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Having collaborated with Lavoisier on the latter’s pioneering chemical nomenclature and presented some seventeen memoirs to the Academy, the author was already an influential chemist when appointed inspector of dye works and director of the Manufacture Nationale des Gobelins in 1784. The Gobelins had their origins in the workshops of Flemish weavers brought to Paris by Henri IV in 1602 and were formally established by Colbert in 1667 as the “Royal Manufactury of Furnishings to the Crown”. They became the pre-eminent centre for tapestry weaving in Europe In the Éléments de l'art de la teinture Berthollet “endeavored to place the ancient craft of dyeing on a scientific basis by a systematic discussion of its procedures, coupled with an attempt to find an adequate set of theoretical principles to explain the chemical actions involved. His explanation was that, depending on the variable physical conditions of temperature, quantity of solvent employed, and so forth, when a cloth was dyed the reciprocal affinities of the particles of the dye, the mordants, and the cloth itself were responsible for the kind and quality of dyeing. The colors produced were due to the oxidation of the mordant by the atmosphere” (DSB). The British edition appeared in the same year as the French, reflecting the market for such a treatise in a country where textile production was becoming one of the most important national industries. A second British edition appeared at Edinburgh the following year and several reprints appeared in the nineteenth century, presumably a measure of the popularity and utility of this scientific manual of dyeing in the British industrial revolution. see full details...
Henry’s reign marked the rehabilitation of France’s fortunes after the near-disintegration of the country during the Wars of Religion. Sully’s collection represents a very immediate account of the period between 1570 and 1628, including episodes such as Henry’s conversion to Catholicism (arguably a political expediency urged by Sully himself, who remained Protestant); the Edict of Nantes (which promised religious toleration for the Huguenots); negotiations with the English crown (both Elizabeth and James I); and war with Spain (in alliance with England). Sully’s own contrubution to the state is amply recorded - he is remembered for his reorganisation of the country’s finances and system of office-holding as well as for his engineering projects (the Place Royale and the Briare Canal linking Seine and Loire being the best known). The Mémoires are historiographically advanced and include both critical narrative and a large number of transcribed diplomatic material. They have, however, been criticized for partiality and for containing “many fictions, such as a mission undertaken by Sully to Queen Elizabeth in 1601, and the famous ‘Grand Design,’ a plan for a Christian republic [or a United States of Europe], which some historians have taken seriously” (Ency. Brit, 1911). The work was completed posthumously by a second volume (present here) under the editorship of J. Le Laboureur. The bibliography of this work has been contentious. For a long time, our edition with the coloured frontispieces was accepted as the first, published with a false imprint at the Chateau de Sully itself. It is now clear that there were actually as many as 3 issues bearing versions of these title pages: the exceptionally rare true first edition printed under Sully’s eye (with a different collation to ours); our swiftly-produced contrefaçon of the same year, and one other pirate edition. Complete sets of any edition are rare. see full details...
Though anonymous, this is perhaps a transcript of legal lectures given at the University of Caen. Of paramount interest here are laws relating to land and inheritance, by which, according to Norman custom, property passed strictly through the male line to the almost total exclusion of women. The text is divided into five parts: 1. De l’origine et de la definition des fiefes; 2. Des droites féodaux; 3. Des droits naturels; 4. Des droits accidentels; 5. Des moïens de reversion ou consolidation aux fiefs. Within these broad sections is also much of incidental interest to the social historian, including several articles on the laws of hunting, fishing and game; on the customary rights of salvage (‘Varech’) of goods washed up on the Channel coasts and on water law, concerning rivers and ditches. The work is generally theoretical in tone, but it contains very numerous references to external sources, usually giving page references. Le Grant Coustumier du pays & duché de Normandie by Guillaume Le Rouillé is cited many times (it was first published in 1534 but frequently reprinted and here referred to as ‘la nouvelle Rouillé’) as is La coustume réformée du pays et duché de Normandie by Josias Bérault. Alongside these treatises, many chapters include precise references to royal ‘arrêts’ governing the operation of customary law which had been issued in the preceding centuries. The author or copyist may have inscribed his name at the foot of the title page, but this has been carefully obscured at an early date see full details...
It had first appeared as a preface to Les crimes de l’amour (1799) and sought to trace the origins and development of the modern or psychological novel from classical literature to the eighteenth-century works of Rousseau, Voltaire, De Graffigny, Marivaux and Crébillon fils and in de Sade’s own Aline et Valcourt. De Sade identifies Richardson and Fielding as the masters of the genre (‘C’est Richardson, c’est Fielding qui nous ont appris que l’étude profonde du coeur de l’homme, véritable dédale de la nature, peut seul inspirer le romancier...’) and he prefers Lewis to Radcliffe among gothic novelists. He also denies his authorship of Justine, attributed to him by contemporaries, writing ‘jamais je n’ai fait de tels ouvrages, et je n’en ferai sûrement jamais.’ Uzanne adds a bio-bibliographical preface, the latter portion providing a checklist of de Sade’s works and a critical overview of nineteenth-century studies. see full details...
It deals with the raw materials, their preparation, manufacturing process and the dyes as well as the styles of hats. The plates, re-engraved for this Spanish edition are detailed depictions of the hatter’s craft with excellent workshop scenes. Like his French counterpart Nollet, Suárez y Nuñez was an enlightened polymath dedicated to the scientific exposition of crafts and industry. His magnum opus was the multi-volume Memorias instructivas, y curiosas: sobre agricultura, comercio, industria, economia, chyimica, botanica, historia natural, &c (1778-1791) translated from pioneering works published across Europe. see full details...
This immensely popular juvenile novel emphasises thrift and hard work through the character of Simon, a travelling salesman. It was published by La Société pour l’instruction élémentaire following a competition, with a prize of 1000 francs donated by an anonymous benefactor, for a work of no more than 250 pages in which were ‘tracés avec simplicité, précision et sagesse, le principes de religion chrétienne, de morale, de prudence sociale’, for the improvement of everyday town and country people. There were numerous subsequent editions in France, as well as translations into Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, Greek and even Breton. A nephew of the Jussieu brothers of botanical fame, Laurent Jussieu became director of police to the French minister for the interior in 1837. see full details...
