my feeble voice with their 
 learned researches, in order to applaud those 
 methods, and to set forth my views upon the art of 
 bibliography and the attainments of a librarian. 
 
(5) 
 
 PART THE FIRST. 
 
 Printing, for the wide sphere of human intelli- 
 gence, plays the same part that nature plays for the 
 terrestrial globe. The latter multiplies the germs of 
 the creatures subject to her triple empire, as the 
 former multiplies the products of the mind, with an 
 indestructible prodigality. But the more nature 
 lavishes, in the wide fields of life, the germs and 
 the elements of her creatures, the more needful it is 
 to have a clue to guide the progress of the observer. 
 It is Natural History that supplies this Ariadne's 
 Thread. 
 
 Printing, ( ^ ) as rich and prodigal as nature, would 
 crush us under the weight of its immense treasures 
 if no one had discovered the art of subjecting them 
 to a certain order which augments their value. This 
 art is Bibliography. ( - ) 
 
 Here we take the word in its whole breadth, as 
 meaning, not only the knowledge, but also the 
 rational love, of the products of the mind. 
 
 If, by insensible degrees, man has come to know 
 
 (1) The invention of Printing goes back at most to the year 
 1440. Faust and Schoeffer, his son-in-law, were collaborators 
 with Gutenberg in this superb invention, and deserve to share in 
 its glory. 
 
 (2) From two Greek words meaning, Writing about Books. 
 
(6) 
 
 the true principles and the advantages of associa- 
 tion; if he has turned to profit the arts and the 
 inventions of industry and of genius, in order to 
 reach a degree of perfection which Hfts him as far 
 above savage man as the savage surpasses the in- 
 sentient oyster fixed upon its rock ; if he has pre- 
 served the written titles which bear witness to his 
 nobility and his rights; if, during the course of 
 centuries and of revolutions, he has been able to 
 consult the great book of experience, that first and 
 indispensable teacher of mankind, can we doubt that 
 it is to bibliography that he owes these precious ad- 
 vantages ? 
 
 If civilized man, despite the crimes generated by 
 the vicious principles and the evil men that, almost 
 everywhere, have presided over the organization of 
 society ; if, I say, social and reasonable man knows 
 how to savour true pleasures and moments of hap- 
 piness ; if a man of private and modest station often 
 finds, in the bosom of a happy obscurity, that his lot 
 is preferable to that of the great and mighty of 
 the earth ; if the mighty man hears day by day a 
 thousand voices crying to him that he must bridle 
 his ambition and work for the welfare of his fellow- 
 citizens, that only upon this condition is he great ; if 
 the man of letters acquires in a few days knowledge 
 that cost his predecessors half-centuries of time ; if 
 the artist is continually surrounded by rivals and 
 
(7) 
 
 great masters who lead him to perfection in his art ; 
 if the opulent man knows a wise, worthy, and de- 
 lightful way to utilise his riches ; if the youth can 
 experience pure pleasures which serve as an antidote 
 to corrupting pleasures, can form useful tastes which 
 by degrees extinguish dangerous or irrational tastes, 
 and can foster felicitous inclinations which counter- 
 balance turbulent and baleful passions; if, finally the 
 old man in each of the moments that remain to him, 
 can possess all past ages, and console himself for his 
 approaching end by the enchanting spectacle of 
 centuries, generations, and nations rapidly succeed- 
 ing each other in the vast course of existence, who 
 can deny that these many benefactions are due to 
 the progress of bibliography ? 
 
 If, to conclude, instead of repeating with certain 
 morose or too short-sighted moralists, that the world 
 grows daily more corrupt, we perceive, in a future 
 doubtless still too distant, that happy time when 
 reason and nature shall make their voices heard and 
 respected in the one hemisphere and the other; 
 when truth shall triumph over all the phantoms of 
 error; when the liberty of united peoples shall 
 henceforward be safe from those deadly attacks, 
 those grievous revolutions, which devour whole 
 generations ; when the morality of nature shall over- 
 turn all the ensanguined altars of a dreadful super- 
 stition to establish the simple, uniform, universal 
 
(8) 
 
 worship of virtues useful to the great family of man- 
 kind; when all the barriers, moral, political, and 
 religious that separate the nations shall be over- 
 thrown, we must expect these marvels as a result of 
 the fertilizing light spread abroad by bibliography. 
 
 These advantages, perceived by thinking men, 
 were coveted by all the celebrated peoples of antiq- 
 uity. Everyone knows that King Ismandes ( ^ ) conse- 
 crated the interior chambers of the most famous of 
 Egyptian palaces to the preservation of the first 
 library of the universe and that on the portal of this 
 palace of learning were inscribed these words, 
 in Greek: The Pharmacy of the Soul 
 
 If, among the usurpers of supreme power, there 
 are some whose names seem less horrifying than 
 others in the memories of free men, we may count 
 among them Pisistratus, to whom we should give 
 credit, not only for respecting the person of the sage 
 Solon when he destroyed his work, but especially 
 for being the first to form a precious library at 
 Athens. 
 
 Who would have believed it? The imbecile 
 Xerxes, madly jealous though he was of the glory 
 
 (1) Or Osymandes. This was a great triumph over the hiero- 
 phants, who had carefully hidden the books and the sources of 
 knowledge. Hieroglyphic writing was long employed only in 
 order that everything might remain a mystery to the people which 
 all the members of the same social organization have a right to 
 know and an interest in knowing. 
 
(9) 
 
 of Athens, respected the Hbrary that Pisistratus had 
 founded, and piously transported it to Persia, whence 
 it was returned by the Seleucidae to the sacred en- 
 closure of its original home. 
 
 Honor to this immortal soil of Greece, the soil 
 of science and the arts ! where even the despots, 
 dominated by public opinion, prided themselves 
 upon preserving and embellishing the repositories 
 of learning, and upon thus tacitly recognizing the 
 crimes of tyranny, the rights of the people, and the 
 noble principles of liberty. 
 
 The most powerful princes did not think that to 
 seek and to collect the works of literature was the 
 least brilliant of the enterprises entrusted to their 
 ambitious grandeur. The most celebrated men, after 
 having drawn a part of their excellence therefrom, 
 made it their glory and their pleasure to multiply 
 the sources of bibliography. 
 
 Alexander, nourished on the fine arts of Greece, 
 devoted a rich jewel of the kings of Persia to the 
 preservation of the rarest product of the human 
 mind, the Iliad. This same conqueror used his 
 treasures, and the genius of his tutor, in collecting 
 the works of nature and of philosophy from every 
 place on the earth which he traversed in triumph. 
 
 The Ptolemys, his worthy successors in Egypt, 
 immortalized themselves by a bibliographical collec- 
 tion, known as the Alexandrian Library. How many 
 
(10) 
 
 tears, during almost nineteen centuries, have been 
 drawn from the eyes of scholars by the impious 
 flames which, under the triumvirate of Caesar and 
 Pompey, devoured this valuable library, a library 
 which, in more modern times, when a new collection, 
 larger if not more precious than the first, had been 
 formed of its fragments and the fruits of several 
 centuries, served as food for the fanatical pyres 
 which were lighted by the fierce Omar ! 
 
