THE name of Elzevir has for more than two centuries been a familiar one to collectors of choice books. These Dutch printer-publishers of the seventeenth century were able to associate their imprint with certain publications of such distinctive typographical excellence as to ensure for the editions known as “Elzevirs” a prestige that has endured to the present day. Aldus alone among the early publishers has had a similar fortune, and while the “Aldine” editions are, of course, in respect to their number and to their typographical excellence, much less important than the “Elzevirs,” it must be remembered that having been issued more than a century earlier, their production called for a much larger measure of originating capacity and initiative on the part of their printer-publisher. The principal authority on the history of the Elzevirs is a comprehensive and carefully written monograph of Alphonse Willems, published in Brussels in 1880.

Louis Elzevir, who, as far as its publishing undertakings are concerned, was the founder of the family, had been brought up as a binder in the Flemish University town of Louvain. He was a Protestant, and in 1580, when existence for Protestants had been made difficult in the Catholic provinces of Flanders, Elzevir, in company with hundreds of others of his faith, made his way across the border to Holland, and settled, with his family, at Leyden. He was at this time about forty years of age. Leyden was, in 1580, next to Amsterdam, the most considerable and the most important city in Holland. The heroic resistance that its citizens had made during the long siege by the Spaniards had earned fame for the city throughout all Protestant Europe, while the University, which had been founded by William the Silent in commemoration of the glory of the struggle, had at once secured for itself a prestige among the scholars of Europe, and in making Leyden a centre for the literary activities of the Dutch provinces, had given a great incentive to its publishing and printing trade.

Louis Elzevir found at Leyden a considerable group of Flemish Protestants who had, like himself, found it wise to get away from the rule of the Spanish soldiers and of the Roman ecclesiastics who were dominating Flanders. Among these exiles were certain men whose names became known, later, in connection with literature or with the work of the University, such as Vulcanius, Drusius, d’Audenard, Lipsius, Stevin, Heinsius, Baudius, Polyander, and Silvius, the first Printer to the University.

Elzevir began work as a book binder for the students and instructors of the University, adding to this business, a little later, a book-selling shop. The undertaking proved, however, unsuccessful. During the troublous times in which the new nation was still struggling against the power of Spain for the right to exist, the number of students in the University was at best but limited, and in Leyden as in Heidelberg, Erfurt, and other of the German universities of the time, the practice of hiring or borrowing text-books, or of arranging in some manner to make one or two volumes serve for the requirements of an entire class, must have interfered not a little with the possibility of securing a living from the post of University bookseller.

Louis found himself, therefore, obliged to give up his first place of business, but he was not willing to confess himself defeated. During his brief experience as a bookseller, he had been able to impress himself favourably upon some of the authorities of the University, and in his present distress he applied to them for help. The University council, recognising the value for higher education of the service to be rendered by a skilled and conscientious bookseller, gave him permission to construct within the limits of the University court a small book-shop, and authorised Elzevir to announce himself officially as the bookseller, and, later, as the publisher, to the University.

With this fresh starting point, Louis succeeded, after some years of persistent and painstaking labour, in creating an assured business foundation. He had never mastered the art of printing, and the typographical work of the publications issued with his name was done under contract with different printers, and presented no feature of special excellence or distinctiveness. The works selected, however, for Elzevir’s publishing list, together with the books selected by him through Frankfort and Paris for sale in his shop, gave evidence of a good literary and scholarly ideal and of a continually widening range of knowledge of existing literature.

His correspondence throughout France, Germany, and Italy brought the name of the new University to the knowledge of many literary circles, and established for Leyden and for the towns of Holland which depended upon Leyden for their foreign literature, connections with the book-producing centres of Europe, connections which were never thereafter to be severed. Louis was, during the greater part of his lifetime, the only publisher and bookseller of Holland having such foreign relations. At the time when the new State was securing through the force of arms and the skill of its ambassadors the political recognition from the Courts of Europe upon which its continued existence depended, its literary representative, Louis Elzevir, was, in like manner, securing for Dutch scholarship and for Dutch publishing enterprise an honourable recognition from the scholars and with the book-trade of Europe.

The first work published by Louis as a venture of his own was an edition of Eutropius, issued in 1592. It was, however, not until after 1594 that his publications began to appear with any regularity. In 1595, he first utilised as a trade-mark the design of an eagle grasping in its claw seven darts, an emblem which was retained by the House for nearly a third of a century.

