Private Libraries as Public Goods
Active membership of the Republic of Letters depended on access to printed books. Whether a citizen of the Republic was a philologist, an antiquarian or an experimental philosopher, he or sheâfor female members of the virtual state were not unknownâneeded to be abreast of what work had been done in the past and was being done in the present in their chosen field, if they were to make an original contribution themselves. Before the eighteenth century, however, there were very few institutional libraries anywhere in Europe where scholars and scientists could find the specialist books and journals they needed. Even in the eighteenth century such learned libraries tended to be located in capital cities or university towns and were not necessarily easily accessible. They were not always open to every citizen of the Republic who wanted to use them, or, if open, only for a short time each week.1 The very many provincial scholars and scientists therefore could participate positively in the Republic of Letters only if they had their own well-stocked and carefully chosen personal library, or, in the case of those whose purse was limited, had access to a large private library in their local or near-by town which contained the specialist publications they sought. While many inhabitants of even small towns after 1750 had access to circulating or subscription libraries, they catered for the wider reading public and seldom held learned works in the vernacular, let alone in Latin, still the lingua franca of much of European science and scholarship.2 As has long been understood, the Republic of Letters could not have functioned if affluent citizens, or at least some of them, had not been willing to share their personal libraries with others.
Historians have recognised the importance of the early-modern private library as a source for mapping individual and communal mentalités since the time of Daniel Mornet.3 But in the last thirty or forty years, interest has grown considerably as the history of the book has become part of the historical mainstream. On the one hand, a number of the largest private collections have been the subject of lengthy studies.4 On the other, historians have set out to map the distribution, size and contents of private libraries in a specific region or among a particular social group.5 The current ambitious digital project of Alicia Montoya and her colleagues will take this research one stage further and make it possible at a touch of a button to trace the relative popularity of specific works across a large part of Europe.6 To date, however, the focus has been largely on the personal library as a collection of books rather than how it was actually used. Above all, with the notable exception of Mark Towsey and his associates, little work has been done on the private library as a community resource, and next to nothing on the way a publishing member of the
Republic of Letters shared his learned library with other active citizens.7 This is not surprising given the bias of the surviving sources. Printed and manuscript catalogues of personal libraries are legion but diaries, notebooks or correspondence revealing how the owners shared their books with family, friends or local scholars are much less common.
This present chapter examines the accessibility of the personal library of Jean-François Séguier (1704â1784), the leading naturalist and antiquarian in the French Midi in the final decades of the Ancien Régime. Although little known today, Séguier in his lifetime was a figure of international importance.8 A native of Nîmes, a confessionally-divided city, Séguier had been brought up as a Catholic and originally destined for a career in law. In 1732, however, he had met the wealthy Italian antiquarian and naturalist, Francesco Scipione, marchese di Maffei (1675â1755), when the latter passed through the town on his way north to Paris, and he became his companion and secretary.9 For the next four years the pair explored the intellectual and cultural delights of the French capital before embarking on a short visit to England and the United Provinces. They then returned to Maffeiâs hometown of Verona, where Séguier spent the next nineteen years fostering his own reputation as a naturalist through a number of significant publications, especially on botanical bibliography. By the mid-1750s Séguierâs name was known to most of Europeâs leading naturalists, including the Swede Carl Linnaeus (1707â1778).10 When his patron died in 1755, Séguier returned to Nîmes. Now independently wealthy, he was able to spend the last twenty-nine years of his life pursuing his own intellectual interests, looked after by a devoted sister. He acted as secretary to the local academy of science and letters. He became the centre of an epistolary network of some 300 correspondents in Languedoc and beyond.11 He bought a house and garden where he could display his growing collection of antiquities and exotic plants to a constant stream of local and foreign visitors.12 And he built up his library (see figure 4.1 page 101).
The library catalogue of J.F. Séguier, opened at the page recording Dilleniusâs Historia Muscorum (1741). The catalogue is organised alphabetically rather than by genres. The right-hand side of the page was kept blank to allow Séguier to insert new acquisitions
According to the manuscript catalogue Séguier left on his death, this library contained 6,951 titles.13 It was not the largest contemporary library in Languedoc. When Jean-Baptiste-Marie Picquet, marquis de Méjanes (1729â 1786) died a few years after the Nîmois at Arles he boasted a collection of 80,000 books.14 But Séguierâs was definitely the largest in the region put together by a bibliophile or an érudit who was not a member of the titled nobility. Indeed, hardly any active citizens of the Republic of Letters in the south of France had libraries that contained more than 3,000 separate works and one notable botanist, the Dauphinois curé Dominique Chaix (d. 1799) owned only 50.15 Séguierâs library was also resolutely professional. Some 4,000 of the titles reflected his particular intellectual interests and were works on botany, pharmacy, chemistry, agriculture and history and antiquities. The rest were largely classical texts and religious works. The library contained no works of eighteenth-century French literature, except the poems of J.-B. Rousseau, and virtually nothing by the philosophes beyond Voltaireâs Henriade and Le Siècle de Louis XIV and Montesquieuâs Grandeur des romains.
From Séguierâs surviving correspondence, it is clear that the Nîmois was happy to give less fortunate érudits in the Rhône valley and beyond access to the riches in his library. Moreover, he not only allowed them to consult his books in situ but also to borrow them and peruse them at leisure. He published next to nothing himself in the last decades of his life and seems to have seen his role as an elder statesman of the Republic to be to promote the research of his juniors.16 The next section of this chapter examines the use that one ambitious young citizen of the Republic of Letters was able to make of Séguierâs generosity in the final years of the Nîmoisâ life. The third section explores Séguierâs lending policy more broadly and illuminates the difficulties he encountered in lending books at a distance in an age of relatively poor communications. The fact that he continued to do so despite many trials and tribulations is a testament to his desire to oil the wheels of local scholarship and science. The fourth and final section offersâalbeit limitedâevidence for the ubiquity of the practice of sharing books in eighteenth-century Languedoc. It concludes by posing but not solving the question of whether the practice became redundant in the years following the French Revolution.
A Citizen in Need
At some time in the summer of 1772 a parvenu member of the Republic of Letters of Montpellier paid a visit to a fellow citizen in the neighbouring city of Nîmes, some fifty kilometres away. The inhabitant of Montpellier was a physician called Pierre-Joseph Amoreux (1741â1824) who had decided a few years before to abandon the practice of medicine and devote his life to natural history and agronomy. His father, Guillaume (1714â1790), was one of the leading naturalists in Languedoc, and thanks to paternal influence Pierre-Joseph had been elected a member of the Montpellier Société royale des sciences as early as 1763.17 In the interim, though, he had done little that would suggest he would become an important figure in the Republic of Letters in turn. Apart from a couple of minor contributions to the Journal de médecine, chirurgie et pharmacie, his only claim to fame were two short books on veterinary medicine published anonymously in 1771 and 1772 at the behest of the mayor of Montpellier, Jean-Antoine Cambacérès (1715â1801), who wanted to establish a veterinary school in the town.18 The Nîmois on whom Amoreux called, on the other hand, was a citizen of a very different kind. As has been already established, Jean-François Séguier was an elder statesman of the Republic with a large and accessible library.
