One Catherinot all his life was printing a countless number of _feuilles
volantes_ in history and on antiquities; each consisting of about three
or four leaves in quarto: Lenglet du Fresnoy calls him “Grand auteur des
petits livres.” This gentleman liked to live among antiquaries and
historians; but with a crooked head-piece, stuck with whims, and hard
with knotty combinations, all overloaded with prodigious erudition, he
could not ease it at a less rate than by an occasional dissertation of
three or four quarto pages. He appears to have published about two
hundred pieces of this sort, much sought after by the curious for their
rarity: Brunet complains he could never discover a complete collection.
But Catherinot may escape “the pains and penalties” of our voluminous
writers, for De Bure thinks he generously printed them to distribute
among his friends. Such endless writers, provided they do not print
themselves into an alms-house, may be allowed to print themselves out;
and we would accept the apology which Monsieur Catherinot has framed for
himself, which is preserved in _Beyeri Memoriæ Librorum Rariorum_. “I
must be allowed my freedom in my studies, for I substitute my writings
for a game at the tennis-court, or a club at the tavern; I never counted
among my honours these _opuscula_ of mine, but merely as harmless
amusements. It is my partridge, as with St. John the Evangelist; my cat,
as with Pope St. Gregory; my little dog, as with St. Dominick; my lamb,
as with St. Francis; my great black mastiff, as with Cornelius Agrippa;
and my tame hare, as with Justus Lipsius.” Catherinot could never get a
printer, and was rather compelled to study economy in his two hundred
quartos of four or eight pages; his paper was of inferior quality, and
when he could not get his dissertations into his prescribed number of
pages, he used to promise the end at another time, which did not always
happen. But his greatest anxiety was to publish and spread his works; in
despair he adopted an odd expedient. Whenever Monsieur Catherinot came
to Paris, he used to haunt the _quaies_ where books are sold, and while
he appeared to be looking over them, he adroitly slided one of his own
dissertations among these old books. He began this mode of publication
early, and continued it to his last days. He died with a perfect
conviction that he had secured his immortality; and in this manner he
disposed of more than one edition of his unsaleable works.[209]
[209] D’Israeli.
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