The name of Louis Elzevir is chronicled for the first time, in 1595, in the list of publishers offering books at the Fair in Frankfort. From the year 1602 he appears to have made regular annual sojourns in Paris. In the Journal of Pierre de Lestoile, under date of August, 1609, is a reference to a purchase made by him from Elvisier (sic) of Leyden, of a treatise (by Grotius) entitled Mare Liberum, together with certain orations of Heinsius and of Baudius. Lestoile goes on to say that the said Elvisier had described to him the bequest recently made by Baudius to the public library of Leyden of his collection of books, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldaic, Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopian, Persian, and Armenian, a collection estimated by said Elvisier as worth not less than three thousand crowns. It would appear from this reference that the scholars and the publishers of Leyden must have had available for their use an exceptionally comprehensive reference library.

The more distinctive work of the Elzevirs began, however, only after the death of Louis, which occurred in 1617. He left six sons, two of whom were carrying on book-shops in Utrecht and The Hague, in affiliation with the present concern in Leyden. One was in the service of the Dutch East India Company, and a fourth had adopted the profession of an artist. The eldest and the youngest, Matthew and Bonaventure, joined hands to carry on the business of their father, a business which they were able very largely to extend and develop. The form of imprint, ex officina Elzeviriana, dates from the year 1617, when the two young men assumed the direction of the concern.

At the time the two young Flemings were beginning work with their publishing operations, the independence of the Dutch Republic, though not yet formally acknowledged by Spain, was an assured fact, and the territory of the seven United Provinces was free alike from invaders and from civil strife. The Thirty Years’ War was, however (in 1618), just beginning in Germany, and until the peace of Westphalia, in 1648, the business connections of dealers in books with the book-trade centres in Frankfort, Leipzig, Cologne, etc., were, in common with all trade operations on the Continent, very much interfered with. The energy of the Dutch traders, however, repressed in one direction, found vent in another. Dutch fleets overcame the Spanish naval forces in the Pacific and transferred to the Dutch the control of many of the Spanish possessions in the East, while the trade between the Mediterranean and the North of Europe was largely transferred from Venice and Genoa to Amsterdam and Harlem. The devastation that had been brought upon Antwerp during the struggle with Spain, and the migration to the provinces of the North of thousands of the Protestants who had constituted a very important portion of the more intelligent and enterprising of the inhabitants of Flanders and Brabant, had helped to develop in the cities of the Dutch Republic the industries and the commerce of which Antwerp and Bruges had so long been the centre.

While for a large part of Europe the Thirty Years’ War meant a throttling, or at least a serious hampering, of its trade, the commerce of the Dutch flourished behind the guns of their fighting vessels. With the expansion of the ambition and of the material resources of the new nation, came a rapid development of its intellectual activities and of the productive work of its scholars and writers.

The Elzevirs had (as would naturally be the case with men who were exiles on the ground of their faith) associated themselves with the stricter and more earnest of the Calvinists of their adopted country. Bonaventure, the youngest of the sons of the first Louis, makes various references in his correspondence to the acceptance of and his cordial sympathy with the creed of the Calvinists as formulated by the Synod of Dort. The first publication which bore his individual imprint was a work of religious controversy bearing the rather ponderous title, Censura ne Confessionem sive Declarationem Sententiæ eorum qui in Fœderato Belgio remonstrantes vocantur, super Præcipues Articules Christianæ Religionis, A. SS. Theol. Professoribus Academiæ Leidensis Instituta. 1626. Cum Privilegio.

Bonaventure married the daughter of a zealous Calvinist preacher, and he himself remained until his death an important lay member of the Council of the Ancients of the Walloon Church, a council which was charged not only with the government of the Church itself, but with a large measure of responsibility in connection with both the spiritual and the civil administration of the community.

The intellectual ferment of which the bitter theological controversies that raged about the name and the doctrines of Arminius were an evidence (or a result), stimulated the production of books and furthered the habit of reading among many classes of the people to whom printed matter had previously been comparatively unfamiliar. The period immediately succeeding the Synod of Dort witnessed an enormous increase in the list of publications by Dutch writers. The views of the Remonstrants and of their opponents the Contra-Remonstrants on the famous five points of predestination, redemption, depravity, conversion, and perseverance, required for their adequate setting forth a long series both of folios and of pamphlets. On these and other grounds, the year 1618 proved to be an exceptionally favourable period for the beginning of a great publishing concern, and the two Elzevirs showed themselves fully capable of taking advantage effectively of the opportunity. The printing-office in Leyden appears to have been completely organised early in the year 1618. Its first immediate director was Isaac, the grandson of Louis. In 1625, he retired from the concern, leaving both the printing and the publishing business in the hands of his uncle Bonaventure and his brother Abraham. The year 1626 is considered by Willems to have marked the most brilliant period in the long record of the House, although in later years a longer series of important works was produced. The productions of the Elzevir Press during the next two or three years were in part devoted to the theology of the period (such as the acts of the National Synod), but were principally represented by the great editions of the classics for which the Elzevir imprint will always remain famous.