 But, turning our affrighted gaze from the dreadful 
 outrages of despotism and superstition, those eter- 
 nal enemies of knowledge and of nations, let us 
 carry it rapidly over the illustrious friends and the 
 founders of bibliographical monuments. 
 
 On the shores of the Propontis I see the learned 
 Philetaerus, chief of the Attalids, founding a brilliant 
 empire and bringing together the famous library of 
 Pergamos, which taught the celebrated Attalus the 
 secret of being happier on the throne through the 
 possession of intellectual wealth than through that 
 of the immense treasures which prolonged 
 economy secured for him. 
 
 Paulus ^milius, philosopher and warrior, tri- 
 umphs over the unhappy Perseus, the last king of 
 Macedonia. Rare and innumerable riches are laid 
 at his feet. Paulus y^milius has them carried to the 
 public treasury; but the library he causes to be 
 transported carefully to Rome, as the most precious 
 
(11) 
 
 heritage he could bequeath to his children. It is in 
 the time of this great man, and by virtue of his ex- 
 ample, that books multiply in Rome, and give birth 
 to the taste for learning and for bibliography. 
 
 Who has not heard boasts about the immense 
 domains, the sumptuous table, of Lucullus ? But is 
 it as well known that this Roman general owed his 
 military successes to his love and study of books? 
 Is it as well known that he owed to the good use 
 of his vast library the beloved and illustrious 
 name that he left among the beaux esprits and the 
 distinguished personages of the Roman Republic?!^) 
 
 Pompey had a passionate love for books, and dis- 
 cerned the inaptitude of a tutor in his badly chosen 
 library. 
 
 Asinius Pollio, virtuous and learned republican as 
 well as famous warrior, was the first to establish 
 public libraries in Rome. It was in the bosom of his 
 own, enriched by the rarest books, that he forgot the 
 grandeurs and splendors that attend public office, 
 and disdained the friendship of Octavius, the 
 oppressor of Roman liberty. 
 
 Octavius, after becoming the Emperor Augustus, 
 
 ( 1 ) Cicero and Cato the Elder often buried themselves in the 
 library of Lucullus ; and Cicero says that Cato, in the midst of 
 so many volumes, seemed a helluo libroruvi : a devourer of 
 books. 
 
 Cicero himself tells us that he saved the profits of his harvests 
 to buy the library of Atticus. 
 
(12) 
 
 thought to win oblivion for the crimes of the trium- 
 virate by protecting letters and scholars. The most 
 solemn proof that he gave of his love for the fine 
 arts was the care he took to bring together a public 
 library in the temple of Apollo Palatine. 
 
 The Roman Empire falls into decadence, and with 
 it is entombed the taste for bibliography. Every- 
 where swarms of ignorant barbarians carry fire and 
 the sword, servitude or death, and, finally, that igno- 
 rance which is in itself more deadly than all these 
 horrible scourges. The wellsprings of bibliography 
 are dried up, and still more often are poisoned by the 
 ministrants of superstition or tyranny. 
 
 Despite the laudable endeavors of Charlemagne in 
 the cause of letters, learning remained concentrated 
 in the depths of the monasteries, and what sort of 
 learning was that which had as its guides only the 
 systematic enemies of reason and nature ! As the 
 art of writing no longer existed except in the hands 
 of a small number of monks, day by day biblio- 
 graphy lost some of its ancient riches ; and, owing 
 to the great cost of simple manuscripts of a few 
 pages, sovereigns alone were able to collect them 
 and in scanty numbers only. ( ^ ) Moreover, as the 
 mystical subtleties of a few theologians occupied, 
 by preference, the idleness of the monks, the 
 
 ( 1 ) Antony of Palermo sold his house to buy a manuscript of 
 Livy. 
 
(13) 
 
 masterpieces of Greece and Rome languished in the 
 corners of innumerous ill-ordered libraries. What 
 am I saying ! Scarcely a monastic superior could be 
 found who did not claim merit, after the example of 
 Gregory I, for the destruction of what he called 
 pagan authors ; and it was thus that almost all cele- 
 brated works were mutilated, and came near to 
 being wholly wrested from the clasp of immortality. 
 Ah ! can the treasures that escaped from this terri- 
 ble persecution of the centuries of ignorance ever 
 console us for those that were devoured ? 
 
 But there shines a ray of hope for the eyes of 
 philosophers. The fall of the Empire of the East 
 pours into Europe a great number of learned men 
 and the sources of knowledge. Enriched by the 
 spoils of the conquered, and by a very widely 
 extended commerce, the Arabs, satiated with luxury, 
 are no longer, as were their ancestors, ignorant 
 satellites of the fierce Omar, but are friends of the 
 fine arts. The three parts of the known world 
 receive from the hands of these warrior-traders 
 the germs of philosophy and the cult of poetry 
 and agreeable talents. 
 
 At last thou appearest, happy Gutenberg, aided 
 by thine immortal colleagues, Faust and Schoffer. 
 From your presses, furnished with characters cut 
 in wood, come masterpieces, which surpass the 
 beautiful script of the fourteenth century, and which 
 
(14) 
 
 still amaze the great masters of typographic art ! 
 May your names, inscribed upon the temple of 
 memory, ever-more be cherished by the lovers of 
 bibliography ! 
 
 The mind of man takes a new flight ; ignorance 
 trembles at the fading of the shadows that hide its 
 hideous nudity, its despicable folly. The springs of 
 knowledge multiply ; the Roman clergy is no longer 
 for Europe that which the mysterious hierophants 
 were for ancient Egypt. Men of all ranks, of all con- 
 ditions, acquire a taste for learning; universities, 
 academies, colleges, learned associations, every- 
 where open the sources of instruction. Learning 
 promotes learning : the nobility, formerly honored 
 for its ignorance, embellishes its 'châteaux' with bib- 
 liographical collections when once the father of 
 philosophy in France, Michel Montaigne, has 
 taught it great lessons and set it a great example. 
 
 Charles VIII founds the library of the 'College de 
 Navarre,' the oldest known to literary France. 
 Brought up in this college, the renowned Cardinal 
 d'Ailly bequeaths to it a portion of his possessions, 
 and the most precious of all, his library. 
 
 Francis I, rightly called the father of Letters and 
 the Fine Arts, who treated as an equal the cele- 
 brated Raphael, founds the 'College Royale' and the 
 library which has served as the first foundation of 
 the ' Bibliothèque Nationale.' 
 
(15) 
 
 Nevertheless, great obstacles still barred the 
 advance of bibliography. Philosophy, far from pre- 
 siding over the collections that were being formed, 
 groaned under the system of proscriptions adopted 
 by the court of Christian Rome. The Index of the 
 popes was, perhaps, more hurtful to the progress of 
 bibliography, at the time of the renaissance of let- 
 ters, than the flames, which for six months warmed 
 with heaps of volumes the baths of Alexandria. 
 But a moral power arose, rivalling that of the 
 popes ; the opinions of men were divided between 
 Rome and Geneva; and thenceforward the Index 
 became, for the opposing party, a sure means 
 of recognizing and searching for those products 
 of the mind that religious despotism wished to 
 annihilate. Thus, amid the deplorable dissensions 
 which, for more than two centuries, bred the mis- 
 fortunes of our Catholic or Huguenot forefathers, 
 philosophy, silently intent upon the preparation of 
 the remedies that could heal the ills of the human 
 mind, gathered and conserved, in the libraries of the 
 leaders of various factions, the precious works that 
 gave umbrage to intolerance. 
 