There is no way of knowing when exactly Amoreux and Séguier met in the summer of 1772 or how long the meeting lasted. The visit is recorded only in a letter the former wrote to the latter on 17 October, sometime after his return to Montpellier.19 Nor is it possible to say whether the visit was pre-arranged or Amoreux arrived unannounced having travelled to Nîmes to see his sister, a nun in a convent in the city, or for other reasons.20 But two things are certain. First, Amoreux and Séguier were already known to one another. Amoreux père had been in contact with Séguier even before the latter returned to France. In anticipation of his return, Guillaume had written to Séguierâs brother in Nîmes, the abbé Joseph Maximilien (1716â1776), enquiring if Jean-François, once he had repatriated his natural-history collection, might be willing to exchange doubles of the fossil specimens he had collected in Italy.21 Thereafter the two naturalists kept in touch at least sporadically and by the spring of 1772, if not before, Pierre-Joseph had also been drawn into the Nimoisâ correspondence web and was assisting him in his bibliographical research. A letter written by Pierre-Joseph to Séguier on 17 April 1772 reveals that he had been trawling the Montpellier book shops hunting, among other things, for the Traité de lâexploitation des mines by Antoine Grimoald Monnet (1734â1817).22 Secondly, whatever else Pierre-Joseph and Séguier talked about during Amoreuxâs visit, the conversation must have touched on Amoreuxâs recent publications on veterinary medicine and his future plans. In the letter of 17 October the young naturalist thanked the Nîmois profusely for the benefits he had garnered from âyour instructive conversationsâ and those that would accrue in the future âif I had the liberty to rummage in your rich libraryâ.23 Séguier was thanked too for various bibliographical tips and the present of a German booksellerâs catalogue which contained a number of works Amoreux was unaware of. In return Amoreux forwarded copies of his own printed works which âyou have appeared to want from meâ.24 Three days later Séguier replied thanking Amoreux for his follow-up missive and the gifts of his works to date, especially for the volumes on veterinary medicine which he found extremely informative.25 He also recalled a promise he had made the young naturalist âto give you the list of some dissertations and small works which deal with the veterinary art and that I have in my library. I collected them in Italy when I translated the Dijon physician, Raudotâs Dissertation sur la malade des bestiauxâ.26 The recollection made sense only if Séguier had informed Amoreux during his visit that he himself had developed a precocious enthusiasm for veterinary medicine while in Italy and had built up a good collection of books on the subject that the young naturalist might want to learn more about.
Amoreuxâs interest in learning what Séguier had in his library on veterinary medicine was understandable. Amoreux at this stage had no collection of books of his own: he still lived in the parental home. Admittedly, he had access to a number of local libraries. Montpellier was one of the leading medical centres in Europe, and there were many physicians in the city, including his own father, with sizeable personal libraries.27 Moreover, from the inauguration of the cityâs first public medical library in 1768, he and his father had been the librarians.28 But, that said, veterinary medicine was a new branch of the artâhence Cambacérèsâs anxiety that a school should be established in the countryâs premier medical cityâand it was highly unlikely that Guillaume or any of the familyâs medical friends had many books on the subject. The first edition of Pierre-Josephâs veterinary works must have been based on slim pickings. Séguierâs large library might contain untold riches. It can be imagined that Amoreux waited impatiently for the letter of 20 October and perused eagerly the list of twenty pamphlets and books in Latin, Italian and French it contained. He must have been even more delighted when he learnt that Séguier was not just sending him a catalogue. âI have all the works on the list I give to you and am happy to lend them to you when they may be of use.â29 Indeed, he would have been willing to give Amoreux a copy of his own translation of Raudot. Unfortunately, he only had one copy left, though it might be possible to get hold of the one he had sent off some time before to another local citizen of the Republic of Letters, the abbé Pierre-Augustin Boissier de Sauvages (1710â1795).30
Amoreux availed himself of Séguierâs generous offer in a letter of 18 December. âYou offer me them [the books] with such good heart that I donât hesitate to ask you to send them to me.â He promised they would come to no harm. âDonât worry about getting your books back. I am your slave and am too well aware of how much they cost not to be careful about their preservation.â31 In a reply ten days later Séguier announced he had complied with the request and the books were on their way.32 The loan was to be the first of many. Two years later Amoreux finally decided how he was going to make a name for himself in the wider Republic of Letters: he would join the ranks of those participating in the annual prize-essay competitions sponsored by Europeâs growing number of academies of science, arts and letters.33 For the next sixteen years until the French Revolution largely put a stop to the activities of the countryâs learned societies, Amoreux entered at least two or three contests a year, answering mainly questions on botany, agronomy and hygiene and frequently meeting with success. He was crowned the winner or named the runner-up on eleven occasions.34 As his approach was usually bibliographicâhe sought to impress the judges by his extensive knowledge of the secondary literature on any topicâhe continually turned to Séguier for help. Séguier, until his death in 1784, was always ready to oblige.
The very first prize essay that Amoreux wrote was in response to the question set by the Dijon Academy for 1775: âWhat are the advantages that morals have drawn from public exercises and games among the different peoples and in the different times they have been in use?â35 Having made up his mind to try his luck when the contest was announced the year before, Amoreux wrote to Séguier asking him what books he possessed on the subject.36 Séguier immediately replied offering his assistance.37 The Nîmois confessed his library was not well-stocked in that regard. âThe only books I have on public entertainments are those that deal with the question whether such spectacles and the modern theatre are permitted to Christians.â38 He particularly lacked Meursiusâs book on the orchestra which Amoreux had specifically enquired about and that he had failed to find anywhere in Nîmes.39 Still he was happy to forward what books he had, including the recent De arte gymnastica nova of Boerner, which he was sure Amoreux would be pleased to have to hand.40 Just as he was finishing the letter, he also remembered that he had Boulengerâs work on the theatre, so added that to the packet.41 Amoreux was over the moon with Séguierâs generosity, as he would be on many future occasions. If only he were fortunate enough to live in the same town as his benefactor so that he could mine the resources of Séguierâs mind and library at the drop of a hat.
By the outbreak of the French Revolution Amoreux was a well-known figure not just in the French but in the European Republic of Letters. His successful prize essays which were subsequently printed found their way all over the continent.42 Séguierâs library played an essential part in his rise to fame. Without the resources to go off to Paris and pursue his bibliographical researches in the Kingâs library or the other large collections open to the public in the capital, Amoreux would never have had the success he did if he had not had access to Séguierâs books. To be sure, Séguierâs generosity was tempered with self-interest. In return for lending Amoreux what he needed, Séguier expected the naturalist to act as his agent in Montpellier and continue performing the petty services he was already engaged in on the Nîmoisâ behalf in 1772. But on balance, there was no doubt which of the two got the better part of the deal.43
Lending Books: Problems and Hazards
Amoreux was not the only member of the Republic of Letters in the Midi to benefit from Séguierâs willingness for his private library to be used as a public resource. From Séguierâs voluminous correspondence, it is clear that his large collection was an informal circulating library.44 Many, even of his most precious books, were frequently on the move. In Montpellier alone there were at least a further five naturalists who benefited from his kindness: Amoreuxâs father, Guillaume; the explorer and zoologist Jean-Guillaume Bruguière (1740â1798); the ornithologist Louis-Henri Pascal de Saint-Félix, baron de Saint-Faugères;45 a naturalist physician called Roussel;46 and two of Séguierâs long-term correspondents, the Linnaean botanists Pierre Cusson (1727â1783) and Antoine Gouan (1733â1821).47 It is evident too from the correspondence that Séguier was lending out his books long before he offered his services to Pierre-Joseph. The first book he is known to have lent Gouan, for instance, was in 1760, when he sent the then novice naturalist his copy of Gronoviusâs extremely important Museum Ichthyologicum, which had only been published six years before.48
For Séguier to keep even a modest proportion of his collection in circulation at any one time was a complex logistical exercise. It was not a simple case of sending a desired volume off in the post and the beneficiary returning it by the same route. There was a state-run postal service for letters in eighteenth-century France but not for parcels. Small packages could be entrusted to private carters who carried loads between local towns but their services were irregular and insecure. The favoured method used by both Séguier and those who borrowed his books was to wait until a reliable third party could be found who was going in the right direction and was willing to act as a postman. The books that Séguier sent to Amoreux were often passed initially to the latterâs sister who looked after them until a member of her order or someone working on its behalf could take them to Montpellier. The same route was used for returning the books. But Séguier would use any method to hand. In March 1774 he entrusted a parcel for Amoreux to the care of a Swiss officer named Escher who was travelling to Montpellier from Nîmes. Two months later he sent the books on physical education via a Montpellier apothecary called Madame Peyre who was returning home.49 Recourse to such ad hoc arrangements meant that books could not always be sent off quickly or took a long time to reach their destination. When Séguier was sending books further afield than Montpellier they could take weeks and sometimes months to reach their destination. Another naturalist who benefited from Séguierâs largesse was the abbé Pierre-André Pourret (1754â1818) who lived in Narbonne, about 130 kilometres from Nîmes.50 Getting a book to him took forethought and planning on both sides, as a letter written by Séguier to Amoreux in late 1775 revealed.
