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

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Luckily, time, which deadens all sorrows, even those which seem likely to endure for ever, assuaged Tory's grief. Before his funeral poem saw the light, he had returned to his beloved studies, and they had restored tranquillity to his mind. This is proved by the following passage from his 'Champ fleury,' in which he tells us how, on January 6, 1523 (or 1524, according to our method of computing time), that is to say, eighteen months after he lost his daughter, the idea of that curious book came to his mind. We are glad to recognize once more therein the patriotic Berrichon who had taken for his device the word 'civis.'

'In the morning of the day of the feast of Kings,'[53] he says, '... which was reckoned M. D. XXIII, the fancy came to me to muse in my bed, and to move the wheel of my memory, thinking on a thousand petty conceits, both serious and merry, whereamong I bethought me of a letter of ancient form, which I not long since made for the house of my lord the treasurer of the wars, Maistre Jehan Groslier, counsellor and secretary to the king our sire, lover of goodly letters and of all learned persons, of whom also he is greatly beloved and esteemed, as well on this side as the other of the mountains. And while thinking of that said antique letter there came of a sudden to my memory a pithy sentence of the first book and eighth chapter of Cicero's "Offices," where it is written: "Non nobis solum nati sumus, ortusque nostri partem patria vendicat, partem amici."[54] Which is to say, in substance, that we are not born into this world for ourselves alone, but to do service and pleasure to our friends and our country.'[55]