 The instance of the learned David Ancillon, pastor 
 of Metz, deserves to be cited. In the silence of 
 unremitting study, Ancillon had collected, during 
 the course of forty-four years, thousands of books 
 and manuscripts, spending among them the greater 
 
(16) 
 
 part of his life. Above all, he sought for first 
 editions, and counted in his rich collection specimens 
 of the earliest great masters of typography. ( ^ ) 
 
 The Edict of Nantes is revoked; Ancillon, pro- 
 scribed, is forced to fly, to steal away from his books, 
 to tear himself from the arms of his friends. His 
 library falls a prey to swarms of covetous or igno- 
 rant men. But, happily, foreseeing this horrible 
 stroke of despotism, Ancillon had removed from his 
 retreat, and sent to a safe sanctuary those of his 
 books which royal or religious intolerance would 
 have devoured. 
 
 But, indeed, what could all the strivings of super- 
 stitious sects and ignorant despots then effect 
 against the torrents of enlightenment which, day by 
 day, flowed from the typographical press? The 
 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries rescued from 
 obscurity, and multiplied the works of the ancients ; 
 hosts of profoundly learned men seemed to emerge 
 from the schools of Aristotle and Plato, of Seneca, 
 Plutarch, and Quintilian. If bibliography was then 
 burdened with voluminous and oftentimes formless 
 productions, at least it found, in these indefatigable 
 writers, diligent hands, which gleaned with respect 
 everything that lettered antiquity had passed on to 
 
 ( 1 ) Bayle was for first editions, saying that here is the first 
 thought of the author, while the corrections of later editions 
 afford highly instructive lessons. 
 
(17) 
 
 us athwart the revolutions of centuries and of 
 empires. 
 
 The seventeenth century was for bibliography a 
 century of conquests, or, it may better be said, of the 
 most abundant harvests. All the empires of Europe, 
 all the cities, all the cantons, all the societies, had 
 their own libraries ; and that which, in the erudite 
 family of the Fuggers, ( ^ ) the preceding century had 
 offered as a marvel, now became common, almost 
 necessary, to all well-to-do citizens. 
 
 What, in conclusion, shall we say of our own cen- 
 tury, when the sources of bibliography, accessible 
 on every side, offer even to children the milk of 
 knowledge and the chance to be, at eighteen years 
 of age, richer in deeds than the too-famous Pico della 
 Mirandola was in words, and to seem, more truly 
 than the learned Thomas Dempster, great talking 
 libraries ? 
 
 But here let us pause to bless the French Revolu- 
 tion, one of the most precious benefits of which has 
 been the giving to bibliography all the latitude, and 
 all the liberty that philosophy for a long time had 
 claimed for itself. Henceforward one and another 
 wellspring of knowledge will no longer be sealed ; 
 
 ( 1 ) One of these, named Huldric Fugger, owned a library the 
 books of which equalled the stars in number. His relatives tried 
 to have him put under restraint, but the sentence was annulled. 
 He bequeathed his library to the Elector Palatine. 
 
(18) 
 
 ignorance will no longer condemn to exile, to pro- 
 scription, the native products of genius ; despotism 
 will no longer devote to the flames the conceptions 
 of free men; nor will superstition again erect, 
 between books and men, those barriers which stood 
 formidable for too long a time. ( ^ ) 
 
 ( 1 ) Now, it is the philosophers who are proscribed under 
 ignorant and ferocious emperors ; again, it is Aristotle who, after 
 being the rival of theologians, is condemned as a source of 
 heresy. There, it is Galileo who, as Voltaire humorously 
 remarks, begs pardon for being right with regard to the move- 
 ments of celestial bodies ; here, it is Voltaire himself who, in his 
 supposed quality of atheist, is forced, like Descartes, to seek a new 
 fatherland. 
 
(19) 
 
 PART THE SECOND 
 Of the Librarian 
 
 First Section 
 What the Librarian should be; His Attainments 
 
 We must grant, however, that these many benefits 
 gain a new degree of usefulness when enlightened 
 directors preside over the sacred repositories of 
 bibliography. A public library is like the mines of 
 Potosi, which hold in their bosom the metallic riches 
 that feed the industry of nations ; and a librarian is 
 the skilful mineralogist who has explored all the 
 veins of the mines ; who knows and indicates those 
 that are abundant or sterile, useful or dangerous ; 
 who prescribes the excavations required for suc- 
 cessful working ; and, lastly, who classifies the divers 
 metals, and prepares them for the crucible. 
 
 If all librarians have not the wide knowledge and 
 the gifts of a Demetrius Phalereus, to whom the 
 Ptolemys confided the direction of the Alexandrian 
 Library, it must still be felt that the important 
 functions they exercise demand attainments that 
 are not common. The knowledge and the methods 
 
(20) 
 
 of a librarian should be like the table which, at the 
 beginning of a book, co-ordinates all its contents. 
 
 To understand the origin and the filiation of 
 human acquirements, the ties and fraternal affinities 
 that unite among themselves all the mechanical or 
 liberal arts; to be able to follow from century to 
 century, from age to age, the chronology of authors 
 and artists; to know what riches of intellect, of 
 genius, of talent, belong to this or that nation, so that 
 all the periods beloved by philosophy and literature 
 present themselves distinctly to the memory, so that 
 the times of Homer and Thaïes, of Bias and Solon, 
 that of Pindar and Euripides, of Demosthenes and 
 Isocrates, of Socrates and Plato, of Thucydides and 
 Xenophon, of Meton and Hippocrates, of Phidias and 
 Apelles, and, again, that of Aratus and of Phocion, 
 of Epicurus, Zeno, Menander, Archimedes, and The- 
 ocritus, do not fall into an embarrassing confusion, 
 so that the reigns of Alexander, of the Ptolemys, of 
 the Attalids may show with great clearness the 
 boundaries that circumscribed their intellectual 
 patrimony; to follow among the Romans the progress 
 of their knowledge more scrupulously than that 
 of their arms, from the time when they had adopted 
 the arts of the Etruscans and, with reprehensible 
 jealousy, had destroyed the precious monuments 
 which these children of ancient Greece had erected 
 in the time of their prosperity; to pass from the essays 
 
(21) 
 
 of Ennius, of Lucilius, of Plautus, of Cato the Censor, 
 to the immortal creations of Lucretius, of Catullus, 
 Terence, Julius Caesar, Sallust, and the prince of 
 eloquence; to perceive, quickly following these, their 
 renowned rivals, a Horace, a Virgil, a Livy, a Phae- 
 drus, all those, in fact, who lent the brilliance of their 
 glory to the Age of Augustus ; to separate from these 
 last, by a line of demarcation, a Pliny, a Seneca, a 
 Lucan, a Tacitus, a Martial, a Quintilian, a Ptolemy, 
 a Papinian, a Vitruvius ; to know how to distinguish, 
 in the thick shadows of an ignorance due to the 
 barbarian irruptions, the precious gleams diffused 
 along the literary horizon by a Boëthius, a Cassiodo- 
 rus, a Procopius, and a Symmachus, by the reigns of 
 Charlemagne and of Alfred the Great, by Avicenna, 
 by Abélard and his Héloise, by Averroës, Robert de 
 Sorbonne, Matthew of Paris, Albertus Magnus, 
 Roger Bacon, Jean de Meung, Lullius, Dante, Join- 
 ville, P. de Cugnières, Daniello Bartoli, Boccac- 
 cio, and Petrarch and by Wycliffe, Froissart, 
 Pierre d'Ailly, Leonardo Aretin, and Poggio; to 
 gather among the Arabs, grown all-powerful in 
 Europe, Asia, and Africa, the literary monuments 
 and especially the poetical works begotten by the 
 genius of the Orient in the different parts of their 
 vast domains : all this is the first and the most solid 
 foundation upon which the librarian should erect 
 the edifice of his attainments. 
 
