t all
the watering-places, and how two learned ladies came to inspect his books
and carried off his favourite Ovid. His library was removed to London and
sold in the year 1725; and the occasion was of some importance as marking
the beginning of the English demand for specimens from Grolier's library.

Archbishop Le Tellier bought fifteen good examples, which he bequeathed
in 1709, with all his other books, to the Abbey of St. Genevieve. His
whole collection included about 50,000 volumes, mostly dealing with
history and the writings of the Fathers. 'I have loved books from my
boyhood,' he said, 'and the taste has grown with age.' He bought most of
his collection during his travels in Italy, in England, and in Holland;
but perhaps the best part of his store came from his tutor Antoine
Faure, who left a thousand volumes to the Archbishop, to be selected at
the legatee's discretion.

The most valuable portion of Grolier's library was bought by his friend
Henri de Mesmes. This included the long series of presentation copies,
printed on vellum, and magnificently bound. De Mesmes was a collector
with a love of curiosities of all kinds. He seems to have been equally
fond of his early specimens of printing, his Flemish and Italian
illuminations, and the Arabic and Armenian treatises procured by his
agents in the East. His library became a valuable museum which was
praised by all the writers of that age, except indeed by Francois Pithou,
who called De Mesmes a literary grave-digger, and mourned over the burial
of so many good books in those cold and gloomy sepulchres.

There seems to have been little occasion for this outburst, since the
library was open to all who could make a good use of it during the life
of Henri de Mesmes and under his son and grandson. Henri de Mesmes the
younger, its owner in the third generation, was renowned for his zeal in
collecting; he is said to have even procured MSS. from the Court of the
Great Mogul, dispatched by a French goldsmith at Delhi, who packed them
in red cotton and stuffed them into the hollow of a bamboo for safer
carriage. One of the finest things in his whole library was the Psalter
which Louis IX. had given to Guillaume de Mesmes: it had come by some
means into the library at Whitehall; but on the execution of Charles I.
the French Ambassador had been able to secure it, and had restored it to
the family of the original donee.

The Norman family of Bigot rivalled the race of De Me