s him "grand auteur des petits
livres." This gentleman liked to live among antiquaries and historians;
but with a crooked headpiece, stuck with whims, and hard with knotty
combinations, all overloaded with prodigious erudition, he could not
ease it at a less rate than by an occasional dissertation of three or
four quarto pages. He appears to have published about two hundred
pieces of this sort, much sought after by the curious for their rarity:
Brunet complains he could never discover a complete collection. But
Catherinot may escape "the pains and penalties" of our voluminous
writers, for De Bure thinks he generously printed them to distribute
among his friends. Such endless writers, provided they do not print
themselves into an alms-house, may be allowed to print themselves out;
and we would accept the apology which Monsieur Catherinot has framed for
himself, which I find preserved in _Beyeri Memoriae Librorum Rariorum_.
"I must be allowed my freedom in my studies, for I substitute my
writings for a game at the tennis-court, or a club at the tavern; I
never counted among my honours these _opuscula_ of mine, but merely as
harmless amusements. It is my partridge, as with St. John the
Evangelist; my cat, as with Pope St. Gregory; my little dog, as with St.
Dominick; my lamb, as with St. Francis; my great black mastiff, as with
Cornelius Agrippa; and my tame hare, as with Justus Lipsius." I have
since discovered in Niceron that this Catherinot could never get a
printer, and was rather compelled to study economy in his two hundred
quartos of four or eight pages: his paper was of inferior quality; and
when he could not get his dissertations into his prescribed number of
pages, he used to promise the end at another time, which did not always
happen. But his greatest anxiety was to publish and spread his works; in
despair he adopted an odd expedient. Whenever Monsieur Catherinot came
to Paris, he used to haunt the _quaies_ where books are sold, and while
he appeared to be looking over them, he adroitly slided one of his own
dissertations among these old books. He began this mode of publication
early, and continued it to his last days. He died with a perfect
conviction that he had secured his immortality; and in this manner had
disposed of more than one edition of his unsaleable works. Niceron has
given the titles of 118 of his things, which he had looked over.

END OF VOL. II.

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BI