(22) 
 
 The revolution produced in bibliography at the 
 end of the ages of ignorance by the wonderful 
 invention of Gutenberg increases the labors of the 
 director while making them easier. Step by step, he 
 follows the literary generations that rapidly succeed 
 one another. Bessarion, Antony of Palermo, Juvenal 
 des Ursins, and Villon open for him this great vista. 
 Then he sees the entry of Agricola, Boiardo, Politian; 
 and, following in their steps, bringing the fifteenth 
 century to its close, Calepino, Christopher Colum- 
 bus, Philippe de Comines, Despautère, Saint-Gelais, 
 Joseph Pontano, and Pomponazzi the sceptic. 
 
 What joys the succeeding century offers him! 
 What a harvest for his memories ! What precious 
 monuments for his bibliographical shelves ! What 
 radiance does the century of Frances I and Leo X 
 shed abroad in the world ! 
 
 Three periods or generations compose this cen- 
 tury of resuscitated learning : the period of Francis 
 I, that of Henry II, and that of Henry IV. 
 
 During the first period, Paracelsus, Erasmus, 
 Agrippa, appear in philosophy; Ariosto, Bembo, 
 Marot, Sannazaro, in poetry ; Guillaume du Bellay, 
 Macchiavelli, Thomas More, in politics ; Copernicus, 
 Fernando Cortez, Ferdinand Magellan, in scientific 
 discovery; Mantegna, Raphael, in the arts; and 
 Guicciardini, Aldus Manutius, Paulus ^milius and 
 Polydore Virgil, in history. 
 
(23) 
 
 Robert Estienne presides over the second period, 
 which is illumined by such men of learning as 
 de Thou, Julius Caesar Scaliger, Giovio, Fracastor, 
 and Paulus Jovius ; by agreeable poets like Pietro 
 Aretino, Trissino, Pibrac, and Margaret of Navarre ; 
 by Michel de L'Hôpital, the model of legislators, in 
 days of crimes and storms ; by Zabarella, the bold 
 philosopher, near the faggots of the Inquisition ; by 
 Buchanan, Danes, Cardan, Rabelais, and Muret, 
 estimable literary men; by Michelangelo, one 
 of the eagles of the art of painting, who nevertheless 
 does not eclipse the radiance with which a Titian 
 or a Paul Veronese shines in the temple of memory. 
 
 During the period of the good Henry, Clio presents 
 on behalf of history Jacques Amiot, du Bartas, 
 Baronius, Aldus Manutius the Younger ; on behalf 
 of politics, Bodin and Sully ; on behalf of learned 
 and chronological research, Justus Lipsius, Joseph 
 Scaliger, and Gerard Vossius ; and on behalf of juris- 
 prudence, Guy Coquille and Cujas. Euterpe gaily 
 advances, holding by the hand Bernardo Tasso; 
 Terpsichore moves with measured steps, repeating 
 some of the songs of Régnier, Desportes, and Pas- 
 serat. Erato, with her lyre, leans upon Etienne 
 Pasquier and Beza. Urania measures the skies with 
 Tycho Brahe ; and Nicot, who upon the earth fol- 
 lows their course, brings to France the powder that 
 receives his name. Polyhymnia, escorted by a 
 
(24) 
 
 throng of artists and philologists, smiles upon Anni- 
 bale Carracci, Christophe Plantin, Henri Estienne, 
 upon the brothers Pithou, Michel Montaigne, 
 and Pierre Charron. Calliope lends her heroic 
 trumpet to Torquato Tasso and de Camoëns. And 
 Thalia and Melpomene, soaring above the rude 
 and ridiculous theatres which our pious ancestors 
 then erected to them, imperatively call upon the 
 scene the great masters of dramatic art. Soon their 
 long widowhood shall be gloriously consoled by the 
 modern equals of a Sophocles and a Terence. 
 
 But let us pause at the entrance of the seventeenth 
 century. However glorious for the human mind may 
 be the immense list of names supplied us by the 
 reigns of Louis XIII and Louis XIV, however opulent 
 for bibliography, agreeable to the memory, seductive 
 to the imagination, and, finally, however dear to 
 august philosophy, we cannot present it here without 
 falling into a fatiguing monotony ; but we may sup- 
 pose that the librarian knows all the robust and 
 perennial plants that adorn the forests of biblio- 
 graphy, from the humble, greenish heather to the 
 majestic oaks that hide their foreheads in the clouds. 
 
 Beginning with the period of the reign of Louis 
 XIII, floods of light are seen streaming from all 
 parts of Europe. England prides herself upon her 
 Francis Bacon, her William Camden, her Shake- 
 speare ; Scotland, upon Barclay ; the Netherlands, 
 
(25) 
 
 upon Van Dyck, Grotius, Daniel Heinsius; Italy 
 glories in Tommaso Campanella, Davila, Guido 
 Reni, Domenichino, Galileo, Guarini, and the Cheva- 
 lier Marini; Spain, in Cervantes and Lope de 
 Vega ; Germany grows illustrious through Johannes 
 Kepler and Peter-Paul Rubens; Geneva, through 
 Isaac Casaubon ; and, lastly, France prepares the 
 dazzling splendor of the next generations with the 
 lyre of Malherbe and Brébeuf, with the telescope of 
 Descartes and Gassendi, with the quiet lamp of 
 such as Mersenne, Pétau, Naudé, Salmasius, and 
 Sainte-Marthe, with the mirror of La Mothe le 
 Vayer and Pascal, with the burin of a J. Aug. de 
 Thou, a Brantôme, a Rapin de Thoyras, with the 
 pen of a Voiture and a Vaugelas, with the buskin of 
 Jean de Rotrou, with the flageolet of Scarron and 
 Sarrasin, with the scales of Nicholas Sanson, and 
 even with the pegs of Maître Adam Billaut. 
 
 However extensive, however fatiguing, the knowl- 
 edge of this nomenclature may be for the librarian, 
 if he knows authors and their works only by the 
 titles they bear, like those pompous ignoramuses of 
 whom Seneca speaks, he will continually find him. 
 self unequal to his duties, and will be no more use- 
 ful to the progress of knowledge in his country than 
 the sentinel stationed by the police near national 
 monuments. 
 