Mayer’s massive collection contains the work of over 40 authors and a valuable bibliographical survey of at least 100 others. It includes tales by Madame d’Aulnoy, Pierre-François Godard de Beauchamps, Charles Duclos, Antoine Hamilton, Antoine Galland, Mademoiselle de La Force, Mademoiselle Leprince de Beaumont, Madame Levesque, Mademoiselle Lheritier, Madame de Lintot, Mademoiselle de Lubert, le chevalier de Mailly, Madame de Murat, Charles Perrault and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. As Marina Warner has pointed out, within this corpus of tales of magic and enchantment, female authors outnumber male authors two-to-one (From the Beast to the Blonde, 1994). Mayer established this canon of wonder tales at the very moment when they were most threatened as a literary form. By 1789, the aristocratic salons which had given birth to this genre, were no longer to be taken for granted and tales of this type almost ceased to be published in France. Le cabinet des fées was Mayer’s attempt to preserve for posterity this remarkable corpus of popular literature. This is also an important illustrated book, with its 120 plates engraved by Pierre-Clément Marillier (1740-1808). These plates are especially interesting for their representation of oriental themes and characters, reflecting the very strong bias within the collection (and within this genre of French literature as a whole) for texts like Galland’s translation of Mille et une nuits set in the Near- and Far East. Marillier’s illustrations certainly reinforce the tendency to depict eastern culture as both alluring but dangerous and, incidentally, furnish the first properly illustrated version of Mille et une nuits (Hensher, ‘Engraving Difference: the representation of the Oriental Other in Marillier’s illustrations to the Mille et une nuits and other contes orientaux in Le Cabinet des fées (1785-89)’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 31, September 2008). see full details...
Mouchez was director of the Paris Observatory and commissioned two young astronomers, Prosper and Paul Henry, to prepare a photographic star atlas. "Arago had embarked on a program of improving Lalande's catalog of 50,000 stars with the aid of new, more precise measurements. Mouchez published the part observed up to 1875. Most notably, however, he enlisted the support of Sir David Gill, director of the Cape Observatory, to bring about an international astronomical congress at Paris in 1887. It was there decided to produce photographically a large-scale general map of the heavens and to establish a catalog giving the position and brightness of all stars up to the eleventh magnitude. Two young astronomers at the Paris observatory, the brothers Prosper and Paul Henry, both of whom were also talented opticians, had just completed an astrograph and Mouchez had it adopted for this gigantic undertaking, which took more than fifty years" (DSB). The first photograph (the frontispiece) depicts the moon's surface around the crater Eratosthenes; the second is of the Hercules cluster of stars; the third is a time-lapse series of depicting Jupiter, showing the rotation of the red spot; the fourth shows the rings of Saturn and the bands of Jupiter. This copy is inscribed by Mouchez to General Brugers, the future military governor of Paris. see full details...
The most influential and characteristic works by the renaissance physician and humanist, Symphorien Champier, colleague of Michael Servetus and François Rabelais at the Schools of Medicine at Lyon. An ardent Galenist and a neo-Platonist Champier sought to reform the French pharmacopoeia and materia medica, insisting that France had all the medical resources it needed in the form of herbs and medicinal plants without recourse to the exotic remedies espoused by the Arabic medical tradition. In doing this, Champier linked politics, culture, medicine and horticulture in praising the new cultural fertility of France (the Hortus Gallicus is dedicated to Francis I). He cites various drugs known to be ‘pernicious and venomous’ to Europeans, albeit perfectly suited to the inhabitants of other regions and other times (cf. Cooper, Inventing the Indigenous: local knowledge and natural history in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, 2007). Champier’s thesis derives from his deep antipathy to Arab medicine: several of his many earlier works sought to purify Galenic and Hippocratic medicine of Arabic influence partly in the belief that by stripping away later Arabic influence the physician was drawing closer to the pure Classical origins of western medicine. It also expresses his persistent critique of the occultist tradition, so deeply ingrained in medical theory and practice at the opening of the Renaissance. Champier’s Renaissance attitudes to medicine were certainly influential. Lyon was one of the most important centres of the Renaissance in France (witness his prominent colleagues) and he was very prolific, writing or editing at least 45 individual books. Many of his works are hard to classify and their very diversity is typical of the spirit of the age. He has been criticised for attempting to uncover the truth by simply piling authority upon authority, drawing from history, poetry, philosophy, magic and medicine without distinction. This approach may be alien to the modern mind, but Champier wrote at the very beginning of the scientific Renaissance and his works are highly characteristic of the humanist cast of mind. ‘He shared with many humanists the capacity for oratorical exuberance. So that when Scaliger called him “insolens, tumens, turgens,” perhaps this spirit should be interpreted as an indication that he was full of the “spirit of the Renaissance,” that rare gas which the historical laboratory has never yet succeeded in holding in solution’ (Thorndike). The three works here have separate titles but were almost certainly issued together. The Campus Elysius contains several additional tracts: De sanguinis missione; Epistola J. Champerii avunculo suo Symphoriano (dated 25 June 1532); Speculum medici Christiani (dedicated to Champier's son Antoine) and De Theriacâ gallicâ. The Periarcha is dedicated to Charles de l'Estang, protonotaire of Saint-Siège. Each work is notable for the careful typography characteristic of Champier's printed works: he worked closely with his printers (Dumaitre, Histoire de la médécine et du livre medical, p. 195). Symphorien Champier was born into a bourgeois family at Saint-Symphorien-sur-Croise, near Lyon and studied at the University of Paris before 1495, when he matriculated at the medical school of Montpellier, which granted him his doctorate in 1504. He taught liberal arts in Grenoble and took a doctorate in theology in 1502. In 1509 he was appointed physician to Antoine Duke of Lorraine, who brought him to Nancy. Champier followed the duke several time to Italy, where he was involved in the battles of Agnadello (1509) and Marignano (1515). During his stays in Italy he won recognition as an academic teacher from the University of Pavia. In 1519 he became an alderman in Lyon, and for the last twenty years of his life he was at the centre of the cultural Renaissance of that city, while simultaneously promoting the study of medicine by helping to found the College of the Holy Trinity and sponsoring translations of, and writing commentaries on, the works of Hippocrates and Galen. see full details...