I am sending you a parcel wrapped in an oil cloth. Please be good enough to take off the oil cloth and give the contents to the physician René the Younger. Ask him to have it forwarded to Narbonne to the abbé Pourret, a beneficed clergyman in that town. René has agreed to take it in and look after it until he finds an opportunity to send it on. There is a cousin of the clergyman who will soon come to Montpellier to take his doctorâs degree in medicine. This cousin is known to René and he could be entrusted with the parcel so it doesnât get lost en route.51
A lot of the time Séguier cannot have known where his books actually were and how soon they might be returned. The problem was compounded by the fact that some borrowers kept hold of them for a long time, none more so than the Montpellier botanist Pierre Cusson, who was a serial offender. In May 1775 Amoreux had received an earlier letter from Séguier seeking his assistance in retrieving a number of books that Cusson had retained for more than three years and was ignoring requests to return.52 âI donât know anyone more negligent than he is in returning books lent to him.â53 The books in question included several valuable folios, among which were two volumes of Rayâs Historia plantarum (London, 1686â1704).54 Séguier wanted them back and counted on Amoreuxâs friendship with the Montpellier Linnaean to do the trick: âAs his pupil you have the licence to reproach him about it.â55 Amoreux did as he was asked but was only partially successful. In June he reported the return of three of the books that Séguier sought. âNotre paresseux docteurâ [Our lazy doctor] had asked that he be allowed to keep the others a little longer.56 The recovered books were back with their owner by 4 July.57 When the others were restored cannot be traced. Nonetheless, Séguier continued to lend books to Cusson on request. Only a few months later he allowed Cusson to borrow his copy of Burmanâs Decades des plantes africaines.58 Cusson, however, made no effort to return it quickly and show he had turned over a new leaf. To Séguierâs exasperation it was still in his hands in January 1776 when he had had the work for five months. This was too much, he complained to Amoreux. At his age when time was pressing, he had to have access to his own books âwhen I want to consult them and make use of them.â59 Amoreux was again asked to force the issue and had successfully prised the Burman from Cussonâs hands by the end of the May. The two-volume work had been left at his family home on the morning of the 29th. Even then all was not well. The Burman had been returned without a wrapper which was presumably not how he had received it from Séguier and Amoreux could not guarantee when it would reach Nîmes.
I have a trustworthy carrier who leaves tomorrow but Iâm not sure if the person in question will want to take the parcel. I will note this on the back of this letter if itâs not possible. At the very least I am certain the carrier will take the letter plus a small package and letter that Bruguière has asked me to pass on to you three days ago.60
There were occasions too when Séguier feared he had lost one of his precious books for good. In 1781 he was particularly exercised by the fate of his copy of Dilleniusâs Historia Muscorum. Johann Jacob Dillenius (1684â1747) was a German botanist who became the first Sherardian professor of botany at Oxford and was acknowledged as Europeâs primary authority on mosses and the so-called lower plants. His work on the subject, published at Oxford in 1741 by the university press, contained 576 pages of Latin text and 85 plates, all drawn and engraved by the author. It was expensiveâit cost a guinea (or about 26 French livres); rareâonly 250 copies were published; and judged one of the most beautiful works of natural history of the eighteenth century.61 A translation of the work into English was printed in London in 1768 but it was the first edition that naturalists coveted and that Séguier owned.62 (See Figure 4.1) He had probably acquired the book directly from England through the services of friends he had made during his short visit to the country with Maffei in 1736, and it is very likely that no other naturalist in Languedoc owned a copy.63 Certainly it was in great demand and often out of his library. In 1768 it was borrowed by the Montpellier naturalist Roussel.64 In 1777 it was sought by Pourret.65 And in March 1781 it was dispatched to Pierrre-Joseph Amoreux with instructions that it be returned only through the safest channels.
My dear sir, Sunday last I sent your father the 1741 quarto edition of Dilleniusâs Historia Muscorum. This is an extremely precious book which is very dear to me, and I begged him to tell you how pleased I was to lend it to you just like all my other books. ⦠When you send back the Dillenius, only entrust it to people who are absolutely reliable and will take perfect care of it.66
It was in the Amoreux household at Montpellier that the book was seen by another naturalist, the abbé Jean-Jacques Duvernoy (1709â1805), who was paying a visit to the town. The abbé was at that date a little-known figure in the Republic of Letters in the Midi who lived with the marquis de Fourquevaux on the aristocratâs estates outside Toulouse and was employed as his botanical factotum. Using the fact that he hailed from Montpellier and knew Amoreux père, he had struck up a correspondence with the son in 1774 and used him as a conduit to furnish the library and plant collection of his noble master. Duvernoy expected rapid service. In May 1775 the marquis wanted a number of works by Linnaeus and Pierre-Joseph was given his marching orders.
[W]ith luck you will find some of them at Montpellier. Others you will kindly have sent to us from Stockholm, Holland or Strasbourg via Lyon, and they must always be attractive editions. ⦠If you canât find everything we would expect to be at Montpellier, please be good enough to purchase what you can at once rather than waiting. We prefer stitched books, if thereâs a choice. It should be easy enough to get what isnât to be found at Montpellier from elsewhere: you are in a land of plenty. We are in a real hurry for these books. Knowing your readiness to oblige your friends and fulfil their requests quickly, I hope we will receive the first package within a fortnight.67
Not surprisingly, Pierre-Joseph soon tired of the peremptory tone and the correspondence appears to have ground to a halt after a couple of years.68 But Duvernoy must have maintained occasional contact with the Amoreux family thereafter or his presence in their home in the spring of 1781 is inexplicable. Amoreux also still felt kindly enough towards the importunate abbé to act as a conduit when Duvernoy wrote to Séguier in June seeking the Nîmoisâ advice on some cryptogam specimens that he had collected.69 Two months later Duvernoy turned up on Séguierâs doorstep and asked if he could take the Dillenius with him while he hunted for fossils in the Vigan, today on the southern edge of the Cévennes national park. Despite his being at best a casual acquaintance, Séguier agreed and the abbé went off on his excursion carrying the precious volume.70 By November, however, he regretted his decision and wrote to Pierre-Joseph in a panic.