In 1625, the Elzevirs took over the printing-office of Erpenius, who was at the time the only printer in the Netherlands, and one of the few in Europe, who possessed any Oriental fonts. In 1629, they initiated with Horace and Ovid the series of Latin classics in sixteenmo, a form which followed very fairly the proportions of the famous series of Aldus. In 1641, they began, with the issue of The Cid, a series of contemporary French drama, and in 1642, with the works of Regnier, a series of the chief monuments of French literature.

Bonaventure and Abraham died in the same year, 1652, but their sons, John and Daniel, were already of sufficient age and of sufficient training to assume the direction of affairs. Among the earlier of the works issued by these two, were an edition of the Imitation of Christ and one of the Psalms, which are described by the enthusiastic Willems as “jewels of typography.” In 1655, Daniel transferred himself to Amsterdam, where he was associated with his cousin Louis. John’s death came a year or two later, leaving in Leyden no member of the Elzevir family. John’s widow, Eva van Alphen, thereupon made herself the head of the printing and publishing concern, and was able also to retain control of the business of the University. The activity of the publishing lessened during the following few years, but the excellence of the work turned out by the printing-office seems not materially to have suffered, and a number of the more important publications issued with the imprint of the Elzevir firm in Amsterdam, were manufactured in the Press of the Elzevir widow in Leyden. After the death of Eva, in 1681, there was, however, a rapid deterioration not only in the activity of the publishing, but in the work turned out by the printing-office. Her son Abraham appears to have been both ignorant and incapable. His business was before long limited to the printing of the University theses, and there were at the time not a few complaints from the instructors concerning the badness of the work put into these. Abraham’s death occurred in 1712, and it seems probable that even if he had had a longer life, the work of the printing-office would speedily have come to a close from inanition or from lack of intelligent direction.

The plant and material of the once famous printing-office was sold at auction, in 1713, for the benefit of the creditors and of a daughter left by Abraham. For nearly a century the printing of the University had been in the hands of the Elzevir family, but after the migration in 1665, of Louis to Amsterdam, the more important of the publishing undertakings of the Elzevirs bear the imprint of the Amsterdam House. The first printer to the University had been William Silvius, who had, before coming to Leyden, held in Antwerp the title of Printer to the King. Silvius was a scholar as well as a printer, and having given evidence of sympathy with the Protestant group, he found it desirable to get away from Antwerp. He held the post in Leyden for but a few months, dying in 1580. For nearly four years, the University appears to have dispensed with the services of a University printer and publisher, but in 1584, the position was given to Christophe Plantin, the famous Antwerp publisher, who was at the time, in connection with certain difficulties, an exile from his home city. It is probable from his acceptance of the post and from the labour given by him to the organisation of an effective printing establishment, that Plantin had seriously in view at the time the plan of a permanent transfer to Leyden of his business interests. In 1585, however, his difficulties having been adjusted, Plantin found it practicable to return to Antwerp, but he was able, in leaving Leyden, to secure from the University authorities the appointment as his successor of his son-in-law Raphelengius. The latter added to his duties as a printer the professorship of Hebrew in the University, and it is evident from the record that he was more assiduous in his work as an instructor than in attention to the rather complex responsibilities of the University printing-office. On the death of Raphelengius, in 1597, the post was given to his son Christopher, who survived his father, however, but for four years. The successor of the younger Raphelengius was a certain Johannes Patius (Jean Paedts). His work appears to have been unsatisfactory, and, in 1620, Isaac Elzevir, grandson of Louis, came into direction of the University printing.

The annual compensation given to Silvius and, later, to Plantin, was two hundred florins. Under the agreement with Isaac Elzevir, the money payment was fixed at fifty florins. It seems probable, however, that during the thirty-five years that had passed since the first establishment of the office, there had been a sufficient development in the incidental business connected with the University printing and publishing to render the post more valuable in 1620 with a stipend of fifty florins, than it had been in 1585 with a payment of two hundred.