 Thus to know the main thoughts and the systems 
 
(26) 
 
 of authors ; to be a stranger to none of the hberal 
 arts or sciences ; to possess precise ideas about the 
 principal ancient and modern languages ; to ignore 
 none of the revolutions that the works of the mind 
 have undergone, and none of those diverse editions 
 which have given them a new life : such must be the 
 intelligent director whom his fellowcitizens have 
 thought worthy to supervise the repository of 
 learning. 
 
 But, above all, with how much ardor must the 
 qualified director be able to question the most dis- 
 tinguished bibliographers and the typographers to 
 whom the human mind owes the perfectioning of 
 the marvelous art of Printing ! With what care and 
 pains must he offer to his fellowcitizens the rare 
 first efforts of Faust, Schoffer, and Gutenberg in 
 Germany ; the learned editions of the Estiennes in 
 France; those of Robert Estienne and Conrard 
 Badius at Geneva, of the brothers Simon of Paris, of 
 Robert Constantin of Caen, and of that Josse Badius 
 to whom typographic art owes, if not the invention, 
 at all events the familiar use, of round Roman types 
 instead of the Gothic types that were more gener- 
 ally employed ; the still more elegant examples of 
 the four Elzevir brothers, whose presses immortal- 
 ized the cities of Leyden and Amsterdam ; those of 
 the Vatican under the direction of the Alduses 
 and Paul Manutius of Venice and of that Michel 
 
(27) 
 
 Vascosan, associate of the Badiuses and the Esti- 
 ennes, who, by beauty of type and paper and of 
 marginal spaces, and by exactness of impression, 
 won for himself a distinguished name in a forever 
 memorable family. 
 
 Nevertheless, his love for these earliest typo- 
 graphic masterpieces is not an idolatry that weakens 
 his admiration for their famous successors. The 
 Creeches, the Maittaires, the Baskervilles of Lon- 
 don, enable him but to appreciate more justly the 
 talents of Sigismond Havercamp of Leyden, of the 
 Barbous of Limoges and Paris, of the Cousteliers, of 
 the Baudoins upon whom France prides herself, 
 and above all of the Didots whose stereotyped 
 editions must effect a happy revolution, and mark a 
 memorable epoch, in bibliography and typographic 
 art. 
 
 Aided by the catalogue of the most renowned 
 printers, he will be able to distinguish true and pure 
 editions from adulterated counterfeits. Further- 
 more, will not his steps be guided by those erudite 
 bibliographers whom he takes pains to interrogate 
 in regard to the editions as well as to the merits and 
 the intelligence of authors ? — for example, Casau- 
 bon, librarian of Henry IV, as distinguished for his 
 learning as for his candor and tolerance in a 
 century of religious wars; Claude François Si- 
 mon, printer and author, learned in mythological 
 
(28) 
 
 researches ; the brothers Pithou, respected in a time 
 of factions and hatreds for their learning, their pro- 
 bity, and their distinguished talents in the magis- 
 tracy ; the brothers Henri and Adrien Valois, biblio- 
 graphers of France ; Denis Lambin, that scrupulous 
 commentator; and that Adrien Turnèbe whom 
 several neighboring peoples tried to take away from 
 France so that they might profit by his exquisite 
 gifts for printing and for literature. ( ^ ) 
 
 SECOND SECTION 
 
 Plan and Method of the Librarian 
 
 To present in an easy and luminous order the filia- 
 tion of human acquirements — this should be the 
 whole aim of the methods of a librarian established 
 near an Ecole Centrale. His bibliographical re- 
 sources being not very great, and his means limited, 
 his plan in consequence cannot be as vast as though 
 he presided over one of the repositories of literature 
 which, much larger than those of Alexandria and 
 Pergamos, proclaim with majestic affluence the 
 enlightenment of the whole nation. 
 
 ( 1 ) Turnèbe took so much pleasure in his books that he 
 passed several hours among them on the very day of his mar- 
 riage. 
 
(29) 
 
 I have seen many libraries, public and private, 
 but none that showed me, at a single glance, even a 
 few of those great results which delight the imagi- 
 nation, nourish an enquiring spirit, and preclude 
 mental delusions. 
 
 I have seen prodigal opulence, with no other aim 
 than to be in fashion, amass volumes bought by the 
 yard, and use them to furnish its pompous apart- 
 ments. Plerisque litterarum ignaris, libri, non stu- 
 diorum instrumenta sunt, sed aedium ornamenta. ( ^ ) 
 
 I have seen the worship of obscure antiquity col- 
 lect its volumes covered with dust or worn by time, 
 prefer the formless and scarcely authentic shreds 
 of Syriac or Hebrew, Etruscan, Arabic, Celtic, Chi- 
 nese, or Gothic literature to the immortal produc- 
 tions of Greece and Rome, bury itself in the biblio- 
 graphy of the fifteenth century and neglect the 
 infinite riches of the seventeenth and eighteenth. 
 
 I have seen caprice and frivolity preferring, with 
 an opposite kind of idolatry, editions brought forth 
 by luxury or blind fashion, and esteeming books 
 only in so far as morocco has lent them its livery, 
 as their edges are double-gilt, as their size is dainty 
 and portable, or, finally, as their assemblage upon 
 costly shelves produces an elegant uniformity. 
 
 ( 1 ) For most of the ignorant, books are not a means of 
 instructing themselves but of adorning their apartments. 
 
(30) 
 
 Ridiculous abuse of learning and of wealth! An 
 ignoscas homini aptanti armaria cedro atque ebore, 
 et inter tot millia librorum, oscitanti, cui voluminum 
 suorum frontes maxime placent ? 
 
 I have seen the half-learned, entombed in immense 
 bibliographical collections, keeping secret with a 
 new sort of charlatanism the distribution and the 
 order they had adopted, moving with a ridiculous 
 arrogance amid their scientific series, and mysteri- 
 ously opening their registers and their alphabetical 
 shelves as in earlier times the hierophants of Egypt, 
 with scrupulous precautions, opened their sacred 
 books and half unveiled their hieroglyphics to Plato 
 and the Pythagoreans. 
 
 There, I have seen monastic sloth, asleep on the 
 enormous folios of the holy fathers and their pon- 
 derous commentators, rouse itself only to condemn 
 to the flames the poems of Horace or the essays of 
 Montaigne. 
 
 Here, I have seen antagonistic sects carrying 
 even into the sanctuaries of bibliography their spirit 
 of intolerance and their horrible systems of excom- 
 munication, Geneva and Rome striving each to 
 
 ( 1 ) What shall one think of a man who builds his shelves of 
 cedar and ivory, and who, idle in the midst of several thousands 
 of volumes, values his books only for their titles and their 
 frontispieces ? 
 
(31) 
 
 exclude the other from these vestibules of the tem- 
 ple of memory, the fiery Calvin repulsing the vol- 
 uptuous Leo X and being, in his turn, excommuni- 
 cated by him, the famous society that produced 
 Pétaus, Rapins, Vanières, and Bourdaloues refusing 
 to share the same horizon with the learned authors 
 of Port-Royal, and vice versa. 
 
