It is to be remarked that the Elzevirs frequently avoided dating or even signing their books, for reasons easy to comprehend. Publishing numerous works, they were afraid of compromising themselves in the eyes of the powerful, and they let them go forth without any trade mark. These artists in typography were, besides, the most prudent and subtle of men. Working at a time when bookselling had become an acknowledged commerce, and a trade requiring all the skill and resources of others, they wisely availed themselves of these, gathering for themselves honour and profit without having done more than seize their opportunity. Employing the characters of Claude Garamond, of James Sanlecques, and the papers of Angoulême, M. Didot thence claims them as French publishers. In France the Elzevirs had no rivals; but a fashion was introduced from the end of the sixteenth century of associating together publishers in the production of important and costly books. There were, among others, the company of the "Grand Navire" in 1610, of the "Source" in 1622, and of the "Soleil" in 1629. In 1631 several publishers united and founded a second company of the "Grand Navire." These were the two Cramoisys, Sebastian and Gabriel, Denis Béchet, John Branchu, Denis Moreau, Claude Sonnius, and Denis Thierry. The associates took a ship as their mark, but without putting their names on the masts, as the original company of the "Grand Navire" had done. They published, at common expense and divided profits, great works, of which each one of them had the right of sale, but of course reserving to themselves the right to publish such others as they pleased. Sebastian Cramoisy passes as the chief, the moral director of another company, formed to publish the Fathers of the Church, with the royal types, a company affiliated to the "Grand Navire" and signed in 1638 by Denis Moreau, Gille Morel, Stephen Richer, Claude Sonnius, and Gabriel Cramoisy. But as regards their personal works, if they had neither the perfection nor the aspect of those of Froben, Aldus, the Estiennes, or even of Plantin, they at least surpassed the French books of the time. Formerly syndic of the Corporation in 1602, twenty-nine years before the constitution of the "Grand Navire," Cramoisy was besides sheriff of Paris, and he exercised his trade in a shop in the Rue St. Jacques which had been that of Father Nivelle, the _doyen_ of booksellers, who died in 1603 at the age of eighty years.