The agreement with Isaac Elzevir provided that he should hold at the disposition of members of the University Faculty one press and during certain seasons of the year two presses, the work of which was apparently devoted to the précis or papers of instruction recognised for use in the class-room. The productions of more considerable compass of which the professors were the authors, were passed upon by the curators of the Press and by the senate of the University with reference to their publication through the University Press and at the charge of the University treasury. The printer was under obligations to secure for the Press the service of correctors competent to supervise the text of any language required. In the majority of cases there should, of course, have been no difficulty in securing such correctors from the membership of the University itself. Any illustrations to be included in the University publications were to be “supplied to the printer,” but it is not clear whether this provision implies that the authors of books, the remaining expense of which was provided by the University, must themselves meet the outlay for the production of the illustrations.

One copy of every work printed by the Publisher to the University was to be deposited in the University library. The publishing undertakings were, in the matter of Press censorship or supervision, to be subject to the regulations of the States-General. What censorship was put in force appears, however, to have been exercised through certain selected members of the Theological Faculty of the University. I find no reference to any political questions arising in connection with these Leyden publications, and apparently there was, outside of the theologians, no keen interest in censorship or in Press supervision. The privilege of occupying for the printing-office a portion of the court or quadrangle of the University buildings, was doubtless estimated as a portion of the compensation and must have been of material service for the prestige of the concern, irrespective of the detail of the saving of rent.

Reference has been made to a certain Erpenius (Th. van Erpen), whose Oriental fonts were taken over, later, by the Elzevirs. Erpenius was one of the more noteworthy scholars who brought prestige to the Faculty of the University. Not content with the task of giving instruction in the languages and literatures of the Orient, or possibly influenced by the difficulty of carrying on such instruction without an adequate supply of texts, Erpenius set up a printing-office in his own house and undertook at his own cost the production of a series of the works of representative Eastern writers. His death, at the early age of forty, interrupted the scholarly undertaking. His widow had had in view the sale to some printers in Paris of the costly collection of type moulds and punches, which constituted, in fact, almost the entire property that had been left to her. The University authorities were averse to permitting this collection to go out of the country, but there happened to be at the time no funds in the treasury adequate to give to the widow the sum she had been offered from Paris. Isaac Elzevir himself provided the amount required, and purchased the material in his own name. It was transferred to his successors, but when the University confirmed them as the official printers, it was made a condition that this Oriental material should be retained in Leyden at the disposition of the University. The annual compensation was at the same time raised to one hundred florins. There was a further specification in the agreement to the effect that any books required by the professors or notabilités académiques, the University publisher was to procure (from Frankfort or Paris) “at his own risk or peril,” and was to charge for the same no higher price than was to be charged by other booksellers. In 1631, the annual stipend was increased to three hundred florins, “in consideration of the exceptional outlays required by the Oriental work of the printing-office and of the cost of providing a special corrector for the Oriental works.”

Up to the time of the death of Abraham, the last member of the Leyden family, no further changes of importance occurred in the relations between the University and its Press. In a number of respects the general organisation and regulation of the Leyden University Press appear to have been quite similar to the arrangement which was put into force, in 1632, in Oxford at the institution of the Clarendon Press.[133] It is, of course, probable enough that the history of the University of Leyden was well known in Oxford and that the regulations controlling the Leyden Press may have served, if not as a model, at least as a general suggestion for the scheme of the organisation of the Clarendon Press.

The number of theses printed by the University printer increased steadily, the increase being an indication, in part, of the growth of the University, and, in part, of the development of the literary activities of its members. The summary of the theses is as follows:

The cost of the several buildings erected for the work of the printers was borne by the Elzevirs. These buildings all stood, however, upon land owned by the University, and were, in fact, immediately connected with the buildings of instruction. The printing-offices remained, therefore, the property of the University, doubtless under the usual conditions of a ground lease. In August, 1641, John Evelyn, writing from Leyden, speaks of visiting the famous Heinsius, and also of inspecting the famous book-shop and the printing-office of the Elzevirs, “renowned throughout Europe for the importance of their publications and for the beauty of their typography.”[134] Evelyn goes on to speak of a statue carved in stone which stood opposite the gateway of the printing-office enclosure, a “representation of the fortunate monk who, as is claimed by the Hollanders, was the first inventor of printing, an opinion combated by the Germans, who insist that the glory of the invention belongs to Gutenberg.” It is not quite certain that the printing-office enclosure or the University court did include at this time a statue of Koster. There was, however, such a statue in the city, in the Haarlemmerstraat, and the English tourist may either have confused his memory as to the location of this, or possibly have thought himself justified, for the sake of dramatic effect, in placing the statue where, according to his judgment, it properly belonged, in front of the headquarters of the printing interests in Holland.