![[RICCOBONI, Marie-Jeanne.]](/photos/600/main/600.jpg "[RICCOBONI, Marie-Jeanne.]")
Quickly reprinted several times in French the novel was translated into English by Frances Brooke as Letters from Juliet Lady Catesby to her friend, Lady Henrietta Campley the following year. Set in England, the story is told through letters exchanged between Juliette and her cousin Henriette, and recounts the inexplicable abandonment of Juliette by her fiancé Lord Ossery on the eve of their wedding. Through a series of twists and subplots the reasons are revealed and the two lovers are eventually reconciled. A quintessential novel of sentiment, it is frequently compared favourably with Frances Burney’s Evelina and it played a major part in the vigorous literary exchange between French and English novelists of the eighteenth century. Madame Riccoboni, née Laboras de Mézières, had acted with the Comédie Italienne prior to beginning her writing career with an extension and imitation of Marivaux’s Vie de Marianne (1751), followed by her first novel Lettres de Mistriss Fanni Butlerd (1756). In addition to her several novels, she made translations of English novels, including Fieldings Amelia, published in 1762. She was well regarded by Voltaire and was part of the circle attending the salons of the Baron d’Holbach, where she became acquainted with Diderot, David Garrick and David Hume. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments (also published in 1759), Adam Smith ranked her with Voltaire, Racine, Richardson, and Marivaux as ‘one of the poets and romance writers who best paint the refinements of… private and domestic affections.’ see full details...
![FLEURY, [Claude, Abbé.]](/photos/351/main/351.jpg "FLEURY, [Claude, Abbé.]")
The part considering servants is divided into categories: butlers, valets, chambermaids, coachmen and so on and is a valuable source for understanding private lives in the age of Louis XIV, giving detailed opinions on the conduct expected in a well-ordered household. To take one example, the instructions to the valets de chambre include remarks on discretion, on moral rectitude and on the effective use of spare time. Reading is recommended as a suitable recreation for servants, provided the subject matter is edifying: works of religion, history and morality are suggested, but also some science and perhaps mathematics. The art of fine writing is encouraged, since it is helpful to the master and also perhaps the learning of a musical instrument or a little painting. Overfamiliarity with the female servants is expressly discouraged, in recognition of the frequent opportunities for female company a valet may find. At the end is an Abregé de l’histoire sainte, a kind of catechism for servants. There are 11 pages of advertisements for other works sold by Aubouin, Emery and Clouzier. see full details...
![GOUBIN, [Mathieu].](/photos/480/main/480.jpg "GOUBIN, [Mathieu].")
The neatly laid out text, with few corrections, suggest that the volumes were prepared, as was frequently the case in contemporary French universities, by copyists for sale to students attending lecture courses. In this case the owner was one Ludovic Loyau du Coteau, whose manuscript ex libris appears in volume 1 of the Physiologia. Goubin taught at Caen, one of the oldest French universities, from the 1750s and was also director of its Jardin des Plantes. Though an active teacher (presenting frequent anatomical dissections) he does not appear to have published anything under his own name, hence the value of this manuscript collection. While we have identified seven theses bearing his name presented at the university in the later 1750s, these are likely to have been supervised rather than written by him. The Physiologia begins with several short chapters on the nature of medicine, before turning to physiology on p. 16. The first volume describes the various functions of the body, the circulation of the blood, systole and diastole, fluids and secretions and nourishment. The second volume opens with a discussion of wounds and diseases, followed by discussion of the body’s processes, including perception, memory, sight, hearing, taste, smell, sleep, the nervous system, circulation and reproduction. The Pathologia is a complete treatise on physical and mental ailments. see full details...
Dating from the end of the thirteenth century, MS 1830 in the Library of Saint Germain (now Bibliothèque nationale MS 19152), is the largest corpus of popular medieval poetry from this early date, containing numerous familiar beast fables (some derived Aesop) and longer narrative poems such as Piramus et Tisbé. The original manuscript comprises 61 different texts of different genres including popular proverbs, translations from Latin, fabliaux, courtly tales, moral poems and burlesque recitations. The anonymous nineteenth-century editor of our manuscript pursues a rather disruptive method of copying much of the original text verbatim, but interpolating his own prose for sections he believes to be repetitive or uninteresting. While frustrating for the medievalist, such a method is interesting as an example of contemporary scholarly method. The editor adds a significant number of additional fables drawn from other manuscripts in the Library of Saint Germain. A 4-volume manuscript copy of the entire codex, apparently made in the eighteenth century, is held by the British Library (Additional MS 15210-15213). A printed edition appeared in 1930. see full details...
![WOODWARD, [George Murgatroyd].](/photos/596/main/596.jpg "WOODWARD, [George Murgatroyd].")