On 13 September last I had a visit from your acquaintance the abbé Du Vernoy. He said he was off to the Vigan to stay with Madame de Régneric and from there to go walking in the local mountains, such as the Esperou and the Aigoual, looking for mosses and cryptogams. While at Montpellier he had seen Dilleniusâs Historia Muscorum when I sent it to you. He importuned me to let him take it with him on his expedition which was to last three months. I couldnât refuse. He promised to pass through here on his return and give me the book back. A few days after he had left, I was told that he had the intention of going to Paris as soon as he had finished his expedition. I wouldnât like the Dillenius, which you know means a great deal to me, to go so very far away. So Iâm asking you, just between the two of us, to tell me if I can completely rely on his word and if there is any risk to him having the book. Calm my fears and tell me clearly how I must go about finding this man of whom I have no news. I await your earliest reply by return of post so that I can write to Madame de Régneric in the Vigan, who is a relative, in order to have some information.71
In the event, Duvernoy returned the book and the pair kept in touch for the next few years until Séguier died. But it is not difficult to feel the angst that the ageing naturalist had felt for a couple of months while the bookâs fortunes were unclear. Nor can this have been the only time that his generosity led to heartache.
Exception or the Rule
Enough has been said to show that Séguierâs large library was a significant resource for his fellow naturalists and antiquarians in Languedoc. What remains to be established is whether his readiness to allow others, not just to access but to borrow his books, often for long periods of time, was commonplace in the eighteenth-century Republic of Letters in the Midi or sui generis. As a social practice, it made particularly good sense in Languedoc in the third quarter of the eighteenth century. The region boasted several subscription libraries where members could read newspapers and find the latest novels.72 But there were no public research libraries where scholars could peruse the books that they lacked in their own collections. Throughout the Midi as a whole, apart from the medical library at Montpellier mentioned above, the sole public library which existed at that date as a research tool was at Carpentras on the other side of the Rhône where one had been established by Bishop Malachie dâInguimbert (1683â1757) in 1745 out of his own extensive collection.73 The eighteenth-century learned academies in Languedocâat Arles, Nîmes, Montpellier, Béziers, Montauban and Toulouseâwould have had their own libraries and presumably allowed access to those who were not members, but they were not necessarily well stocked or easy to reach for those not living in the town.74 The two universities at Montpellier and Toulouse and most of the larger secondary schools in the area, known as the collèges de plein exercice, which taught philosophy as well as the Latin and Greek humanities, would also have had some sort of library, but they would seldom have had a good collection of up-to-date works in experimental philosophy and natural history, except where one of the teachers was an active member of the Republic of Letters.75 This would have been equally true of the handful of large monastic libraries. Unless citizens of the Republic in Languedoc passed their books around, many scholars with a limited budget and an inability to travel far beyond their home, let alone to Paris, would have found progress in their research constantly impeded by lack of information. Many citizens were relatively immobile due to infirmity, age or professional commitments: most were lawyers, medics or priests who could only infrequently leave their clients or flock in the lurch.76 Sharing books, furthermore, would have allowed citizens of the Republic to rationalise their book-buying and concentrate on building up a collection that reflected their specialist interests of the moment. Otherwise they would all have had to be generalists, buying books that covered the gamut of human knowledge in case they suddenly needed to immerse themselves in another genre. But if book-sharing appears logical, it does not necessarily mean that it was widely practised. Books are aesthetic as well as functional objects, and scholars, especially those who had built a library from scratch, might have been very reluctant to let their âchildrenâ out of their sight, whatever the demands of civic duty.
As was earlier noted, the largest private library in Languedoc at this date was owned by the marquis de Méjanes. How widely he lent his books is impossible to say but Séguier, with whom he corresponded frequently, was definitely able to borrow whatever he liked. Méjanes also kept the Nîmois abreast of new acquisitions that Séguier might like to see, as in January 1771 when he announced the arrival of Scheuchzerâs work on fishes. âHe and Willoughby are the best authors on that part of natural history. If you want the work, I will lend it to you willingly.â77 Probably the second largest book collection in the region, on the other hand, was less accessible. This was the creation of Charles Baschi, marquis dâAubais (1686â1777) who inhabited a chateau four leagues to the north of Nîmes. He had a collection of some 25,000 volumes and unlike Méjanes was an active scholar.78 He was a specialist in genealogy and French history and a member of the Nîmes academy. DâAubais never allowed scholars to borrow his books but only permitted them to come and consult them in situ. In March 1773 Séguier spent a fortnight at the chateau. A year earlier, Amoreux, just starting out in his career as a publishing naturalist, had gone there with an Italian called Raniery, while researching his second pamphlet on veterinary medicine.79 The marquis, moreover, was often away and the chateau was a lonely place for a scholar to be cooped up in, while the library was not easy to use. Amoreux called it âa vast rabbit-warren. You need to know where a book is buried ever to find it.â80
Most of Séguierâs correspondents in the Midi, of course, had libraries which were much more modest than his own, but they seem to have been as public-spirited as Méjanes. One example is Gouan who from time to time lent books to Séguier as well as borrowed from him. On 23 March 1762 he was asked to send to Nîmes a volume of Hallerâs Bibliotheca medica, on 8 September 1769 the latest edition of Linnaeusâs work on earths and fossils.81 Another example is the former army officer Guillaume-Emmanuel-Joseph Guilhem de Clermont-Lodève, the Baron de Sainte-Croix (1746â1808), who was one of the Midiâs leading Hellenists and in 1772 won the annual essay prize set by the Paris Académie des inscriptions for his study of Alexander the Great. Based at his chateau at Mormoiron near Carpentras, he was a relatively isolated figure in the Republic of Letters until he moved to Paris after the Revolution, and he was heavily dependent on the generosity of his intellectual friends in pursuing his researches into Greek mythology and history.82 But when he was able he willingly lent from his own collection. In the summer of 1769 another one of Séguierâs close correspondents, the Avignon physician and antiquarian Esprit Calvet (1728â1810), received the gift of a Greek marble bearing an inscription about the exploits of the Olympian athlete Orrippus. On the basis of what he had to hand about Greek epigraphs, Calvet was convinced that this was a hitherto unrecorded and very early inscription which, once published, would put his name on the map.83 He was aware, however, that the epigraph might already have been printed in works he did not own, so he immediately wrote to his friends seeking their assistance in taking his research further. Séguier inevitably was ready to lend the Avignonnais all the books in his library which might prove useful.84 But so too was Sainte-Croix with whom Calvet had only recently struck up a correspondence. He was sorry that he did not have copies of most of the works that Calvet would need, but he sent off the two he possessed: the Thucydides Scholiast and an anthology of Greek epigrams published by the sixteenth-century printer Henri Estienne (1531â1598).85