The work of the Elzevirs in Leyden had continued from 1621 to 1712, a period of ninety-one years. The printing and publishing House instituted by the Elzevirs in The Hague began its operations in 1590. Its first head was Louis, the second son of the founder of the dynasty. His work was, however, limited to the business of bookselling, his establishment containing one of the most comprehensive and best organised collections of scholarly publications to be found in the North of Europe. After his death, in 1621, the business was carried on for about twenty years, first by his brother Bonaventure and, later, by his nephews and their cousins. In 1661, the book-shop at The Hague was finally closed, the stock being, in part, transferred to Amsterdam, and in part, sold at auction.

The continuity of the printing and publishing work originated in Leyden, was maintained by the branch of the Elzevir family which settled at Amsterdam, and the Amsterdam House continued active operations until about the close of the seventeenth century. The book-shop in Amsterdam was instituted in 1638, by Louis, grandson of Louis of Louvain. In 1640, Louis added to his book-shop the plant of a printing-office, and when, in 1655, he obtained the coöperation of his cousin Daniel from Leyden, the Amsterdam House was able to secure for itself a foundation and a prestige which exceeded that of the parent concern in Leyden. In fact the series of publications issued from Amsterdam during the twenty years following 1655 was more considerable and important than the list of the Leyden Elzevirs during the same period. It is proper to add, however, that even for the books of this period the experts give the palm for typographical excellence to the volumes bearing the Leyden imprint. The most noteworthy of the publications of the first ten years of the new partnership, from the point of view at least of typographical excellence, were the Corpus Juris, published in folio in 1663, and the French text of the Scriptures edited by Desmarets, issued in 1669.

Louis retired in 1665, and on the death of Daniel, in 1680, there being no sons old enough to carry on the concern and no cousins available, the business was wound up. The last publication bearing the imprint of Elzevir of Amsterdam was issued in 1680, by Anna, the widow of Daniel. The emblem of the Elzevirs, which appeared on the signs of the several buildings occupied by them in Amsterdam, was an elm. An important feature in the rapid development of the publishing business of the Elzevirs, a feature which may be considered partly as cause and partly as effect, was the extensive series of foreign connections, connections initiated by the first Louis, and maintained and extended by two generations of his successors. The majority of the Dutch publishers of the time were content to limit their trade connections to the towns of their own country, with an occasional correspondent in Frankfort. But Louis Elzevir, with a larger ambition and a more comprehensive view of the requirements of a high-grade publishing business, decided from the outset that the widest possible connections with the scholarly book-buyers of Europe was essential in order to ensure adequate support for the class of undertakings he had in view. Within fifteen years of the death of the founder, the firm had a direct representation in nearly every one of the book-selling centres of Europe. A number of these agencies were placed, either temporarily or permanently, in the charge of some member of the family, and it became the usual routine for the younger Elzevirs to secure in turn in this manner an important part of their education and their business training, in different foreign cities. The fact that during nearly a century the family circle was so large, facilitated not a little the carrying out of a general scheme of a federation of book-selling agencies, whose special purpose it was to make known to the reading public of Europe, and to find an outlet for the productions of the Elzevir Presses. The first Louis was able, notwithstanding his active labours in Leyden, to pass a considerable portion of each year on the trade routes of Germany and France. His youngest son, Bonaventure, had, before his twenty-third year, sojourned in all the more important of the cities of Italy, and the nephews and grandchildren appear to have, so to speak, parcelled out Europe between them, carrying on literary campaigns from Naples in the South, to Copenhagen in the North. These “campaigns” had for their purpose not only the distribution of the Elzevir publications, but the collection from literary centres throughout Europe of “copy,” “texts,” and literary suggestions, to utilise for future publishing undertakings. The travelling Elzevirs were also, of course, in a position to secure to advantage the supplies required for their retail concerns in Leyden, Amsterdam, and The Hague. Willems finds records of large purchases of books made by the Elzevirs in Italy between 1606 and 1652. In 1622, there are references showing the existence in Venice of a depot for the sale of the Elzevir publications, and it appears that this depot was within a stone’s throw of the site of the establishment of Aldus, closed nearly half a century earlier. It was the Aldine classics that served as a model or at least as a suggestion for the more beautiful and more accurate sixteenmo editions of Elzevir. There was also an agency in Florence which, in the seventeenth century, was more nearly than Venice the literary centre of Italy.