Like his drinking-partner Thomas Rowlandson, Woodward absorbed high and low culture omnivorously and paid keen attention to contemporary politics. A Political Fair is ‘a fantastic survey of the international situation’ in 1807 and is considered one of Woodward’s finest images, the print catalogue of the British Museum devoting two full pages to its complex allegories. At the heart of the fair is a large booth (‘The Best-Booth in the Fair’) representing Great Britain holding aloft on its platform images of Britannia, John Bull, together with an Irishman, Scotsman and Welsh harpist gathered convivially around a punchbowl, while a waiter sweeps into the chamber below with a vast joint of roast beef on his platter. All this was typical of Woodward’s patriotism and was intended to portray the essential unity of the nation amidst the host of clamouring figures in the neighbouring booths representing the other nations. Napoleon, in tricorn and feathers, rebuffs a disgruntled Dutchman complaining about his King with the words ‘I never change Mynheer after the goods are taken out of the Shop’. High up on the right, the American booth displays a placard advertising ‘Much ado about Nothing with the Deserter’, a reference to the friction between Britain and the United States over recent defections from British to American ships and the ban on armed British ships in American ports. The Danish booth on the left advertises ‘The English Fleet and The Devil to Pay’ in reference to the hideous bombardment of Copenhagen by the British fleet in September that year. Musical and theatrical references abound, with many of the placards punning on the titles of plays and musical performances then showing in London: Much ado about nothing, All’s well that ends well (Shakespeare), The Padlock (Bickerstaffe), The Deserter (Dibdin), The Double Dealer (on the Russian booth, by Congreve) and The English Fleet (Dibdin again). see full details...
![HUES, Robert. D[enis] HENRION, translator.](/photos/551/main/551.jpg "HUES, Robert. D[enis] HENRION, translator.")
Hues had studied at Oxford where he became acquainted with Richard Hakluyt and later, Walter Raleigh and Thomas Harriot, before taking part in a voyage to Newfoundland. In five parts, the book describes the practical uses of the globes designed by Molyneux and, especially, how mariners could find the sun’s position, latitude, course and distance, amplitudes and azimuths, and time and declination. The fifth part describes the use of rhumb lines in navigation. The translation is by Denis Henrion, the Paris mathematician remembered for his edition of the works of Viète and for the introduction of the calculating device known as the proportional compass to France. Henrion’s is a faithful translation with numerous interpolations of his own (indicated by italics). In these, Henrion adds several practical details to the methods of calculation but also takes the opportunity to advertise his Cosmographie, which was not to appear until two years later. At several points he affirms Hues’ text while stating ‘comme nous avons enseigné en nostre Cosmographie.’ The notes on the operation of the proportional compass promised by the title are confined to very sparse remarks on how a lengthy calculation, for example, could be achieved simply with the compass. They would appear to be an attempt to advertise another of Henrion’s works, Usage du compas de proportion (also 1618) and perhaps the instruments themselves. see full details...
Intended as the first of a projected series of works with the general title Idées singulières, Le Pornographe is an important early manifesto for the regulation of prostitution. It also holds a significant place in the historical etymology of pornography: meaning literally ‘one who writes about prostitutes’, being the first modern coinage of a word used by the ancient Greeks. Restif issued the work anonymously, presenting it with a preface claiming that the idea was not a French invention at all but one found in the manuscript of an Englishman by the name of Lewis Moore. In a series of letters, the work presents an anatomy of prostitution, noting its inevitability in cities such as Paris and its dangers to public health and morality. Most interestingly, it then outlines a system of regulations, with well-managed maisons publiques, in which prostitutes are required to stay, where they are protected and cared for and where customers are strictly controlled. A major pre-occupation is the contemporary anxiety over the (wrongly) perceived decline in population, a decline to which prostitution was seen to have contributed. Restif proposes that pregnant prostitutes be required to fulfil their pregnancies and that their children should be brought up and educated within the maisons publiques and to take up alternative professions when of age. This early work by Restif encapsulates both his social realism his utopian aspirations, both of which became major aspects of his later novels. The imprint is false and the work was published in Paris by Delalain, who sold the author’s works, but who deleted his own name from the imprint after the first impression. The two issues are identical save for the title-page. see full details...
The Subterranean Voyage of Nicolas Klim is one of the classics of speculative and utopian fiction, written fifteen years after Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and often compared favourably with that work. It is the first fully developed novel to
be set in the earth’s interior, a setting which has been utilised countless times in later science fiction. Klim, a poor student, falls through a hole in the earth just outside the Norwegian town of Bergen and finds himself on the inside of the earth’s crust. He lands on the planet Nazar (which orbits a sun at the centre of the earth’s cavity) where he finds a nation that lives according to the laws of reason and nature. The peasantry are considered very highly and therefore are the most distinguished class in the state; many of the highest offices are held by women, who are in every way equal to the men. Nazar presents an enlightened utopia, very much in the mould of the ideals of Montesquieu and Voltaire (who Holberg admired enormously) but Klim also travels to other states where the perfect state of society is not so fully developed or is perhaps degenerate, allowing a vivid comparison of political, social and philosophical systems. Holberg (like his hero Klim) was a native of Bergen at a time when Norway and Denmark existed as a twin kingdom. He saw himself as a fully European writer and the equal of the French philosophes. The majority of his works, including the present, first appeared in Latin, the universal language. The adventures of Nicolas Klim were immediately popular and were rapidly translated into all the major European languages. see full details...