There was nothing exceptional then in Séguierâs generosity, though the size and richness of his library must have meant that his books circulated more frequently than those of his friends. In the Midi at least, book-sharing for a member of the Republic of Letters was more than a theoretical obligation: it was a day-to-day reality and given the absence of public scholarly libraries essential. As a result, it would be dangerous to erect an account of the intellectual formation of Séguier and his friends simply on the contents of their library, even when this is based on a personal catalogue and not a post-mortem sales inventory. Séguierâs library, we have seen, suggested he had no interest in the Enlightenment of the philosophes or the scurrilous literature made famous by Robert Darnton. But this would be a premature conclusion to draw. A resident of Nîmes and member of the local academy who makes a frequent appearance in Séguierâs correspondence is the Huguenot physician and naturalist Pierre II Baux (1708â1790) with whom he was close friends from at least early adulthood. Bauxâs personal library catalogue reveals a man with very different philosophical tastes. He owned numerous works by Voltaire and Rousseau, La Mettrieâs Histoire naturelle de lââme (1745), Diderotâs Pensées philosophiques (1746) and Helvetiusâs De lâesprit (1768). He also possessed an array of infamous underground titles, such as La Religieuse en chemise ou Vénus dans la cloître, supposedly published in London in 1740.86 Séguier could have borrowed these works from his friend at any time he chose. But since they were neighbours living in the same town the books they exchanged can never be known. Bauxâs correspondence with Séguier exists only for the period that the latter was away from his hometown as Maffeiâs companion and secretary.87
Conversely, though this needs to be properly investigated, book-sharing as an ethical imperative and an essential underpinning of scholarly and scientific research in the Midi arguably lost much of its significance from the turn of the nineteenth century with the establishment of a fast-expanding network of public provincial libraries. The first were envisaged, if not actually opened, in the mid-1780s as Séguier and his correspondents started to die off. On their demise, most of their libraries were dispersed by their heirs, as DâAubaisâs had been by his daughter, the marquise dâUrre, in 1777.88 But two members of the Republic of the Letters in the Midi in the second half of the eighteenth century were good citizens to the end and left their books for the use of the public. The first to do so was Séguier himself. His patron Maffei had arranged for a public library to be created at Verona from his own collection after his death. Séguier followed suit and entrusted his books to the Nîmes academy in 1784 with the instruction they should do the same. Two years later Méjanes copied his example and bequeathed his huge library to the estates of Provence with the proviso it should be maintained at Aix as a public resource. He also left a legacy of 5,000 livres to sustain the collection.89 Other members of the circle would have probably followed in their footsteps, had not the French Revolution intervened and made such individual initiatives redundant: throughout France, municipal libraries were created in the 1790s out of the books purloined by the state from the secularised monasteries, the confiscated property of émigrés, and the dissolved universities, colleges and learned academies.90 Thereafter the civic-minded could simply leave their books to a local bibliothèque municipale.91 In the event, only Calvet, among the other intellectuals mentioned in this chapter, specifically founded a public library under his will when he died in 1810, and he had planned to do so from at least 1788.92
These new municipal libraries potentially opened up the life of the mind to much large numbers of people than had been the case in the eighteenth century when access to books depended on wealth, letters of recommendation and uncertain communications. In the long term, in the French Midi, they made possible the florescence of a vibrant research school into Occitan and Provençal history and culture.93 In the short term, they cannot have immediately displaced the older tradition of book-sharing between individuals. Many of the new public libraries were poorly furnished with the works antiquarians, naturalists and experimental philosophers wanted to read; their holdings were only slowly catalogued; and the books could not be borrowed. For those who did not live in a departmental chef-lieu using their resources still meant travelling many miles and a heavy investment in time, if nothing else, before the railway age. To what extent the ethic of open access and mutual exchange still held good in the first half of the nineteenth century, however, remains to be explored. All the attention to date, in France at least, has been on the eighteenth century. The research practices of provincial intellectuals after 1800 remains largely a closed book. Certainly, individual hommes de science still opened their collections to outsiders in the Napoleonic era. When the elderly but now financially independent Pierre-Joseph Amoreux visited Paris on several occasions in the 1800s and 1810s he spent as much time consulting books in the large personal library of the veterinarian, Jean-Baptiste Huzard (1753â1838), as he did in the Bibliothèque impériale and other institutional libraries in the capital.94 But Amoreuxâs friendship with Huzard had been sealed many decades before. Whether the generation of scientists and scholars who grew up during the Revolution were as generous with their books as their predecessors remains to be discovered.
For an overview, see Frédéric Barbier. âEn France: le privé et le public, ou Quâest-ce quâune bibliothèque des Lumières?â, in Frédéric Barbier and Andrea De Pasquale (eds.), Un Instituzione dei Lumi: la biblioteca. Teoria, gestione e pratiche biblioteconomiche nellâEuropa dei Lumi (Parma: Museo Bodoniano, 2013), pp. 10â28. For a study of the public libraries in one European capital, see Emmanuelle Chapron, âAd utilità pubblicaâ. Politique des bibliothèques et pratiques du livre à Florence au XVIIIe siècle (Geneva: Droz, 2009).
For the literature on âcommunityâ libraries in the Anglo-American world, see Mark Towsey and Kyle Roberts, âIntroductionâ, in Mark Towsey and Kyle Roberts (eds.), Before the Public Library. Reading, Community and Identity in the Atlantic World, 1650â1850 (Leiden: Brill, 2018). The standard work is David Allan, A Nation of Readers: The Lending Library in Georgian England (London: British Library, 2008). For the continued importance of Latin as the language of science, see Floris Verhaart and Laurence Brockliss (eds.), The Latin Language and the Enlightenment (Oxford: Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2023).
Daniel Mornet, âLes Enseignements des bibliothèques privées (1750â1850)â, Revue dâhistoire littéraire de la France, 17 (1910), pp. 449â496.
E.g. Elisabetta Barile and Rosalba Suriano, Edizione del testo e identificazione degli esemplari possedati dalla Biblioteca universitaira di Padova. Studio introduttivo di G. Ongaro (Trieste: Edizione Lint, 1983) on Morgagniâs library; Dominique Coq, âLe Paragon du bibliophile français: le duc de Vallière et sa collectionâ, in Claude Jolly (ed.), Histoire des bibliothèques françaises, vol. 2, Les bibliothèques sous lâAncien Régime, 1530â1789 (Paris: Promodis, 1988), pp. 317â329; Yann Sordet, LâAmour des livres au siècle des lumières: Pierre Adamoli et ses collections (Paris: Ãcole des chartes, 2001); Philippe Hourcade, La Bibliothèque du duc de Saint-Simon et son catalogue des manuscrits (1693â1756) (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2010).
E.g. Bernard Lorenz, Allgemeinbildung und Fachwissen: deutsche Ãrtze und ihre Privatbibliotheken (Herzengorath: Murken-Altrogge, 1992); Paul Raabe, âGelehrtenbibliotheken im Zeitalter der Aufklärungâ, in Werner Arnold and Peter Vodosek (eds.), Bibliotheken und Aufklärung (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1988), pp. 103â122.
Alicia C. Montoya, âShifting Perspectives and Moving Targets: From Conceptual Perspectives to Bits of Data in the First Year of the MEDIATE projectâ, in Simon Burrows and Glenn Roe (eds.), Digitizing Enlightenment: Digital Humanities and the Transformation of Eighteenth-Century Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2020), pp. 195â218.
Mark Towsey, Reading the Scottish Enlightenment: Books and their Readers in Provincial Scotland (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 47â54. See also April G. Shelford, âOf Mudfish, Harpsichords and Books: Libraries and Community in Eighteenth-Century Jamaicaâ, in Towsey and Roberts, Before the Public Library, pp. 73â97; James J. Caudle, âAffleck Generations: The Libraries of the Boswells of Auchinleck, 1695â1825â, in Towsey and Roberts, Before the Public Library, pp. 98â122. Shelford uses a diary to good effect to provide a careful analysis of book-sharing among a group of readers on the fringe of the Republic of Letters; Caudle uses the Boswell papers to examine a learned library but has discovered little about its users outside the immediate family.
