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

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But Tory's active mind could not be content with a single occupation. He was a patriot first of all, as his device proves. And so, far from allowing himself to be engrossed by his memories of the literary and artistic treasures of Italy, he began to study with ardour the monuments of his mother tongue, not only in those books printed in French—very few as yet—which he had at hand in his shop, but also, and especially, in divers fine manuscripts on parchment confided to him by 'his good friend and brother, René Massé, of Vendôme, chronicler to the king,' whose merits, entirely forgotten in our day,[45] he warmly extols.[46]

Now, while studying that same French tongue, so decried by the scholars of his time, Tory discovered therein beauties which required only a little cultivation to make of it the finest language in the world. From that moment our Berrichon, hitherto a partisan of the classics, shook off entirely the yoke of Greek and Latin, and thought only of the means of making French take precedence everywhere.