One of Alvarez’s functions seems to have the been the procurement of books for Pombal and his government, both in Paris and London, and these accounts reveal, in considerable detail, the means by which books and pamphlets were sourced. Numerous authors and titles are listed, especially for the English books. Alvarez kept brief accounts of transactions on behalf of six individuals: Pombal himself, Vicente de Souza Coutinho (Portuguese ambassador in Paris), Henriques de Menezes (envoy at Turin and Rome), Jozé Jacques da Cunha (envoy at La Haye), Da Costa (secretary to Pombal) and Father Francis Blyth (Carmelite friar and chaplain to the Portuguese embassy in London). Of these, the most extensive accounts concern Pombal, de Souza and Blyth. Books bought by Alvarez in Paris came mainly from the libraire Barrois, whose shop was on the quai de Augustins. They include copies of Pascal’s Lettres Provinciales, ‘Annales Jésuitiques’ (probably Les Jésuites démasqués, ou Annales historiques de la Société, 1759 and later), a ‘Receuil de l’affaire des Jesuites’ (8 volumes in quarto), La science du gouvernement (by Réal de Curban, 1761 and later), Fleury’s Du devoir des Maîtres, missals, New Testaments, an Italian dictionary and several volumes of French official acts or arrêts. Figures are recorded for binding, packing and shipping the books. Father Blyth, in London, is revealed as an important source for English books. He had been appointed chaplain at the Portuguese embassy in 1756 by Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo himself (then Portuguese ambassador to England; some fourteen years before he became Marquês de Pombal). Blyth remained in the post until his death in 1772 (ODNB). The accounts show that Alvarez arranged shipment of several books from Paris to Blyth in London and received in return a fascinating list of English titles, mainly on medicine and public health, for onward shipment to Pombal in Lisbon. Among those listed are Richard Brookes, The general dispensatory (1753, and later editions); Sir William Fordyce, A review of the venereal disease (1767); Alexander Sutherland, An attempt to revive antient medical doctrines (1763); James Lind, A treatise of the Scurvy (1753 and later) and William Hillary, A practical essay on the small-pox (1740). He also procured a map of the English colonies in America and several tracts and pamphlets. At least two London booksellers are mentioned: the bills of Thomas Meighan and Thomas Lewis were forwarded to Alvarez for payment, and there are also figures for binding and shipping. Besides the bibliographical detail, the accounts reveal occasional other duties by these agents. Blyth shops at Hernon’s in the Strand for finest green tea, while Alvarez looks after Pombal’s watch, taking it to the famous Voisin for repair. In a couple of places, Alvarez has to remind himself with a short memorandum how English currency works, and how many pence and shillings there are to a pound. see full details...
At the time of its publication, Siris was the most popular of the author's many works. Berkeley had observed the use of tar-water among the native Americans and came to regard it as a panacaea in medicine, setting up an apparatus for its manufacture. "He recommends it not only in fevers, diseases of the lungs, cancers, scrofula, throat diseases, apoplexies, chronic disorders of all kinds, but also as a general drink for infants. It strengthens their bodies and sharpens their intellects. It is good for cattle... It is good for all climates, land and sea, for rich and poor, high and low livers, and he had himself drunk a gallon of it in a few hours" (DNB). The Siris is, however, more than just a medical work and the consideration of tar-water led Berkeley into a lengthy chain of reflections on the principles of the universe and of divine providence. see full details...
François Gattey was, with Legendre, one of the members of the convention established in 1795 to enact the definitive adoption of the metric system. “One of the most significant results of the French Revolution was the establishment of the metric system of weights and measures....On June 19, 1791, a committee of 12 mathematicians, geodesists, and physicists met with Louis XVI, who gave his formal approval. The next day, the king attempted to escape from France, was arrested, returned to Paris, and was imprisoned; a year later, from his cell, he issued the proclamation that directed two engineers, Jean Delambre and Pierre Méchain, to perform the operations necessary to determine the length of the metre. The intervening time had been spent by the scientists and engineers in preliminary research; Delambre and Méchain now set to work to measure the distance on the meridian from Barcelona, Spain, to Dunkirk in northern France. The survey proved arduous; civil and foreign war so hampered the operation that it was not completed for six years. While Delambre and Méchain were struggling in the field, administrative details were being worked out in Paris. In 1793 a provisional metre was constructed from geodetic data already available. In 1795 the firm decision was taken to enact adoption of the metric system for France. The new law defined the length, mass, and capacity standards and listed the prefixes for multiples and submultiples. With the formal presentation to the assembly of the standard metre, as determined by Delambre and Méchain, the metric system became a fact in June 1799. The motto adopted for the new system was ‘For all people, for all time’” (Ency. Brit.). see full details...
An early work by Bentham, published in seven sections, of which the first is Bentham's proposed draught, and the following six chapters consist of his analysis and observations of the draught. "The news that the Constitutional Committee had submitted on 21 December 1789 to the National Assembly a draught plan for a new judicial system prompted Bentham to prepare and print in instalments his own Draught of a new plan for the organisation of the judicial establishment in France. Instalments, translated by Dumont, began to appear in the Courier de Province, for 22-23 May and continued to do so until May. At the beginning of April he addressed a letter to the President of the National Assembly, and one hundred copies of the parts so far printed in England were sent to Paris through the French minister in London, Francois Barthelemy (Correspondence, iv)" (Chuo, p. 59). see full details...
![BLONDEL, [Lieutenant Colonel d’artillerie.]](/photos/474/main/474.jpg "BLONDEL, [Lieutenant Colonel d’artillerie.]")
It was repared by a prominent artillery captain, largely from material gathered first-hand from visits to military academies (notably West Point), arms factories, arsenals and from observations aboard the US warships Tennessee and Kearsarge. The year 1881 saw a special diplomatic visit to the United States by representatives of the French armed forces, partly in celebration of the the centenary of the combined French-American victory at Yorktown. Descendants of the victorious Comte de Rochambeau and an array of military top-brass were lavishly entertained in New York, with a sequence of visits, dinners and balls. Among the guests were General Boulanger and Lieutenant Colonel Blondel. On November 9th The New-York Tribune reported the imminent departure of Boulanger for France and that ‘Lieutenant-Colonel Blondel will spend the next few weeks visiting West Point, the Frankfort and Springfield arsenals, and the firearms manufacturies at New-Haven and Bridgeport, in order to prepare a report on the subjects of arms and defence.’ This manuscript is an overview of the American armies and a description of the military curriculum of West Point, which is followed by the illustrated description of American weaponry, including a variety of artillery (large guns by Hotchkiss, Parrott, Dean, Sutcliffe, Lyman and Woodbridge are illustrated); small arms (the Springfield rifle is described and compared with the Martini-Henry model and the Colt, Schofield Smith and Wesson revolvers are illustrated). There is an extensive section on the specification of artillery shells and small arms cartridges and on the American preparation of gunpowder. Blondel adds several observations on artillery exercises aboard American ships, which include an early description of the use of telegraphy for range-finding. He notes at the opening that some of the information (comprising three sections) is derived from the [printed] reports of General S.V. Benet but that remainder was gathered from his own observations at the installations noted above. The report is remarkable for the detailed access the French were given to American military establishments, which is perhaps to be explained by the diplomatic context. The 1870s and 80s saw a rapprochement in French-American relations, and several celebrations of the natural connection between the two great republics: from the celebration of the Yorktown victory to the gift of the Statue of Liberty by the French nation. The manuscript is from the personal collections of General Boulanger. Boulanger continued his rise to prominence throughout the 1880s, firstly with popular army reforms and later with real political influence, to the extent that his popular right-wing Royalist stance while running for deputy of Paris threatened to topple the Third Republic in 1888-9. He was charged with treason and conspiracy and exiled by the government; a disgrace from which he never recovered. He committed suicide in a Brussels cemetery in 1891. see full details...