Gabriel Audisio and François Pugnière (eds.), Jean-François Séguier: un Nîmois dans lâEurope des Lumières (Aix-en-Provence: Ãdisud, 2005).
Presumably Maffei had come to Nîmes to see the Roman antiquities.
The pair corresponded between 1745 and 1761, see <http://linnaeus.c18.net/Letters/letter_list.php> (under Séguier to Linnaeus and Linnaeus to Séguier).
Daniel Roche, âCorrespondance et voyage au XVIIIe siècle : le réseau de sociabilités dâun académicien provincialâ, in Daniel Roche, Les Républicains des lettres : gens de culture et Lumières au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1988), pp. 263â280. The correspondence for the most part exists in the Nîmes Bibliothèque Municipale. It contains 3â4,000 letters. They are gradually being published online by the Comité international Séguier: <https://www.seguier.org/correspondance/correspondance.aspx> (2,000 letters to date).
He entertained 1,402 visitors between 1773 and 1783: see Emmanuelle Chapron, LâEurope à Nîmes: les carnets de Jean-François Séguier (1732â1783) (Avignon: Ãditions A. Barthélemy, 2008), an introduction to and transcription of his visitorsâ book.
Nîmes, Bibliothèque Municipale (hereafter BM), MS 285, âCatalogue des livres de J. François Séguier en 1760 et années suivantesâ. For an analysis, see Elio Mosele, Un accademico francese del settecento e la sua biblioteca (Jean-François Séguier 1703â1784) (Verona: Libraria universitaria editrice, 1981), ch. 3. The catalogue was arranged alphabetically with the right-hand side of each page kept blank to record later additions to the library (see Figure 4.1).
Xavier Lavagne, âLe Marquis de Méjanes et ses livresâ, in Jolly (ed.), Les Bibliothèques sous lâAncien Régime, 1530â1789, pp. 257â259.
Laurence Brockliss, Calvetâs Web. Enlightenment and the Republic of Letters in Eighteenth-Century France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 293â297.
His one significant publication after he returned to Nîmes was his Dissertation sur lâancienne inscription de la maison-carrée de Nismes (Paris: N.M. Tilliard, 1759), where he successfully decoded from the rivet holes the inscription on the pediment of the cityâs Roman temple.
For his life and works, see Laurence Brockliss (ed.), From Provincial Savant to Parisian Naturalist: The Recollections of Pierre-Joseph Amoreux (1741â1824) (Oxford: Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2017).
Brockliss, Provincial Savant, p. 151. A veterinary school had been founded a few years before at Lyon. The mayor was the father of Napoleonâs minister.
Nîmes, BM, MS 136, f. 63.
Magdeleine Amoreux (d. 1815) was a member of the teaching order of the Soeurs de lâEnfant-Jésus.
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (hereafter BnF), MS Nouvelles acquisitions françaises (hereafter NAF) 6573, ff. 53râ54v: Séguier to Amoreux père, 13 Dec. 1755.
Nîmes, BM, MS 136, f. 61.
â[V]os instructives conversationsâ; â[S]i jâavois la liberté de fouiller dans votre riche bibliothèqueâ.
â[V]ous mâavez paru desirerâ.
Paris, BnF, MS NAF 6571, ff. 112â113.
â[D]e vous donner la liste de quelques dissertations et petits ouvrages qui ont traité a la veterinaire et que jâai dans mon cabinet de livres. Je les ramassai lorque je fis en Italie une traduction de la Dissertation sur la malade des bestiaux par M. Raudot medecin de Dijon.â In 1748 Séguier had published an Italian translation of Pierre Raudotâs Dissertation sur la maladie épidémique des bestiaux (Dijon: François Desventes, 1745).
Laurence Brockliss, âMedical Education and Centres of Medical Excellence in Eighteenth-Century Europe: Towards an Identificationâ, in Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham and Jon Arrizabalaga (eds.), Centres of Medical Excellence? Medical Travel and Education in Europe, 1500â1789 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 17â46; Hélène Berlan, Faire sa médecine au XVIIIe siècle. Recrutement et devenir professionnel des étudiants montpelliérains (1707â1789) (Montpellier: Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2013).
The library was situated in the cityâs Hôtel-Dieu Saint-Eloy and contained the medical books of the professor Henri Haguenot (1687â1775): Brockliss, Amoreux, p. 149. According to the catalogue, it comprised only 472 titles: Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Médecine de Montpellier, H550.
âJâai tous les ouvrages dont je vous donne ici la liste, que je vous preterai bien volontiers lorsquâils pourront vous etre utiles.â
Another naturalist and brother of the Montpellier medical professor, François Boissier de Sauvages (1706â1767), who is remembered as the father of nosology.
âVous me les offrés avec tant de cordialité que je nâhésite point a vous prier de me les envoyer tous.â âNe soyez nullement en peine sur lâexpatriation de vos livres, jâen suis esclave et scais assés ce quâils couttent pour veiller a leur conservation.â BM Nîmes MS 136, f. 69.
Paris, BnF, NAF 6571, ff. 114â117: Séguier to Amoreux 28 Dec 1772.
Jeremy L. Caradonna, The Enlightenment in Practice: academic prize contests and intellectual culture, 1670â1794 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012). On the growth of the learned academies, see James E. McClellan III, Science Reorganised: scientific societies in the eighteenth century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), and Daniel Roche, Le Siècle des Lumières en province: académies et académiciens provinciaux, 1680â1789 (2 vols., Paris: Ãditions de lâÃcole des Hautes Ãtudes en Sciences Sociales, 1978).
1784 was his annus mirabilis. For a discussion of his endeavours, see Brockliss, Provincial Savant, pp. 54â64. His successes and failures can be followed year by year in his autobiography: ibid., pp. 149â179, passim. For a list of his entries, see Montpellier, BM, MS 90.
âQuels sont les avantages que les moeurs ont retiré des exercices et des jeux publics, chez les différens peuples et dans les différens temps où ils ont été en usage?â
Nîmes, BM, MS 136, f. 74r: Amoreux to Séguier, 27 April 1774. He did not say why he wanted the information.
Paris, BnF, MS NAF 6571, f. 138: Séguier to Amoreux, 10 May 1774.
âJe nâai pas dâautres ouvrages sur les spectacles publics que ceux qui traitent la question si les spectacles, le Theatre moderne, est permis aux Chretiens.â
Johannes Meursius, Orchestra sive de saltationibus veterum (Lyon: Godefridus Basson, 1618). USTC 1011569.
Friedrich Boerner (1721â1763), dissertation, Helmstedt 1748.
Jules-César Boulenger, De Theatro ludisque scenicis libri duo (Troyes: P. Chevillot, 1603). USTC 6802119.
For copies in British Libraries, search the union catalogue Library Hub Discover, available online at <https://discover.libraryhub.jisc.ac.uk/> sub nomine.
See Laurence Brockliss, âDéséquilibre mais mutuellement profitable. La correspondance entre Jean-François Séguier et Pierre-Joseph Amoureuxâ, in Emmanuelle Chapron and François Pugnière (eds.), Ãcriture épistolaire et production des savoirs au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Garnier, 2019), pp. 203â221.
This section relies heavily but not exclusively on the Amoreux-Séguier correspondence. It is particularly rich because we have both sides.
Librarian of the Montpellier academy, 1779â1793.
He was the son of Jacques-Jérémie Roussel de Rocquencourt (1712â1776), a financier and creator of the gardens of La Celle-Saint Cloud at Marly outside Paris.
