Here at Leyden he read in the great library, soon
to be endowed with Scaliger's books, and saw the room of which Heinsius
so nobly said: 'In the very bosom of Eternity among all these illustrious
souls I take my seat'; and at Louvain he could only lament the death of
Justus Lipsius, whom he regarded as 'the light and the loadstar of
wisdom.'
Gassendi has left us an account of the library collected by Peiresc.
Besides his acquisitions in the East, of which we have spoken elsewhere,
the books came in crowds from his agents in France and Germany, and his
scribes in the Vatican and Escorial. 'When any library was to be sold by
public outcry, he took care to buy the best books, especially if they
were of some neat edition that he did not already possess.' He bound them
in red morocco with his cypher or initials in gold. One binder always
lived in the house, and sometimes several were employed at once, 'when
the books came rolling in on every side.' He would even bind up bits of
old volumes and worm-eaten leaves; good books, he said, were so badly
used by the vulgar, that he would try to have them prized at least for
their beauty, and so perhaps they might escape the hands of the
tobacconist and the grocer. A treatise published by Jerome Alexander
contained a wonderful description of the establishment. 'Your house and
library,' says the dedication, 'are a firmament wherein the stars of
learning shine: the desks are lit with star-light and the books are in
constellations: and you sit like the sun in the midst, embracing and
giving light to them all.
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