Bibliomania; or Book-Madness: A Bibliographical RomanceDibdin, Thomas Frognall
History
Bibliomania; or Book-Madness: A Bibliographical Romance
Dibdin, Thomas Frognall
Bibliography; Bibliomania; Book collecting; Books -- Prices
Bibliologie_, vol. i., 221, 422: vol iii., 277.]
[Footnote 148: The mention of De Bure and the Abbe RIVE
induces me to inform the reader that the _Chasse aux
Bibliographes_, Paris, 1789, 8vo., of the latter, will be
found a receptacle of almost every kind of gross abuse and
awkward wit which could be poured forth against the
respectable characters of the day. It has now become rare.
The Abbe's "_Notices calligraphiques et typographiques_," a
small tract of 16 pages--of which only 100 copies were
printed--is sufficiently curious; it formed the first number
of a series of intended volumes (12 or 15) "_des notices
calligraphiques de manuscrits des differens siecles, et des
notices typographiques de livres du quinzieme siecle_," but
the design was never carried into execution beyond this
first number. The other works of Rive are miscellaneous; but
chiefly upon subjects connected with the belles lettres. He
generally struck off but few copies of his publications; see
the _Bibliographie Curieuse_, pp. 58-9; and more
particularly the _Dictionnaire de Bibliologie_, vol. iii.,
p. 277, by the same author, where a minute list of Rive's
productions is given, and of which Fournier might have
availed himself in his new edition of the _Dict. Portatif de
Bibliographie_. From Peignot, the reader is presented with
the following anecdotes of this redoubted champion of
bibliography. When Rive was a young man, and curate of
Molleges in Provence, the scandalous chronicle reported that
he was too intimate with a young and pretty Parisian, who
was a married woman, and whose husband did not fail to
reproach him accordingly. Rive made no other reply than that
of taking the suspicious Benedick in his arms, and throwing
him headlong out of the window. Luckily he fell upon a
dunghill! In the year 1789, upon a clergyman's complaining
to him of the inflexible determination of a great lord to
hunt upon his grounds--"_Mettez-lui une messe dans le
ventre_"--repiled [Transcriber's Note: replied] Rive. The
clergyman expressing his ignorance of the nature of the
advice given, the facetious Abbe replied, "Go and tear a
leaf from your _mass book_, wrap a musket-ball in it, and
discharge it at the tyrant." The Duke de la Valliere used to
say--when the knowing ones at his house were wrangling about
some literary or bibliographical point--"Gentlemen, I'll go
and let loose my bull dog,"--and sent into them the Abbe,
who speedily put them all to rights. Rive died in the year
1791, aged seventy-one. He had great parts and great
application; but in misapplying both he was his own
tormentor. His library was sold in 1793.]
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