 Just now I have seen Ignorance, calling itself the 
 friend of Liberty and pluming itself upon a blind 
 patriotism, repudiate or even destroy works 
 fathered by the friends or famous pensioners of 
 kings, only to take up those born in the bosom of 
 ancient or modem republics, and thus unfortunately 
 provoke a charge of vandalism against the wise 
 friends of the Republic. ( ^ ) 
 
 ( 1 ) This may be said without adopting the hypocritical wail 
 of some of the half-learned, who, creating or reviving this word 
 vandalism, have tried to justify their hatred of the Revolution. 
 Here is something that happened to me. An officer of the Rev- 
 olutionary Guard, as ignorant as he was sincere, came to my 
 house and, with a stroke of his sword, destroyed a beautiful 
 print by Sebastien Leclerc, representing an evangelical subject 
 Arriving at the moment when he was about to lay hands upon 
 others, I made him understand the merits of these works and the 
 respect due to the fine arts, and since then the arts have had no 
 more zealous defender. Is not this ignorance, which has caused 
 disasters so great in the realm of letters and fine arts, one more 
 crime to be imputed to the ancien r^/we rather than to the pat- 
 riots? Let us take care not to adopt without commentary words 
 which the antagonists of philosophy and liberty have employed 
 against them. 
 
(32) 
 
 Lastly, and still more often, I have seen the parti- 
 sans of royalty and the, tools of superstition renew- 
 ing in their ancestral libraries the criminal excesses 
 of the fierce Omar, of domineering popes, of the 
 fanatical Sorbonne, and of Séguier the parliamen- 
 tarian, by proscribing the immortal works of philos- 
 ophy and the ardent pages of republicanism. 
 
 It is evident that a librarian superior to religious 
 prejudices, to exclusive systems, to the fantasies of 
 luxury and the pettinesses of semi-erudition will 
 not adopt any of these methods, which tend to. nar- 
 row instead of widening the limits of human intelli- 
 gence. The librarian, like the historian, belongs to 
 his own country but is the friend of all others. He 
 is not the priest of any faith, the minister of any 
 sect, the chief of any faction, the initiate of any 
 coterie, the adept or candidate of any academy, the 
 idolatrous partisan of any system. 
 
 O you who are called to govern any of the tem- 
 ples consecrated to the sciences and the fine arts, 
 imbue yourself with the importance of your func- 
 tions ; let your mind be filled with great and liberal 
 ideas ; and, to this end, come to the capital of the 
 world of thought, to enjoy the enchanting specta- 
 cles offered you by the monuments of science and 
 art, those august sanctuaries where the genius of 
 the Buffons, the Daubentons, the des Thouins, the 
 Davids and Lenoirs, still presides. 
 
(33) 
 
 Behold, in galleries more magnificently adorned 
 by the native products of all climes and of every 
 element than they could be by the dazzling profuse- 
 ness of luxury, behold how the riches of nature pre- 
 sent themselves in orderly array to the eager gaze 
 of the spectator ! Behold how orders, classes, genera, 
 species, families, distinguish the insect and the 
 reptile from their like, the bird from the bird, the 
 quadruped from the quadruped, the fish from the 
 amphibian! Behold the surprising contrasts that 
 Nature shows! How she differentiates climates! 
 What brilliancy she gives to the diamonds of Gol- 
 conda and Visapour! What charming variations 
 her brush paints upon the shells of Oriental seas I To 
 what great size she raises the insect and the reptile 
 of America in comparison with the correspond- 
 ing families of Europe! One might say that the 
 fable of the frog who tried to grow as large as the 
 ox has finally been realized. 
 
 If from the temple of Nature you pass to that of the 
 fine arts, ( ^ ) although this monument truly worthy 
 
 ( 1 ) The Street and the House of the Petits-Angusthis at Paris 
 under the direction of Lenoir. I know this estimable citizen only 
 by the grand and simple plan he has adopted, and it is because 
 of the feeling of admiration he inspires in me that I venture to 
 point out to him that, in his index, he has used the word revolu- 
 tionary in such a way as to provoke disastrous conclusions. It is 
 not befitting in the erudite artist, who in consequence of the 
 
(34) 
 
 of a powerful people is only sketched out, you will 
 be struck by a great, simple, luminous idea directing 
 its learned arrangements. You will see SCULP- 
 TURE in its cradle, growing, waxing strong, per- 
 fecting itself from age to age, and reaching the point 
 to which the CHISEL OF PIGALE has led it. . . 
 
 Each century has a sanctuary which contains its 
 experiments or its masterpieces. Let us hope that 
 in the end this plan, as grand as it is simple, may 
 develop still more grandly, and that, all national 
 predilections being renounced, the masterpieces of 
 ancient peoples and of neighboring nations may be 
 placed beside those of the natives of the soil. 
 
 What delightful moments the librarian must have 
 passed in the bosom of public libraries and, above 
 all, of the 'Bibliothèque Nationale !' ( ^ ) What a pleas- 
 ing ecstasy must have captivated his senses ! What 
 
 Revolution finds himself clothed with a sort of priesthood in the 
 liberal arts, to insinuate that the Revolution and its friends con- 
 spired against the fine arts. 
 
 ( 1 ) Rue de la Loi ( formerly Rue Richelieu ). A painful feel- 
 ing has taken possession of me w^henever I have left this library, 
 seeing the ease with which this superb monument may be 
 destroyed by fire. The police and safety regulations adopted by 
 the late Directory are insufficient. 
 
 Isolate this sacred temple ; let a colonnaded enclosure, porticoes 
 preceded by alleys of trees, by guard-houses, by arenas and 
 gymnasia for bodily exercises, announce and realize the broad 
 views of a perfected government ; or else, fear the fury of a new 
 Erostratus ! 
 
(35) 
 
 useful reflections he must have made upon the meas- 
 ureless reach of the human mind ! 
 
 Place on the loftiest summit of the proud Alps a 
 Buff on, or a Buonaparte ; and, if possible, let your 
 soul identify itself with his soul, in order to enjoy 
 to the full the vast and magnificent spectacle that 
 unrolls itself to his gaze! Verdant plains where 
 numerous herds are pasturing; mountain crests 
 covered with eternal snows; hamlets, villages, 
 towns, cities, countries, empires, governed by differ- 
 ent laws and usages ; ancient forests and dim val- 
 leys ; rocks resting upon the brink of the most ter- 
 rific precipices ; cavernous dens where the bird of 
 prey hides his fierce habits and his hatred for the 
 light ; groves of fig trees, of orange trees, of lemon 
 trees, where birds of varied and brilliant plumage 
 incessantly salute and celebrate the beauties of the 
 dawning day and of the sun sinking below the 
 horizon : such are the most striking beauties that 
 will quicken the thoughts of the philosophic 
 observer whom we have set in the centre of so 
 many marvels. 
 
 But however sublime this spectacle may be, how 
 narrow and circumscribed it is by comparison with 
 the one that absorbs the enlightened man who has 
 directed the arrangement of a bibliographical repos- 
 itory and is acquainted with all its riches ! How all 
 the arts of human industry unfold to his eyes the 
 
(36) 
 
 secrets of their mechanism ! How all the physical, 
 moral, religious, political, and philosophical revolu- 
 tions of our globe succeed one another ! How the 
 nations are born, grow to maturity, flourish, and 
 fall into decadence ! How the divine language of 
 the Homers, Virgils, Voltaires, seems to transport 
 him to a celestial sphere ! How the thunderous and 
 persuasive voice of a Demosthenes, a Cicero, a 
 Mirabeau, compels the attention of the surrounding 
 universe! How he beholds Reaumur and Buffon 
 recording and painting, under the dictation of 
 Nature, the habits of all living things from the 
 republic of the laborious bee to the isolated horde 
 of the monstrous elephant, from the brilliant tribes 
 of the butterfly that lightly caresses the flowers to 
 the innumerous families that soar above the storms ! 
 How he beholds Archimedes taking his lever in 
 hand and preparing to displace the globe on which 
 we live ! 
 