Even at this time, 1675-1700, there was no organised system of transportation between Holland and Italy that could be depended upon for regular shipments of books. There is a reference in the Elzevir correspondence in 1675, and again in 1679, to the forwarding of bales of books through the kindness of travellers, in the former instance through Charles Dati,[135] and in the latter through the Abbé Brassetti. De exemplaren von Virgilius sign door schipper Jan Willis op Livorno versonden ende geaddresseert aen Abbate Brassetti, soo dat met twyffele ofte sullen wel te recht koomen.[136]

With England the Elzevirs had important relations, not only in the matter of buying and selling books, but in connection with the publication of a considerable number of books by English authors. Some of these publications were undertaken either for the account of the authors or of English publishers, who desired to secure the advantage of the Elzevir typography, which could not at that time be equalled by the work of any printers in England. It was the England of Charles II., of Pepys, Evelyn, Dryden, and Baxter, of which we are speaking.

In Frankfort the Elzevirs instituted, as early as 1595, a permanent depot for their publications, utilising their agency also for the collection of stock for the retail departments both of the Leyden and of the Amsterdam House. The first general catalogue of the books offered at the Frankfort Fair was printed in 1564, by George Willer, a bookseller of Augsburg. After 1595, these semi-annual Fair catalogues always contained an important representation of the Elzevir publications. The semi-annual gatherings of the booksellers at Frankfort were maintained, at least in form, during the stormy period of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), although at certain of the appointed dates the attendance was very small and the business done but trifling. The records of the Fair give evidence, however, that notwithstanding the serious difficulties and dangers of travel during this period, a representative of the Elzevirs made his way from Holland and was recorded as present at every one of the Fairs during the thirty years. From the middle of the seventeenth century, the Frankfort Fair decreased in importance, the centre of the book-trade of Germany being transferred to Leipzig. For a number of years the Fair was held in both places, but before 1700 its business was transferred entirely to Leipzig, which became the headquarters of the book-trade in Germany, the best organised book-trade in Europe. The change was brought about through a variety of influences. The operations and results of the Thirty Years’ War had doubtless something to do with the matter, but it is possible that a large factor was the increasing intellectual activity of the Protestant States of North Germany as compared with that of the territory, in the main Catholic, of the South. Leipzig was of course better situated to serve as a centre for book production and for book distribution for these Northern States. It lacked, however, the very important advantage which had so long furthered the trade of Frankfort, the convenience, namely, of direct connection by water (the river Main) with the great highway of the Continent, the Rhine. For the traders from Holland, the Rhine was the natural means of communication with Germany, and made easy an important portion of the route to Italy. For this and for other reasons, the Elzevirs opposed the removal of the Fair from Frankfort to Leipzig, and their influence was sufficiently powerful to delay this removal for a quarter of a century.

The Elzevirs retained in their hands for many years a very large proportion of the business of supplying Germany with foreign publications, including more particularly those from Holland, England, and France. The German booksellers of this period appear to have been comparatively unenterprising in the matter of maintaining direct foreign connections. With Paris, the energetic Louis had taken pains to open relations almost at the outset of his business career. Reference is made as early as 1602 to a sojourn by Louis in Paris, and to a privilege extended to him for a term of three weeks of accepting orders for his books from the Paris dealers. Under the regulations which had been established for the French book-trade, regulations emanating in part from the University that had from an early period assumed the right to control bookselling, and in part from the Booksellers’ Guild itself, foreign dealers could do business in Paris only under a very narrow system of restrictions. They were forbidden either to buy or to sell at the Fairs of St. Germain and St. Laurent; they were forbidden to come to Paris more frequently than once a year, or to sojourn there for a longer period than three weeks, counting from the date of the opening of their bales; they were, further, forbidden to accept orders from any but the booksellers of the Guild (les libraires jurés). Bonaventure, the son of Louis, appears to have made, after 1624, regular annual sojourns in Paris. In 1626, he brought back with him to Leyden a series of unpublished letters of the scholar Scaliger, who had died in Leyden seventeen years before. Scaliger had held in Leyden the Chair of Belles-Lettres, and had done much to add to the prestige of the University. Among his pupils was Grotius. The list of the Leyden publications gives evidence that these Paris visits were utilised for the collection of material from French authors and editors. Against this kind of competition on the part of foreign publishers the French book-trade was evidently unable to frame any effective regulations.

