Читать книгу Geofroy Tory. Painter and engraver; first royal printer; reformer of orthography and typography under François I онлайн

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The first work edited by Tory in 1512 was an architectural treatise entitled: 'Leonis Baptistæ Alberti Florentini.—Libri de re ædificatoria decem,' etc.; a quarto volume of 14 preliminary leaves and 174 leaves of text. This book was printed by Berthold Rembolt (whose mark it bears on the first page), at the joint expense of that printer and the bookseller Louis Hornken, whose mark is at the end of the book. The dedication, which is addressed to Philibert Babou, and dated at the College Coqueret on the XV of the Calends of September (August 18), 1512, informs us that Tory received the manuscript of the book from his friend Robert Dure,[30] principal of the College of Plessis, who gave it to him four years earlier, when Tory himself was professor at the same college. As always, this dedication is signed CIVIS. A note on the last page but one informs us that the printing was finished on August 23, 1512.[31]

The second work put forth by Tory in 1512 was the 'Itinerarium Antonini.' It was the second book that he prepared for Henri Estienne, in whose establishment it has been said[32] (erroneously, I think) that he filled the post of corrector of the press. However that may be, the dedication, addressed by Tory to Philibert Babou, is dated at the College Coqueret the XIV of the Calends of September (August 19), 1512. Tory says to Babou that he had dispatched a copy of the manuscript of this book to him at Tours four years before (that is to say, in 1508), but that the person to whom it was entrusted for delivery to him had given it, in his own name, to somebody else. This time, in order not to be defrauded of the fruits of his labours, he had caused the work to be printed from his own copy, having carefully collated it with a manuscript lent him by Christophe de Longueil.[33] The volume is a sexto-decimo, remarkable for the beauty of its execution. The copy in vellum which I have seen at the Bibliothèque Nationale is still redolent of the fifteenth century. We find in it certain verses of the Burgundian Gérard de Vercel in honour of Tory, which prove that the latter was even then in some repute as a scholar, and as a printer, too; for the author contrasts him with the wretched printers of the day. The preliminary matter, by Geofroy Tory, is signed by the word CIVIS, printed in red. At the end of the volume the same word reappears in a very curious monogram composed of the letters CIVS so arranged that we can read the word CIVIS in all directions. Therein we may detect thus early Tory's taste for ciphers and devices, a taste to which he afterward gave free rein, in his 'Champ fleury.'