In this encyclopaedic work, Vergil addresses questions of origins, from the origin of the gods, man and languages to the origin of wine and liqueurs, marriage, magic, medicine, poetry, drama, geography and law. First published (in Latin) in Venice in 1499, it was first printed in France in 1528 (also in Latin). A French translation (probably by Jacques Regnault) appeared in 1544, followed by a new translation by François de Belleforest printed at Paris in 1576. Our small format Lyon edition of the same year is of de Belleforest’s text, without the preliminary material. An Italian by birth, Vergil spent much of his life in Britain, principally working as a Papal envoy at the court of Henry VIII. François de Belleforest (1530-1583) was a prolific translator and author, perhaps best known in the anglophone world as a source of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, through his French translation of the medieval Gesta Danorum found in his Histoires Tragiques published in 1570. The book contains the bookplate of Justin Godart, lawyer and mayor of Lyon, who was a leading figure in the French Resistance (heading the Comité du Front National clandestin de libération de la France Zone Sud) during the Second World War. see full details...
A later bibliographical note to the endpaper asserts that this must “sans aucune doute” be Giard’s manuscript for his edition. This is perhaps unlikely: early manuscript copies of hard-to-come-by imprints are an important (if under-appreciated) aspect of the contemporary circulation of new books. Chastelet’s treatise (dedicated to the King) covers all aspects of war: types of troops, garrisons, ranks, invasion, battle, morale, treatment of casualties, defence, sieges, sea warfare, civil wars, discipline, military law, espionage and treaties. see full details...
Among the several songs is a salute to Napoleon himself: ‘Chargeons, allignons nos canons, Tirons au F[rère] Bouneparte; C’est en lui que nous admirons Les vertus de Rome d’esparte. Libérateur de son pays, Il se rend du monde l’arbitre La France n’a plus d’ennemis Qui lui conteste un si beau titre.’ The song is known from at least one other source (a version is published in Chroniques d’Histoire Maçonnique Lorraine, 9, January, 2000), and is notable for the reference to Napoleon as ‘Frère’. His membership of the Freemasons has long been a source of debate (though now commonly dismissed) and his relationship to masonry is an important aspect of the Order’s history. The Freemasons were widely accused of Revolutionary activity and were vigorously suppressed during the Terror only to be re-established under Napoleon who sought to capitalise on their loyalty and patriotism. He installed his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, as Grand Master of the Grand Orient de France and ensured that administration of French Freemasonry was directly overseen by legislator Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès. The ritualised dinner described here has elaborate table settings, with utensils and food given ceremonial names. Bread becomes ‘Pierre prutte’; wine, ‘poudre forte, b[lan]che ou rouge’; salt, ‘sable blanc’ amd pepper, ‘sable gris’. The table is referred to as the ‘Tribune’; the candles, ‘étoiles’ and spoons, ‘truelles’. Each of the toasts is given in full and the seven songs are usually supplied with the name of the popular tune to which they are sung, including, ‘L’air vive Henry quatre’ and ‘Femmes, voulez-vous éprouver?’ see full details...
The notes have the character of being source material for an unpublished scholarly work on the subject of the office of Magistrate (chief priest, lawgiver, judge, and commander of the army) in ancient Rome. Compiled in the immediate aftermath of the Napoleonic experiment, Gibelin's exmination of Diocletian's termination of republicanism in favour of autocracy for is surely significant. The author, Jacques Gibelin (1744-1828), in whose hand the volumes are written, was, at the time of composition, the librarian of the town of Aix and secretary of the town's Société Académique. He was already a prominent literary figure and had lived in Paris and England, being responsible for introducing many English scientific ideas to a French audience, having translated and published large portions of the Abridgements of the Transactions of the British Royal Society and important Enlightenment treatises by Joseph Priestley and Richard Kirwan. He also published the French translation Adam Ferguson's History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic and oversaw the first publication of the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, which appeared, in Gibelin's French translation (before the original English version) in 1791 as Mémoires de la vie privée de Benjamin Franklin écrits par lui-méme. The extracts in this manuscript are drawn from Herodian, Dion, Suetonius, Tacitus, Eutropius, Justinian, Plutarch, Apuleius, Orosius, Zosimus and modern commentators such as Isaac Casaubon. The compilation is made with a librarian's thoroughness, with precise references given to the editions consulted (usually giving the editor, and the place and year of publication). Loosely inserted is a printed and manuscript slip, with Gibelin's printed subscription, from the Aix Société Académique, requesting the presence of a member at a meeting on the 4th July 1827 at 6 o'clock. see full details...
Wickham, a French dermatologist and pioneer of radium therapy, began treating tumours and gynaecological conditions with radium in 1908. He and his younger colleague Degrais were among the first clinicians to treat human conditions with ‘radiumtherapy’ having obtained radium from the Curies. Wickham died in 1913, several months before his colleague Degrais inscribed this copy to Vannier. The work also appeared in an English translation printed in London in the same year. It was preceded by the larger work Radiumthérapie; instrumentation, technique, traitement des cancers, chéloïdes, naevi, lupus, prurits, névrodermites, eczémas, applications gynécologiques (Paris, 1909). see full details...