Gouan was the foremost Linnaean in France in the second half of the eighteenth century with a European reputation: see Pascal Duris, La Linné et la France (1780â1850) (Geneva: Droz, 1993), passim (esp. ch. 3).
London, British Library (hereafter BL), Additional (hereafter Add.) MS 22935, ff. 268â269: Séguier to Gouan, 18 June 1760. Laurens Theodoor Gronovius (1730â1777), Museum ichthyologicum (Leiden: T. Haak, 1754â1756). The work described 200 species of fish. 152 of Gouanâs letters to Séguier survive.
Paris, BnF, MS NAF 6571, ff. 134â135 and 138: Séguier to Amoreux, 1 March and 10 May 1774. Mme Peyre was presumably the wife of the apothecary Antoine-Pierre Peyre (1721â1795) who became a member of the Montpellier academy.
After the Revolution, Pourret moved to Madrid where he began an exhaustive study of Spanish flora: see Louis Galibert, Biographie de Pierre-André Pourret né à Narbonne en 1754, mort à Santiago de Galice en 1818 (Narbonne: Emmanuel Caillard, 1856).
âJe vous envoye un paquet de toile cirée, aiés la bonté dâen ôter la toile cirée et de le faire remettre à M. René le Cadet Doct. en médecine en le priant de vouloir bien le faire passer à Narbonne à M. lâabbé Pourret, Bénéficier dans cette ville, qui me marque quâil voudra bien le recevoir et en avoir soin jusquâà ce quâil trouve quelque occasion de lâenvoyer à sa destination. Il y a un cousin de ce Bénéficier qui doit venir bientôt à Montpellier pour sây faire docteur en médecine; ce cousin est connu de M. René et il pourrait sâen charger afin quâil ne sâégarât pas en route.â BM Montpellier (médiathèque Emile Zola), MS 384, pièce 6: Séguier to Amoreux, 8 Nov. 1775. I owe the transcription of this letter to François Pugnière.
Paris, BnF, MS NAF 6571, ff. 148â149: 12 May 1775.
âJe ne connois pas de personnes qui soient plus negligent que lui a renvoyer les livres quâon lui prete.â
John Ray (1627â1705): a leading seventeenth-century botanical taxonomist.
âComme son disciple vous aves la permission de lui en faire des reproches.â As a medical student at Montpellier, Amoreux had been given private lessons by Cusson: Brockliss, Provincial Savant, pp. 128 and 132â133.
Nîmes, BM, MS 136, f. 83r: Amoreux to Séguier, 12 June 1775.
Paris, BnF, MS NAF 6571, ff. 151â152: Séguier to Amoreux, 4 July 1775.
Johannes Burman (1706â1779), Rariorum Africanarum plantarum decas (Amsterdam: H. Boussière, 1738â1739). Burman was an expert on the plants of the Dutch Cape Colony. The work must have been lent in August at the latest. In early September Séguier visited Cusson at Nîmes and saw the book in his house: NAF 6571, ff. 153â154: Séguier to Amoreux, 4 Sept. 1775.
â[S]i je veux les consulter et mâen servir.â
âJâai une commodité très sûre qui part demain mais je suis incertain si elle voudra se charger de ce paquet, ce que je marquerai au dos de la lettre si cella ne se peut, mais je doute nullement quâon veuille bien se charger de ma lettre et dâun petit paquet que mâa remis pour vous Monsieur Bruguière il y a trois jours et une lettre avec.â Paris, BnF, MS NAF 6571, ff. 155â158 and 161â164: Séguier to Amoreux, 9 Nov. and 25 Nov 1775 and 6 Jan. 1776 and 10 April 1776; Nîmes, BM, MS 306, f. 92r: Amoreux to Séguier, 29 May 1776.
To explore this work see <https://herbaria.plants.ox.ac.uk/bol/historiamuscorum> (accessed 5 June 2019).
Nîmes, BM, MS 285, f. 48v (library catalogue). He also sought to obtain the English translation but does not seem to have succeeded: see Nîmes, BM, MS 312, ff. 148â149: Piestre and Cormon (Lyon booksellers) to Séguier, 22 Nov. 1783. I owe this reference to François Pugnière.
Sadly the only part of Séguierâs correspondence with England that survives are the letters he wrote to John Strange in London from 1768 to 1772. Strange was definitely buying books on his behalf. See London, BL, Egerton MS 1981, ff. 33â47. John Strange (1732â1799) was a geologist and archaeologist.
London, BL, Add. MS 22935, f. 284: Séguier to Gouan, 22 Oct. 1768.
Paris, BnF, NAF 6569, ff. 70â71: Pourret to Séguier, 14 Oct. 1777.
âMon cher Monsieur, je remis dimanche dernier à Monsieur votre père le volume de lâhistoria muscorum Dillenii, Oxonii, 1741 4°, livre extrêmement précieux dont je fais un cas infini et je le priai de vous dire que je me faisais un plaisir de vous le prêter, de même que tous les autres livres que je possède ⦠Lorsque vous renverrez le Dillenius, ne le confiez quâa des personnes extrêmement sures et qui en aient tous les soins possibles.â Paris, BnF, MS NAF 6571, f. 221r: Séguier to Pierre-Joseph Amoreux, 17 March 1781. For its return, see Nîmes, BM, MS 306, f. 122r: Amoreux to Séguier, 21 May 1781.
â[V]ous en trouverez heureusement une partie à Montpellier. Lâautre, il faudra avoir la bonté de nous la faire venir de Stockolm, Hollande ou Strasbourg par la voye de Lyon, mais que ce soit toujours de jolies editions. ⦠Si vous ne reussissez pas à trouver le tout à Montpellier, ayes sâil vous plait la bonté de prendre en attendant et tout de suite tout ce qui sây rencontra; nous preferions ces ouvrages brochés sâil etoit permis de choisir [;] et pour ceux qui nây seront pas, il vous sera aise de les faire venir dâailleurs: vous êtes en pays de resources pour cela. Nous sommes extremement pressés à cet egard, et persuadé comme je le suis de votre zele et de votre exactitude à obliger vos amis, jâespere que nous recevrons le 1er envoy au moins dans la quinzaine.â Paris, BnF, MS NAF 6570, ff. 135râ36v: Duvernoy to Amoreux, 21 July 1775.
There are no extant letters between the two from March 1776 to July 1783.
Nîmes, BM, MS 94, f. 83: Duvernoy to Séguier, 6 July 1781 (Duvernoyâs thanks for Séguierâs reply: the original letter no longer exists). Available online at <https://www.seguier.org/1544/> (accessed 10 June 2019).
Chapron, LâEurope à Nîmes, pp. 103 and 144 (notes).
âJe vis ici le 13e 7bre dernier Mr lâabbé Du Vernoy que vous connoiés, qui sâen aloit, me dit-il, au Vigan chès Me de Régneric, et de là pour parcourir les montagnes des environs, telles que lâEsperou et lâAigoual pour y chercher des mousses et les plantes cryptogamiques. Il avoit vu à Montpellier le Dillenius Historia Muscorum lorsque je vous lâenvoyai. Il me le demanda avec embressement pour sâen servir dans sa tournée qui devoit etre environ trois mois. Je ne puis me refuser de lui le confier. Il me promit de repasser ici a son retour, et de me le rendre alors. Peu de jours apres quâil fut parti, on me dit quâil avoit dessein de sâen aller à Paris apres avoir fini sa tournee. Je ne voudrois pas que le Dillenius, qui comme vous savvés me tient extremement a cÅur, sâeloignat si fort de moi. Ainsi je vous prie de me dire de vous à moi, si je puis me fier entierement a ses promesses, et si cet ouvrage ne risque rien entre ses mains. Calmés mon inquietude et dites moi clairement comment je dois mây prendre pour retrouver ce Mr dont je nâai aucune nouvelle. Jâattends votre réponse au plutôt par le courrier pour en écrire par le Vigan à Made de Régneric ma parente afin dâen avoir quelque renseignement.â Paris, BnF, MS NAF 6571, ff. 225râ226v: Séguier to Amoreux, 4 Nov. 1781. For Amoreuxâs reply on 12 Nov, Nîmes, BM, MS 306 f. 125r.
