In the next generation there was a
startling change. The library had been left to Bouhier's son-in-law,
Chartraire de Bourbonne: the grave offspring of Aldus and Gryphius found
themselves in company with poets of the _talon rouge_ and muses of the
_Opera bouffe_. When the gay De Bourbonne died, the ill-assorted crowd
passed to his son-in-law in his turn, and was transferred in 1784 to the
Abbey of Clairvaux.
We cannot name or classify the bibliophiles of the eighteenth century. It
would be endless to describe them with the briefest of personal notes;
how M. Barre loved out-of-the-way books and fugitive pieces, or Lambert
de Thorigny a good history, or how Gabriel de Sartines, the policeman of
the Parc aux Cerfs, had a marvellous collection about Paris. When Count
Macarthy sold his books at Toulouse his catalogue contained a list of
about ninety others, issued in the same century, from which his riches
were derived. We can point to a few of the mightiest Nimrods. We see the
serene Gaignat pass, and the bustling La Valliere; the Duc d'Estrees is
recognised as a busy book-hunter, and there are the physicians Hyacinthe
Baron and Falconnet whose keenness no prey could escape. We can
distinguish the forms of the elegant '_bibliomanes_' to whom their books
were as pictures or as jewels to be enclosed in a shrine; there is Count
d'Hoym with a house full of treasures, and Boisset and Girardot de
Prefond with their cabinets of marvels. If the crowds in the
old-fashioned libraries are like the multitude at Babel, these tall
volumes in crushed morocco and 'triple gold bands' remind us of what our
antiquaries have said of books glimmering in their wire cases 'like
eastern beauties peering through their jalousies.
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