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Updated: June 16, 2025
However, as they filled but a few sheets , he did not think proper to print them, at Paris; but sent them, in 1640, to his brother, who communicating them to the Elzevirs, they were published the same year in their edition of Tacitus , and have been several times reprinted. Ep. 573. p. 225. Ep. 402. p. 869. Ep. 444. p. 897. Fabricius, Biblioth.
"We must not think of the Elzevirs, he writes in confidence to Vossius , on account of that man who has so much credit with them, and bears us ill-will. I should be glad to know whereabouts are his notes on the sacred books, and when they will be published, for I postpone till then the revisal of mine." There was at that time in Holland a Jew very famous for his learning, Manassah Ben-Israel.
M. du Maurier received this Letter with the highest satisfaction; he permitted several copies to be taken of it, and it was printed by the Elzevirs in 1637, in a collection of several Methods of Study, under the title of De omni genere studiorum recte instituendo. Grotius acquaints us that it was published with out his consent. Ep. 740. p. 976.
Modern machinery has swept all this old-world mechanism into oblivion; the wooden press which, with all its imperfections, turned out such beautiful work for the Elzevirs, Plantin, Aldus, and Didot is so completely forgotten, that something must be said as to the obsolete gear on which Jerome-Nicolas Sechard set an almost superstitious affection, for it plays a part in this chronicle of great small things.
All lovers of rare books are admirers of what they call Aldines and Elzevirs that is, books printed at the press of Aldo Manuzio and his family at Venice in the sixteenth century, and by the Elzevir family in Holland in the seventeenth century. We speak of a Bradshaw and a Baedeker to describe the best-known of all railway guides and guide-books.
Like Monkbarns with his Elzevirs and his bundle of pedlar's ballads, he must have, in common with all hunters, a touch of the competitive in his nature, and be able to take the measure of a rival, as Monkbarns magnanimously takes that of Davie Wilson, "'commonly called Snuffy Davie, from his inveterate addiction to black rappee, who was the very prince of scouts for searching blind alleys, cellars, and stalls, for rare volumes.
It makes me groan to think of the number of Elzevirs that are lost in the libraries of rich parvenus who know nothing of and care no thing for the treasures about them further than a certain vulgar vanity which is involved. When Catherine of Russia wearied of Koritz she took to her affection one Kimsky Kossakof, a sergeant in the guards.
A fine, clean, fresh copy, one of those brave old Teutonic classics of the last century, less exquisitely printed than the Elzevirs, less learnedly critical than the later Germans, but perfectly trustworthy and satisfactory, and attracting every one's eye on a library shelf, by the rich sturdiness of their creamy binding, that smacks of the true Dutch and German burgher wealth.
I love them as I never can the moderns; they are my most intimate friends, my heart's own darlings. And how I love to lavish money on them, to see them adorned in every way! How I love to heap them up, Aldines, and Elzevirs, and Baskervilles, and Biponts, in all their grace and majesty. This was what filled that London box.
Occasionally a chance remark reminds one of Dickens; this for example: He is talking of large, black old books of divinity, and of their successors, tiny books, Elzevirs perhaps. "These little old volumes impressed me as if they had been intended for very large ones, but had been unfortunately blighted at an early stage of their growth."
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