They were usually run by printer booksellers. Subscribers would pay the bookseller an annual fee to read journals and books in situ. They could not be borrowed.
Henri Dubled, âLa Bibliothèque Inguimbertine de Carpentrasâ, Revue française dâhistoire du livre, 5 (1973), pp. 35â85. Séguier corresponded regularly with its librarian, the abbé Joseph-Dominique Fabre de Saint-Véran (1733â1812). The library contained the correspondence of the great Peiresc. Initially it had 25,000 volumes and double that by 1810. A public library had been set up at Aix-en-Provence in 1705 but it had all but disappeared by 1750: Jean Stouff, âLes bibliothèques publiques dâAix-en-Provence au XVIIIe siècleâ, Annales du Midi, 239 (2002), pp. 293â317.
The library of the Montpellier academy was almost certainly the best equipped. It was predominantly a science library for the academy, unlike the others in provincial France, did not include the arts and belles-lettres in its remit. It had a collection of 2,500 to 3,000 volumes by the end of the eighteenth century. Available online at <https://www.ac-sciences-lettres-montpellier.fr/sources/index.php?page=Bibliotheque> (accessed 5 June 2019).
For brief notices on the individual colleges, see Marie-Madeleine Compère and Dominique Julia, Les Collèges français 16eâ18e siècles. Repertoire 1âFrance du Midi (Paris: Institut national de recherche pédagogique/Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1984): alphabetically listed. The notices occasionally give information about the libraries. Several members of the Republic of Letters in Languedoc were schoolmasters, notably the electrical philosopher, the abbé Pierre-Nicolas Bertholon (1741â1800), who taught at the Doctrinairesâ college at Béziers and was one of Séguierâs correspondents.
Amoreux was fortunate in that he was able to give up medical practice at an early age and concentrate on his intellectual interests. He on the other hand was very much an arm-chair naturalist and seldom travelled far from Montpellier in between a visit to Paris in the mid-1760s and the French Revolution, even though his duties as a librarian were not demanding.
âLui et Wiloughby sont les meilleurs auteurs sur cette partie de lâhistoire naturelle. Si vous voulez cet ouvrage, je vous le ferai prêter bien volontiers.â Nîmes, BM, MS 145, f. 120: Méjanes to Séguier, 10 Jan. 1771. Available online at <https://www.seguier.org/2128/> (last accessed 6 June 2019). Presumably Johann Jakob Scheuchzer (1672â1733), Piscium querelae et vindiciae (Zurich: Gessner, 1708). Francis Willoughby (1635â1672): his work on fishes (1686) was finished by Ray.
London, BL, Egerton 1981, f. 47: Séguier to Strange, Jan. 1772.
Paris, BnF, MS NAF 6571, ff. 118â119: Séguier to Amoreux, 8 March 1773; Nîmes, BM, MS 136, f. 61r: Amoreux to Séguier, 13 April 1772; Brockliss, Provincial Savant, p. 153 (autobiography).
Nîmes, BM, MS 306, f. 73r: Amoreux to Séguier 2 Mar 1774. â[U]ne vaste garenne. Il faut connoitre le gite dâun livre pour lây trouver.â For DâAubaisâs peregrinations earlier in life see the autobiography of one of his servants: Pierre Prion scribe, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie and Orest Ranum (eds.) (Paris: Gallimard-Juillard, 1985). Séguier knew the marquis well but only one letter survives between them: Nîmes, BM, MS 139, ff. 8â9, DâAubais to Séguier, 30 Mar 1769. Available online at <https://www.seguier.org/2234/> (last accessed 6 June 2019).
London, BL, Add. MS 22935, ff. 272 and 298. Presumably Hallerâs Bibliotheca botanica (Zurich: Orell, Gessner and Fuessli, 1771â1772), the first part of the Bibliotheca medica to be published, and Linnaeusâs Systema naturae, vol. 3 (Stockholm: Laurentius Salivius, 1768).
Maurice Larroutis, âLe Baron de Sainte-Croix: Un comtadin injustement oublié (1746â 1809)â, Mémoires de lâAcadémie de Vaucluse, 7th series, 3 (1982), pp. 211â223. The size of his chateau library is unknown: it was destroyed when the chateau was pillaged during the Revolution.
For the inscription and its history, see Brockliss, Calvet, pp. 317â321.
Nîmes, BM, MS 140, ff. 116â118: Calvet to Séguier, [?] June and 4 July 1769; Avignon, BM, MS 2364, ff. 162â164 and 168: Séguier to Calvet, 28 June, 25 July, 23 Aug. 1769.
Avignon, BM, Avignon MS 2367, ff. 241 and 243: Sainte-Croix to Calvet, 20 and 29 June 1769. Understandably the baron called on Calvet for aid in return when he began preparing his essay on Alexander: ibid., f. 254: Sainte-Croix to Calvet, 12 Oct. 1770.
Nîmes, BM, MS 449, âCatalogue de ma bibliothèqueâ (c.1770). The catalogue contains 1,712 titles arranged thematically.
Samuel Cordier and François Pugnière (eds.), Jean-François Séguier, Pierre Baux Lettres 1733â1756 (Avignon: Ãditions A. Barthélemy, 2006).
Séguier bought some of the books. On the sale of DâAubaisâs library, see Nîmes, BM, MS 136, ff. 96â102 passim: Amoreux to Séguier, letters 2 Oct. 1777 to 6 Jan. 1778.
Jean-Marc Châtelain, Un cabinet dâamateur à la fin du xviiie siècle: le marquis de Méjanes bibliophile (Aix-en-Provence: Cité du livre, 2006). As a result, the library was moved to the other side of the Rhône. It was not opened until 1810.
In September 1793 the Convention closed down all Franceâs institutions of education and learning prior to the creation of a completely new system which slowly evolved over the next twenty years.
As Pierre-Joseph Amoreux did in 1824.
Brockliss, Calvet, pp. 63â68 and 387â389.
For an introduction, see Robert Fox, The Savant and the State. Science and Cultural Politics in Nineteenth-Century France (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012).
Brockliss, Provincial Savant, p. 291, passim. Huzard was a member of the new Paris Institut. Amoreuxâs economic fortunes improved after the death of his father. Another member of the Ancien Régime Republic of Letters whose personal library remained open to outside readers at the beginning of the nineteenth century was the mathematician and Revolutionary Gilbert Romme (1740â1795): see Philippe Bourdin, âLa postérité de la bibliothèque Romme: le prêt privé dans les milieu ânéojacobinsâ provinciauxâ, in Philippe Bourdin and Jean-Luc Chappey (eds.), Réseaux et sociabilité littéraires en Révolution (Clermont-Ferrand: Presses universitaires Blaise Pascal, 2007), pp. 143â190.