Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/32

Rh one of them found its way into the office of a printer. A fragment was smuggled into the memoirs of Castelnau and was printed with them in 1659. A better edition was now not far off. In 1665 and 1666 the first edition was published in Leyden by Jean Sambix. It comprised nine volumes in Elzevir. This very incomplete and unreliable edition was printed from a copy. Speculating printers now made a number of reprints. A large number of manuscripts were now in circulation which were named according to the copyists. In the 17th and 18th centuries these books were invariably printed from copies. The edition of 1822, Oeuvres completes du seigneur de Brantôme (Paris: Foucault), was the first to go back to the original manuscripts in possession of the family Bourdeille. Monmergue edited it. The manuscript of the book of Fair and Gallant Ladies was in the possession of the Baroness James Rothschild as late as 1903. After her death in the beginning of 1904, it came into possession of the National Library in Paris, which now has all of Brantôme's manuscripts, and also plans to publish a critical revised edition of his collected works.

The two books, Vies des Dames illustres and Vies des Dames galantes, were originally called by Brantôme Premier and Second Livre des Dames. The new titles were invented by publishers speculating on the taste of the times, which from 1660-1670 greatly preferred the words illustre and galante. The best subsequent edition of the Fair and Gallant Ladies is that printed by Abel Ledoux in Paris, 1834, which was edited by Philarete Chasles, who also supplied an introduction and notes. On the other hand, the critical edition of his collected works in 1822 still contains the best information regarding Brantôme himself, and the remarks by the editor Monmergue are very excellent and far superior to the opinions which Philarete Chasles expresses, poetic as they may be. The crayon-drawings and copper-cuts of Famous and Gallant Ladies of the sixteenth century contained in Bouchot's book, Les femmes de Brantôme, are very good; Bouchot's text,