![[L’ESTOILE, Pierre de].](/photos/200/main/200.jpg "[L’ESTOILE, Pierre de].")
The second part (1589-1611) is printed here for the first time; the first part originally having been published in 1621 as Journal des choses memorables advenues durant tout le regne de Henry III (Cioranesco 13602). The imprint is certainly false, and Brussels is the more likely origin, though the woodcut device on the first title is that of Antoine Vincent of Lyon. The frontispiece is notable and is a violent allegory of this turbulent century, the female personification of France is beset by a crowd of petitioners in the form of vagrants, a monk, nobles and merchants while in the background several brutal excutions are enacted, with the city of Paris and the towers of Notre Dame in the distance. It is the work of Richard van Orley (1663-1732), a Brussels painter and engraver, and engraved by François Harrewijn (1700-1764), also a Brussels engraver, pupil of Romeyn de Hooghe, known primarily for his portraits of historical figures. Harrewijn also supplied the excellent suite of 33 portraits of kings and queens (including Mary Stuart) and leading members of church and state. see full details...
![[BAUDOT, François.]](/photos/711/main/711.jpg "[BAUDOT, François.]")
Baudot, at various times maître des comptes and mayor of Dijon, here presented his evidence that the Burgundian town of Autun was the Gaulish city of ‘Bibracte’ described by Julius Caesar in the Gallic Wars, the site of Caesar’s 52BC victory over the Helvetii. The town of Beaune had previously been assumed as the site of Bibracte but Baudot here argues strongly against that view as recently expounded by Hughes de Salins, with archaeological, architectural, textual and iconographic evidence. The plates, four of which depict Roman ruins are quite crudely executed but are still delightful. Ultimately, nineteenth-century archaeologists located the actual site of the Gaulish settlement on nearby Mont Beuvray. This copy probably belonged to a contemporary local antiquary (perhaps the Claude Maillard who inscribed it) who added 8 manuscript pages containing a ‘Copie d’une lettre de Mr de la Monnoye à Mr. Baudot maître des comptes à Dijon’ and ‘Pour feu Mr. le Maître des Comptes Baudot ancien Maire de Dijon’. The former is an etymological study of the name of Bibracte, while the latter is a funeral elegy composed by Bernard de La Monnoye on Baudot’s death in 1711 (published, in print but perhaps not until a collected edition of de la Monnoyes’ works, 1743). The book passed at quite an early date to the Scottish antiquary Walter Bowman (1699-1782). Bowman was a tireless Grand Tourist and collector, who left a fine library at Logie, Fife (see William White in The Book Collector, 31, 1982). see full details...
As a new foundation, removed from direct influence of church and state, it played an important part in fostering the Enlightenment project, and counted several eminent scholars among its early members, including the pioneering chemist Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau, historian and philosopher Charles de Brosses and naturalists Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon and Bernard Germain, Comte de Lacépède. The Academy’s most enduring contribution to the Enlightenment, however, was in awarding a young Jean-Jacques Rousseau one of its annual prizes in 1750 for his essay Discours sur les sciences et les arts, in which he famously argued that the arts and sciences corrupt human morality. It was this essay which first found him fame as a philosopher and provided the germ for much of his later philosophy on the corruptive power of civilization. The present Mémoire has a good deal to say about the prizes awarded by the Academy. It is a report, presumably drawn up on behalf of the governors or directors, which sought to clarify the terms of Pouffier’s will as he left it in 1725 and 1726. The founder went to great lengths to ensure that Academy prospered but his detailed provisions in practice led to unforeseen consequences. As the Mémoire outlines, Pouffier stipulated that 1310 livres annually be spent as follows: 930 livres to endow a series of six prizes in three subjects (Physique, Morale and Médecine); 200 livres ‘pour la bougie des Directeurs’; 120 livres for the Secretary’s salary and 60 livres for books and necessary scientific instruments. The text is concerned with situations in which one or other of these amounts is not needed in its entirety and asks what is to be done with the residue and whether it can be spent elsewhere. What if the Secretary can be paid less? What if the necessary books are all bought for less than the sum set aside? Most persistently, it asks what happens if there are not sufficient candidates, or sufficiently good candidates for the prizes? The problem seems to have stemmed from the delay in formally constituting the Académie: royal letters patent were not, apparently, granted until 1740, whereas Pouffier made provision for immediate payment of each of these expenses soon after his death. It seems that there were just too few members or students in the early years to justify all of them. One wonders whether it was this situation that encouraged the Academy to advertise nationally for prize essays, as a way of attracting the best minds to Dijon. Certainly their advertisement placed in the Mercure de France in 1749 did just that in catching the attention of young Rousseau. The mémoire ends aptly, with the quotation from Juvenal, ‘quis enim virtutem amplectitur ipsam / Praemia se tollas (for who would embrace virtue itself if you take away its rewards?, Satire X, 140) see full details...
![[DRAKE, James.]](/photos/403/main/403.jpg "[DRAKE, James.]")
![NECKER, M. [Jacques].](/photos/288/main/288.jpg "NECKER, M. [Jacques].")
![‘STELLI, L.’ [pseudonym of Hippolyte MAGEN.]](/photos/559/main/559.jpg "‘STELLI, L.’ [pseudonym of Hippolyte MAGEN.]")
![JUSSIEU, L[aurent]. P. de.](/photos/299/main/299.jpg "JUSSIEU, L[aurent]. P. de.")
![[BAKER, Thomas].](/photos/105/main/105.jpg "[BAKER, Thomas].")
![‘CHAMBLEY, Edmond sire de’ [pseudonym of Edmond Haraucourt.] ‘VAN MAELE, Martin’ pseudonym of Maurice François Alfred Martin.](/photos/528/main/528.jpg "‘CHAMBLEY, Edmond sire de’ [pseudonym of Edmond Haraucourt.] ‘VAN MAELE, Martin’ pseudonym of Maurice François Alfred Martin.")