 It is true that not everything suggests to him 
 grand and agreeable ideas, and that the errors of the 
 mind, like the transgressions of the heart, do not 
 form the least voluminous part of bibliography. 
 Thus precipices, the aspect of which makes one 
 tremble, arid rocks, poisons side by side with heal- 
 ing herbs, and serpents hidden under grass and 
 flowers, have offered themselves to the gaze of our 
 observer. But as he quickly turns his attention 
 
(37) 
 
 toward the more satisfactory points of his vast 
 horizon, so Hkewise the Hbrarian hastens there 
 where the aged Theocritus, Virgil, or Gesner gives 
 forth the sweet sounds of his pipe, here where an 
 Anacreon, a Tibullus, a Horace, a Chauheu, a Ber- 
 nard, softly sings the verses that amorous Erato 
 inspires, or, farther again, where Lucian and Apu- 
 lius, Swift and Sterne, Rabelais, Montesquieu, 
 Lesage, and Marmontel enchant those who harken 
 to their witty conversations and their allegorical 
 lessons. 
 
 To procure for itself solid pleasures a cultivated 
 spirit does not confine itself to rapid surveys; it 
 subjects its meditations to a methodical variety. 
 This useful method should result, at least I think 
 so, from the plan which I propose for the classifica- 
 tion of my bibliographical collection. 
 
 From the heroic times where we place the first 
 rivulets of knowledge, the first essays of arts and 
 of talents, down to our own day, including in the 
 heroic period the obscure centuries with which the 
 Chinese, the Indians, the Egyptians, Assyrians, and 
 Chaldaeans compose their early history — this long 
 interval I divide into fourteen epochs noteworthy 
 for bibliography : 
 
(38) 
 
 FIRST EPOCH 
 
 Homer, the father of poets and the marvel of his 
 century, is the first to present himself in this great 
 vista. 
 
 SECOND EPOCH 
 
 Alexander the great, revenging Greece, pro- 
 tecting and enriching the fine arts, but oppressing 
 liberty. 
 
 THIRD EPOCH 
 
 Paulus ^milius, transporting to Rome the 
 treasures of Perseus and notably the library of 
 Macedonia. 
 
 FOURTH EPOCH 
 
 Augustus, surrounded by the fine arts, command- 
 ing for forty years all the known world. 
 
 FIFTH EPOCH 
 
 Marcus Aurelius, seating philosophy upon the 
 throne of the Caesars. 
 
 SIXTH EPOCH 
 
 Omar I, the fanatical conqueror, burning the 
 famous library of Alexandria and wishing to substi- 
 tute for all bibliographical riches the Koran alone. 
 
(39) 
 
 SEVENTH EPOCH 
 
 Charlemagne, contending with a monastic lamp 
 against the thick shadows of his century and of those 
 that followed. 
 
 EIGHTH EPOCH 
 
 Gutenberg, in concert with Faust and Schoffer, 
 creating typographic art, with the aid of which we 
 have so many times centupled the resources of 
 bibliography. 
 
 NINTH EPOCH 
 
 Francis I and Leo X, bringing about the renais- 
 sance of the fine arts. 
 
 TENTH EPOCH 
 
 Richelieu, conversing in regard to learning with 
 the first forty fathers of the French Academy. 
 
 ELEVENTH EPOCH 
 
 Louis XIV, proudly offering to the celebrated men 
 of Greece and Rome rivals worthy of these famous 
 republics. 
 
 TWELFTH EPOCH 
 
 Voltaire, scrawling on the walls of the Bastille 
 the first drafts of the Henriade. 
 
(40) 
 
 THIRTEENTH EPOCH 
 
 Voltaire, crowned at Paris, descending into the 
 tomb at the age of eighty-four. 
 
 FOURTEENTH EPOCH 
 
 As the thirteenth epoch should include the immor- 
 tal annals of the Revolution, nothing in which 
 should be confounded with ordinary events, I think 
 that it should be brief and should terminate with the 
 end of this Revolution, which astounded the world 
 and must some day ameliorate its condition. Thus 
 may the fourteenth epoch entitle itself in this 
 manner ! 
 
 Buonaparte, friend of the arts and of scholars, 
 consolidating the French Republic and giving peace 
 to Europe. 
 
 Once I have formed the chronological framework 
 of my bibliography, I pass to the classification of 
 subjects, putting in a uniform order, which embraces 
 successively all my epochs, the various subjects and 
 the authors who have treated of them. 
 
 In the gallery containing a given epoch and a 
 given subject the prose writers have their shelves 
 distinct from those of the poets ; and so it is with 
 originals and translations, with pamphlets and 
 bound volumes, with printed books and manu- 
 scripts. This is the only sacrifice of the sort that I 
 
(41) 
 
 make in favor of appearances, for no such detail as 
 the neatness of bindings or the form of editions, it 
 seems to me, should turn the director away from 
 the order that he has begun to adopt. 
 
 His shelves are prepared, his galleries distributed, 
 according to epochs; and, like the spirit which, in 
 the system of the Hebrews, disembroiled the chaos 
 of the world, the director, placed in the midst of 
 bibliographical treasures confusedly scattered, 
 assigns to each author and to each of his works the 
 sphere which, by his intelligence, he himself has 
 created in the literary world. 
 
 The order of subjects that I propose is not the 
 same as that adopted by the learned men who have 
 classified and generalized knowledge, but I have 
 based it, in so far as I have thought it possible to do 
 so, upon the birth and progress of the arts and of 
 civilization. I have also approximated to the order 
 established in most of the national Gymnasia, con- 
 secrated to the instruction of youth. 
 
 FIRST DIVISION 
 
 AGRICULTURE 
 Who could dispute the right of Agriculture to that 
 first rank which I give it — Agriculture, which has 
 given birth to all the arts and, in some sort, has cre- 
 ated nations and governments? I distinguish it, 
 
(42) 
 
 furthermore, from the other arts because, in itself, 
 it is a more abundant bibhographical source than 
 all the others combined. I unite it with COM- 
 MERCE because their first elements have always 
 been blended together at the birth of civilizations. 
 
 SECOND DIVISION 
 LANGUA GES AND GRAMMAR IN GENERAL 
 What a prodigiously extended scale the human 
 mind traverses, from the syllabary of childhood to 
 the dictionaries of academies and of the ablest 
 etymologists, from the grammar of the islanders of 
 the South Sea to the logic of Port-Royal and the 
 essay of Locke on human understanding ! 
 
 THIRD DIVISION 
 THE MECHANICAL ARTS 
 
 FOURTH DIVISION 
 THE LIBERAL ARTS 
 There we shall see the young Débutade, as she 
 traces the lineaments of her lover on the wall that 
 held his beloved shadow, bringing to birth one of 
 the first of the fine arts, and, in modern times, 
 Gutenberg inventing the most marvelous, per- 
 haps, of them all, the one by which the thoughts of 
 the learned are preserved as if cast in a mould. 
 