One of the most distinctive of the Elzevir undertakings in foreign parts was the branch House established in 1632 in Copenhagen. The Danish community proved to be a good customer as well for the publications from Holland as for the books which the Elzevirs were able to supply to advantage from Germany, Italy, and France. One evidence of the importance attached by the Elzevirs to this branch House in Copenhagen was the printing (in 1642) of a separate catalogue of the books there offered for sale. The first of the Elzevirs to visit Denmark was probably Louis (the second) in 1632. There are references to later visits by him in 1634, and in 1637. On the occasion of his first visit, he had opened a shop and appointed a permanent representative. The record of the town library of Copenhagen contains an entry of the payment to Elzevir, in 1632, of two hundred and sixty-four rigsdaler for books imported, and of a further payment, in 1634, of one hundred and twenty rigsdaler.[137]

In 1650, it was Daniel who represented the House in the North, sojourning in both Sweden and Denmark, and having for his travelling companion one of his famous authors, Nicholas Heinsius. While Daniel Elzevir was in Sweden, he received a proposition from Queen Christina to establish a printing and publishing concern in Stockholm. Christina of Sweden was a daughter of Gustavus Adolphus. She was at the time but twenty-eight years of age, but she had already given evidence of a strength of character and a brilliancy of intellect that made her personality a very distinctive one. She was a scholar of varied attainments and a great collector of books, and she was ambitious to make her capital city a literary centre for the North of Europe. Mr. Myrop speaks of the proposition made to Elzevir as being a very flattering one, and it is easy to understand that the ambitious Queen could hope to secure in her literary undertakings the kind of service she required from a House like the Elzevirs, who were alike the greatest publishers, the most distinguished printers, and the most extensive booksellers of their time. For some reason, however, the suggestion of a Stockholm branch did not happen to fit in with the policy of the House, and the proposition was declined.[138] A few years later, a printing and publishing concern was established in Stockholm, under the protection of King Charles Gustavus, by Johann Janssons of Amsterdam. The visit to Stockholm of Daniel Elzevir and his negotiations with Christina preceded by but four years the abdication of the brilliant but erratic Queen, which took place in 1654. She became a Catholic (her intention of abandoning Protestantism was one ground for her abdication) and made her home in Rome. She brought with her to Rome no less than 2145 books in manuscript, and after becoming a Roman citizen, she added to the collection several hundred valuable works. With a few exceptions, the entire collection now rests in the Vatican.

The most valuable of the books she had owned in Stockholm was the famous Codex Argenteus, which contains a portion of the Gospels in the Merso-Gothic version of Ulfilas. This Codex the Queen had, however, given away, before her abdication, to a certain Count Magnus de la Gardie, and it remained in Sweden, where it is still preserved as one of the greatest treasures of the State. Among the more important of the literary antiquities that the Queen had taken with her to Rome, were the codices of the Septuagint, written in the seventh century, several manuscripts dating from the Carlovingian times, a very old Psalter, and a copy of the Theodosian Code and the Laws of the Visigoths, which was said to have been written in the middle of the seventh century. There is also a fragment of the Theodosian Code, written in the Tironian character. In addition to this great series of manuscripts, the Queen left nearly six thousand printed books, an enormous library for a collection made as early as the middle of the seventeenth century. She died in 1689.[139]

The many who have admired the typographical chefs-d’œuvre which issued from the presses of the Elzevirs, neglect to give due credit to the name of the man to whose artistic skill is to be credited the designing and engraving of the punches from which were produced the exquisite Elzevir fonts of type. It is the general opinion of typographical experts that these fonts, in the beauty of their proportion, the delicacy of their outline, and the distinctive grace of their general effect, surpassed anything that had as yet been produced in Europe. The discovery that the designer of these fonts was Christophe Van Dyck is due to the researches of Willems. Van Dyck’s work appears to have been done between the years 1630 and 1640. The name is a famous one in the annals of the Netherlands, but there is, I understand, nothing to show that this artistic engraver and type-founder was connected with Sir Anthony Van Dyck, the Flemish painter. The latter was born in 1599, and died (in England) in 1641, so that the two men were, however, contemporaries.

During the larger portion of time in which the presses of the Elzevirs were active, the publishers had the advantage of carrying on their work under comparatively slight restrictions in the matter of government censorship, while to censorship on the part of the Church there are but few references. It is probable that during the seventeenth century the Press of the Dutch Republic was more untrammelled than that of any State in Europe. It is true that there is record of various edicts and regulations on the part of the States-General prohibiting the printing of libellous material, or of works directed against princes or governments which were allied with the Republic. There is also an occasional edict against the circulation of publications classed as “irreligious” or “obscene.” With the latter class of publications the Elzevirs took no part either as printers or as booksellers. It did occasionally happen, however, that they interested themselves in the production and in the circulation of publications, the purpose or influence of which might evoke criticisms or complaints from friendly governments or from individual statesmen. For such publications they found it wise to make use of some nom de presse or to issue the same without imprint of name or place. Such publications can be identified as coming from the Elzevirs either by means of books of account or through the evidence of their very distinctive fonts of type.