![[CHEVRIER, François Antoine.]](/photos/335/main/335.jpg "[CHEVRIER, François Antoine.]")
![[COURTILZ DE SANDRAS, Gatien de.]](/photos/186/main/186.jpg "[COURTILZ DE SANDRAS, Gatien de.]")
![[VOLTAIRE, François-Marie Arouet de.]](/photos/433/main/433.jpg "[VOLTAIRE, François-Marie Arouet de.]")
![(SADE, Donatien Alphonse François, marquis de). [BRUNET, Pierre Gustave.]](/photos/549/main/549.jpg "(SADE, Donatien Alphonse François, marquis de). [BRUNET, Pierre Gustave.]")
![[HOTMAN, François.]](/photos/11/main/11.jpg "[HOTMAN, François.]")
![[DIGBY, Kenelm.] DIONIS, Charles.](/photos/128/main/128.jpg "[DIGBY, Kenelm.] DIONIS, Charles.")
![[AUBIGNÉ, Théodore Agrippa d’.]](/photos/290/main/290.jpg "[AUBIGNÉ, Théodore Agrippa d’.]")
![[FIELDING, Sarah, attributed to.] Mr. de la PLACE.](/photos/295/main/295.jpg "[FIELDING, Sarah, attributed to.] Mr. de la PLACE.")
![MARIN, [François Louis Claude.]](/photos/255/main/255.jpg "MARIN, [François Louis Claude.]")
![[BURNET, Sir Thomas.]](/photos/406/main/406.jpg "[BURNET, Sir Thomas.]")
![[AULNOY, Madame d’.]](/photos/24/main/24.jpg "[AULNOY, Madame d’.]")
![FREYDIER, M[onsieur].](/photos/382/main/382.jpg "FREYDIER, M[onsieur].")
![COTTIN, [Sophie Ristaud.]](/photos/336/main/336.jpg "COTTIN, [Sophie Ristaud.]")
![‘CHAMBLEY, Edmond sire de’ [pseudonym of Edmond Haraucourt.]](/photos/527/main/527.jpg "‘CHAMBLEY, Edmond sire de’ [pseudonym of Edmond Haraucourt.]")
![[FENN, Ellenor]. [Mrs.] LOVECHILD.](/photos/160/main/160.jpg "[FENN, Ellenor]. [Mrs.] LOVECHILD.")
![[ERARD, Claude.]](/photos/328/main/328.jpg "[ERARD, Claude.]")
![[MOLÉ, Guillaume François Roger.]](/photos/317/main/317.jpg "[MOLÉ, Guillaume François Roger.]")
![(NESTLÉ, Henri.) LEBERT, H[ermann].](/photos/393/main/393.jpg "(NESTLÉ, Henri.) LEBERT, H[ermann].")
![[LONGUE, Louis Pierre de.]](/photos/256/main/256.jpg "[LONGUE, Louis Pierre de.]")
![[RAGUENET, François.]](/photos/289/main/289.jpg "[RAGUENET, François.]")
![LOUVET DE COUVRAY, [Jean-Baptiste].](/photos/429/main/429.jpg "LOUVET DE COUVRAY, [Jean-Baptiste].")
![[SHIRLEY, Laurence, fourth Earl Ferrers.]](/photos/1/main/1.jpg "[SHIRLEY, Laurence, fourth Earl Ferrers.]")
![BO[UCHER], [Juste Nathan] F[rançois].](/photos/561/main/561.jpg "BO[UCHER], [Juste Nathan] F[rançois].")
![[DAMOURS, Louis.]](/photos/434/main/434.jpg "[DAMOURS, Louis.]")
![[COURTILZ DE SANDRAS, Gatien de.]](/photos/135/main/135.jpg "[COURTILZ DE SANDRAS, Gatien de.]")
![[SMITH, Horatio.]](/photos/318/main/318.jpg "[SMITH, Horatio.]")
![[OLIVIER, Abbé Jean.]](/photos/254/main/254.jpg "[OLIVIER, Abbé Jean.]")
![[FOUQUET, Charles Louis Auguste de,] Duc de Belle-Isle [and Louis-Georges-Erasme CONTADES, marquis de].](/photos/296/main/296.jpg "[FOUQUET, Charles Louis Auguste de,] Duc de Belle-Isle [and Louis-Georges-Erasme CONTADES, marquis de].")
![TAILLEFER, L[ouis]-G[abriel].](/photos/389/main/389.jpg "TAILLEFER, L[ouis]-G[abriel].")
![[ALI ABENCUSIAN, pseudonym of Miguel de LUNA]. VIEUX-MAISONS, [Gilles de Rainssant, Sieur de], translator.](/photos/322/main/322.jpg "[ALI ABENCUSIAN, pseudonym of Miguel de LUNA]. VIEUX-MAISONS, [Gilles de Rainssant, Sieur de], translator.")
![(MILITARY MANUSCRIPT). C[HASTELET, Paul Hay, Marquis de.]](/photos/205/main/205.jpg "(MILITARY MANUSCRIPT). C[HASTELET, Paul Hay, Marquis de.]")
![[FIELDING, Sarah, attributed to.]](/photos/121/main/121.jpg "[FIELDING, Sarah, attributed to.]")
![[CHOUDARD]-DESFORGES, [Pierre Jean Baptiste].](/photos/291/main/291.jpg "[CHOUDARD]-DESFORGES, [Pierre Jean Baptiste].")
![[EMERY, Antoine Joseph d’.]](/photos/323/main/323.jpg "[EMERY, Antoine Joseph d’.]")
![LAMOTHE-LANGON, E[tienne] L[eon], Baron de.](/photos/321/main/321.jpg "LAMOTHE-LANGON, E[tienne] L[eon], Baron de.")
