Des sa plus tendre enfance aux etudes livre, La soif de la science l’a toujours devore.  Une immense lecture enrichit ses ecrits, Et la critique sure en augmente le prix.

These lines are copied from the Journal des Savans for October 1779.  Iean Joseph Rive was born at Apt, in 1730, and died at Marseilles in 1791.  He had doubtless great parts, natural and acquired:  a retentive memory, a quick perception, and a vast and varied reading.  He probably commenced amassing his literary treasures as early as his fourteenth year; and to his latest breath he pursued his researches with unabated ardour.  But his career was embittered by broils and controversies; while the frequent acts of kindness, and the general warmth of heart, evinced in his conduct, hardly sufficed to soften the asperity, or to mitigate the wrath, of a host of enemies—­which assailed him to the very last.  But Cadmus-like, he sowed the seeds from which these combatants sprung.  Whatever were his defects, as a public character, he is said to have been, in private, a kind parent, a warm friend, and an excellent master.  The only servant which he ever had, and who remained with him twenty-four years, mourned his loss as that of a father.  Peace to his ashes!

From bibliography let me gently, and naturally, as it were, conduct you towards BIBLIOPOLISM.  In other words, allow me to give you a sketch of a few of the principal Booksellers in this gay metropolis; who strive, by the sale of instructive and curious tomes, sometimes printed in the black letter of Gourmont and Marnef, to stem the torrent of those trivial or mischievous productions which swarm about the avenues of the Palais Royal.  In ancient times, the neighbourhood of the SORBONNE was the great mart for books.  When I dined in this neighbourhood, with my friend M. Gail, the Greek Professor at the College Royale, I took an opportunity of leisurely examining this once renowned quarter.  I felt even proud and happy to walk the streets, or rather tread the earth, which had been once trodden by Gering, Crantz, and Fiburger.[122] Their spirits seemed yet to haunt the spot:—­but no volume, nor even traces of one—­executed at their press—­ could be discovered.  To have found a perfect copy of Terence, printed in their first Roman character, would have been a trouvaille sufficiently lucky to have compensated for all previous toil, and to have franked me as far as Strasbourg.

The principal mart for booksellers, of old and second hand books, is now nearer the Seine; and especially in the Quai des Augustins. Messrs. Treuttel and Wuertz, Panckoucke, Renouard, and Brunet, live within a quarter of a mile of each other:  about a couple of hundred yards from the Quai des Augustins.  Further to the south, and not far from the Hotel de Clugny, in the Rue Serpente, live the celebrated DEBURE.  They are booksellers