f Cardinal Richelieu, to whom the merit is often
assigned of having been the first to bequeath the use of his library to
scholars. The Cardinal was not particular about the methods by which he
amassed his literary wealth: he is said to have increased his store by
all the arts of cajolery, and even by bare intimidation; and he may have
wished to make some amends by directing that 'persons of erudition'
should have access to his books after his death. De Thou had an equal
love of books, and showed perhaps a kinder feeling about the use of the
treasures which his own care had accumulated. 'It is important,' he
wrote, 'for my own family and for the cause of learning that the library
should be kept together which I have been for more than forty years
collecting, and I hereby forbid any division, sale, or dispersion
thereof; I bequeath it to such of my sons as shall apply themselves to
literature, and they shall hold it in common, but so that it shall be
free to all scholars at home or abroad. I leave its custody to Pierre du
Puy until my sons are grown up, and he shall have authority to lend out
the MSS. under proper security for their safe return.'

Pierre and Jacques du Puy, the 'two Puteani' as they were often called,
were the sons of a distinguished bibliophile, Charles du Puy, who died in
1594, and were themselves the leaders in a curious department of
book-learning. Their father was the founder of a library enriched by his
care with the best specimens of early printing and a few rare MSS. In the
latter class he possessed an ancient bilingual copy of St. Paul's
Epistles, a Livy in uncial characters, and the precious fragments of the
Vatican Virgil, which he gave to Fulvio Orsini in his lifetime. 'On his
death,' says M. Guigard, 'the bibliographical succession passed to Pierre
and Jacques, his younger sons, the first a Councillor of State, the other
Prior of St. Sauveur-les-Bray, and both employed as guardians of the
books in the Royal Library. No two men were ever more ardently devoted to
the interests of learning. They worked in concert at increasing and
improving their father's library; but their chief object was to
accumulate and preserve the obscurer materials of history. The
_Collection Du Puy_, which has now became national property, comprised
more than 800 volumes of fugitive pieces, memoirs, instructions,
pedigrees, letters, and all the other miscellaneous documents that were
classed by D'Israeli 'under the vague