Among the books for the anonymous circulation of which the House was responsible, were the Defensio Regia of Saumaise, the Defensio Populi Anglicani of Milton, and the Mare Clausum of Selden. The interest of the Elzevirs in circulating the last named treatise (which was an argument to justify certain pretensions of England) is somewhat to be wondered at, because, only shortly before, they had published with their imprint the famous argument of Grotius, Mare Liberum, in which was upheld the Dutch contention in behalf of the freedom of the seas.

On a number of the unavowed publications of this kind, the Elzevirs placed the imprint Lugduni (Lyons), in place of Lugduni Batavorum (Leyden). This was done particularly in the case of the writings of the French Jansenists, who would not wish to emphasise the fact that these were printed in such an heretical headquarters as Leyden. One of the bogus names employed quite frequently for these unavowed publications was that of Jouxte, and another was Jean Sambix. The imprint of Nic Schouten, Köln, was also utilised, together with a number of mythical or manufactured names connected with actual places.

The Elzevirs, following the example set a century and a half earlier by Aldus, but since that time very generally lost sight of by the later publishers, initiated a number of series of books in small and convenient forms, twelvemo and sixteenmo, which were offered to book-buyers at prices considerably lower than those they had been in the habit of paying for similar material printed in folio, quarto, or octavo. For volumes of classics printed in twelvemo, such as the Virgil of 1636, the Pliny of 1640, and the Cicero of 1642, volumes containing an average of five hundred pages, the catalogue price was one florin, the equivalent in currency of about forty-three cents. Quintus Curtius, published in 1633, is catalogued at sixteen sous, the equivalent of thirty-five cents. Sallust, Terence, and Florus, sold at fifteen sous; and Livy, in three volumes, at four florins ten sous.

These well edited, carefully printed, and low priced editions of the classics won for the Elzevirs the cordial appreciation of scholars and of students throughout Europe. Matthew Berneggerus, professor of Strasburg, in the preface to his translation of Galileo’s System of the Universe, speaks of the Elzevirs as unquestionably the first typographers of the world, Elzevirios Leydenses typographus, artis nobilissime facile princeps universio de studiis præclare meritos. The professor was writing in 1635, only six years after the appearance of the earliest of the noteworthy specimens of the Elzevir typography, which gives the impression that, notwithstanding all the general obstacles and the special hindrances of war times, the diffusion of information concerning new publications, at least in the university centres, must have been fairly prompt. A few years later, Galileo (who died in 1642) himself gave testimony to the excellence of the work done by his Dutch publishers.[140] I do not find record of the arrangements entered into by Galileo for the publication of the translation of his treatise, but it is evident that he considered the undertaking a desirable one. The approval on the part of the scholars of these smaller and more economical editions of the Elzevirs was, however, not unanimous. The scholar, De Put (Erycius Puteanus), writing to Heinsius, in 1629, to acknowledge the receipt of the new Horace, says: “The Elzevirs are certainly great typographers. I can but think, however, that their reputation will suffer in connection with these trifling little volumes with such slender type. An author like Horace deserves to be produced in a dignified form, with a certain majesty of appearance, and not to have his thoughts buried in shabby little type like this.” It was not unnatural that the long-time association of great authors with big volumes should have brought about the impression, not easily to be outgrown, that the size of the book should be in direct proportion to the literary importance of its contents. This view of the requirements and limitations of book-making was, however, based on the assumption that books were for the use of the wealthier classes only, or for placing in libraries which were accessible only to privileged bodies of scholars. The tendency of the age was, on the other hand, towards a continually increasing distribution of literature among impecunious scholars and with the public at large; and the Elzevirs, while doubtless shaping their publishing plans with a view to securing the largest business returns, were also, in popularising the best literature, doing their part towards the spread of the higher education of the community.

Some authors of their time were, in fact, so fully appreciative of the service rendered to their fame by the circulation of their writings in the attractive form given to them by the Elzevirs, that in place of considering the appropriation of their productions as a grievance, they were ready to express their satisfaction at the compliment thus paid to them. In 1648, the Elzevirs printed an unauthorised edition of Les Lettres Choisies of Balzac (Jean Louis Guez), putting on the title-page, according to their usual routine for “appropriated” books, the words Suivant la copie imprimée à Paris. So far was the author from feeling any annoyance at this proceeding, that he promptly wrote to express his gratification, and to suggest that the Elzevirs might also be interested in publishing in the same form an edition of his Œuvres Diverses. A further correspondence followed, and finally the Elzevirs received from Balzac (some time in 1651) a letter of which the following is the substance: