I leave its custody to Pierre du
Puy until my sons are grown up, and he shall have authority to lend out
the MSS. under proper security for their safe return.'
Pierre and Jacques du Puy, the 'two Puteani' as they were often called,
were the sons of a distinguished bibliophile, Charles du Puy, who died in
1594, and were themselves the leaders in a curious department of
book-learning. Their father was the founder of a library enriched by his
care with the best specimens of early printing and a few rare MSS. In the
latter class he possessed an ancient bilingual copy of St. Paul's
Epistles, a Livy in uncial characters, and the precious fragments of the
Vatican Virgil, which he gave to Fulvio Orsini in his lifetime. 'On his
death,' says M. Guigard, 'the bibliographical succession passed to Pierre
and Jacques, his younger sons, the first a Councillor of State, the other
Prior of St. Sauveur-les-Bray, and both employed as guardians of the
books in the Royal Library. No two men were ever more ardently devoted to
the interests of learning. They worked in concert at increasing and
improving their father's library; but their chief object was to
accumulate and preserve the obscurer materials of history. The
_Collection Du Puy_, which has now became national property, comprised
more than 800 volumes of fugitive pieces, memoirs, instructions,
pedigrees, letters, and all the other miscellaneous documents that were
classed by D'Israeli 'under the vague title of State Papers.
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