(43) 
 FIFTH DIVISION 
 MATHEMATICS, which include arithmetic, 
 geometry, and mechanics. 
 
 SIXTH DIVISION 
 BELLES-LETTRES, which are composed of all 
 branches of literature, from the Gallic triolet to the 
 Iliad of Homer, from the impetuous harangues of 
 Demosthenes to the humorous allegories of Rabe- 
 lais. 
 
 SEVENTH DIVISION 
 COSMOGRAPHY, which comprises the learned 
 and useful observations of astronomers and geo- 
 graphers. 
 
 EIGHTH DIVISION 
 NATURAL HISTORY, that is, zoology, botany, 
 and mineralogy. 
 
 NINTH DIVISION 
 
 CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS 
 
 In this division is to be found, in the first rank, 
 
 MEDICINE or the art of healing, the principles of 
 
 which must be the same as those of physics (^), at 
 
 least if it is not to degenerate into charlatanism. 
 
 ( 1 ) It is with good reason that, among certain peoples, phys- 
 ics and medicine are held to be the same thing. In English, 
 Physick or Physicks, signifies the science of physics. Physician 
 means a medical man and a physicist. 
 
. (44) 
 TENTH DIVISION 
 THE HISTOR Y OF NA TIONS. The narratives 
 of travelers belong in this division, 
 
 ELEVENTH DIVISION 
 
 LEGISLA TION. Everything that pertains to the 
 science of law, of government, and of political 
 economy, should be included in this division. 
 
 TWELFTH DIVISION 
 
 MORALS 
 
 Here I trace a line of demarcation between works 
 that treat of universal morality and those that con- 
 tain the religious morality of a given sect and the 
 theology of all peoples. 
 
 THIRTEENTH DIVISION 
 PERIODICAL WORKS 
 
 This class, which belongs to modern times, offers 
 so great an abundance of bibliographical riches, in 
 so great a variety of kinds, that I think it needful to 
 assign it a special place in the general collection. 
 
 Here I shall doubtless be asked what place in 
 these divisions I assign to authors who have treated 
 of topics belonging m more than one division. 
 What place, in fact, can be assigned to men who 
 
(45) 
 
 have traversed all the climes of the literary world, 
 leaving there the monuments of an almost universal 
 genius ? I consider in which branch such authors 
 have most brilliantly excelled and I attach them to 
 the division that contains it, but at the end of each 
 division I have an analytical table of the authors 
 whose works, although placed upon other shelves, 
 nevertheless contain some productions that belong 
 to this one. 
 
 Thus I place Aristotle in the second division, at 
 the head of the masters of dialectics, but the sixth 
 division in the alphabetical table recalls his poetics 
 and his rhetoric, the eighth his history of animals, 
 and the twelfth his morals. 
 
 In the same way our immortal Voltaire, placed, as 
 an epic poet, in the sixth division, leaves in all the 
 others monuments of his happy fecundity. 
 
 THIRD SECTION 
 
 DUTIES OF A LIBRARIAN 
 
 Finally, the librarian, imbued with the knowledge, 
 as varied as it is broad, which his functions demand, 
 after establishing in his scientific collection the 
 order that we have merely sketched, must day by 
 day remind himself of the important duties that 
 philosophy and patriotism demand of him. 
 
(46) 
 
 He owes himself to the public and, especially, to 
 the throng of true amateurs who will find in him a 
 talking library, who will draw more aid from his 
 vast and obliging erudition than from his systematic 
 registers, his alphabetical shelves, his numbered 
 series. 
 
 He owes himself to the inquisitive young, eager 
 for instruction, for whom he will be a sure and 
 affable guide, leading them toward the purest and 
 most accessible founts. 
 
 He should be, for the professors of the different 
 schools of his Department, a useful colleague, an 
 enlightened friend, a permanent counsellor working 
 in concert with them for the success of public 
 instruction. 
 
 He owes himself, above all, to the prosperity of 
 his Department, all the riches and resources of 
 which will be known, will be almost familiar, to him. 
 
 Doubtless, there is no longer on French soil a 
 place which has not been vivified by some tutelary 
 genius, which, if a mythological allegory must be 
 borrowed, has not its pénates or local divinities. 
 
 Nièvre ( ^ ), has she not good reason to glorify her- 
 self upon the celebrated men whom she has pro- 
 duced, and could the librarian, without reproach, 
 
 ( 1 ) I could not here speak of all the Departments without 
 falling into tiresome repetitions, but I owe this tribute, as a mark 
 of preference, to the one that witnessed my birth. 
 
(47) 
 
 fail to procure the works of his fellow-citizens ? ( ' ) 
 Thus we shall see appearing in the temple of 
 bibliography of Nièvre : GUY COQUILLE, editor 
 and able commentator upon the customs of our 
 ancestors; ADAM BILLAUT, the poet-carpenter, 
 who has sung so jovially the orgies of friendship ; 
 JEAN BERRYAT, a physician as able as he was 
 modest and estimable ; ROGER DEFILES, in whom 
 painters, authors, and men of business may find a 
 guide and a model ; LE PRESTRE DE VA UBAN, 
 the philosophical and republican warrior to whom 
 France owes her most impregnable fortifications ; 
 BUSSY-RABUTIN, satirical writer and unfortu- 
 nate courtier; RABEAU-LA-CHAUSSADE, the 
 Vulcan of Nièvre ; BROTIER, continuator and suc- 
 cessful rival of Tacitus ; NEE DE LA ROCHELLE, 
 author of a history of his country and of several 
 romances; ROBERT-LE-JEUNE. one of the first 
 aeronauts; THE MANCINI, and notably the 
 former ( and last ) duke of Nivernois, worthy rival 
 of Lafontaine and of Horace. 
 
 Familiar with all kinds of knowledge, the libra- 
 rian will, if necessary, join to the bibliography of his 
 Department a cabinet of medals and antiquities. 
 
 ( 1 ) In most Departmental libraries one would seek in vain 
 for the complete works of native writers. Yet a moderate sum 
 would have procured for amateurs this agreeable possession. 
 
(48) 
 
 geographical collections, a museum of arts and of 
 natural history, and the archives of legislation. 
 Everywhere he will carry the spirit of order and 
 enlightenment that has presided over the arrange- 
 ment of his library. 
 
 What resources a library wisely arranged and 
 directed, and nourished with all the riches that ex- 
 tend the limits of human knowledge, will offer to the 
 artists of a Department, to the friends of letters, to 
 intelligent administrators and good citizens, to tal- 
 ents of every sort ! What a useful and interesting 
 correspondence the librarian will carry on with the 
 learned men of his country and, perhaps, of all 
 Europe ! 
 
 It is thus that, by pouring upon the Department 
 of Nièvre, together with the light of philosophy, the 
 seeds of all industries and all sciences, one may 
 vivify this naturally fecund soil which, for so long, 
 has called for the hand of the cultivator and the 
 thought of the philosopher. 
 
 A^. B. This Essay will be followed by a character- 
 istic history of Bibliography among all nations, 
 from the quipus of America to the immortal collec- 
 tions of the Encyclopedia. 
 
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