Danton, A Study

Appendix VIII

CATALOGUE OF DANTON’S LIBRARY

 

No part of the very scanty evidence we possess upon Danton’s personal life and habits is of more value than this little list. It is the small and carefully chosen bookcase of a man thoroughly conversant with English and Italian as well as with his own tongue. He buys a work in the original almost invariably, and collects, in a set of less than two hundred works, classic after classic. He has read his Johnson and his Pope; he knows Adam Smith; he has been at the pains to study Blackstone. It must be carefully noted that every book he bought was his own choice. There were only a few legal summaries at the old home at Arcis, and Danton was a man who never had a reputation for learning or for letters, still less had he cause to buy a single volume for effect. I know of few documents more touching than this catalogue, coining to the light after seventy years of silence, and showing us the mind of a man who was cut off suddenly and passed into calumny. He had read familiarly in their own tongues Rabelais and Boccaccio and Shakespeare.

 

The following volumes are in English:—

A translation of Plutarch’s Lives

8 vols.

Dryden’s translation of Virgil

4 vols.

Shakespeare

8 vols.

Pope

6 vols.

Sussini’s Letters

1 vol.

The Spectator

12 vols.

Clarissa Harlowe

8 vols.

A translation of Don Quixote (probably Smollett’s)

4 vols.

A translation of Gil Blas

4 vols.

Essay on Punctuation

1 vol.

Johnson’s Dictionary (in folio)

2 vols.

Blackstone

1 vol.

Life of Johnson

2 vols.

Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” (number of vols, given as 23, probably an error)

 

Robertson’s History of Scotland

2 vols.

Robertson’s History of America

2 vols.

Works of Dr. Johnson

7 vols.

The following are in Italian: —

(The names are not given in Italian by the lawyer, and I can only follow his version.)

Venuti: History of Modern Rome

2 vols.

Guischardini: History of Italy

4 vols.

Fontanini: Italian Eloquence

3 vols.

Denina’s Italian Revolutions

2 vols.

Caro’s translation of Virgil

2 vols.

Boccaccio’s Decameron

2 vols.

Ariosto

5 vols.

Boiardi’s edition of the “Orlando Furioso”

4 vols.

Mitastase (?)

8 vols.

Dalina (?)

7 vols.

Reichardet (?)

3 vols.

Davila: History of the French Civil Wars

2 vols.

“Letters on Painting and Sculpture”

5 vols.

Il Morgante de Pulci, 12mo

3 vols.

The remainder (except one or two legal book and classics) are in French.

Métamorphoses d’Ovide, traduit par Banier, in 4to

4 vols.


Œuvres de Rousseau, 4to

16 vols.

Maison Rustique, 4to

2 vols.

Lucréce, traduit par La Grange, 8vo

2 vols.

Amours de Daphnis et Chloé, 4to, Paris, 1745

 


Œuvres de Lucien, traduit du grec, 8vo

6 vols.


Œuvres de Montesquieu, 8vo

5 vols.


Œuvres de Montaigne, 8vo

3 vols.


Œuvres de Malby, 8vo

13 vols.


Œuvres Complètes d’Helvétius, 8vo

4 vols.

Philosophie de la nature, 8vo,

7 vols.

Histoire Philosophique, de l’Abbi Raynal, 8vo

10 vols.


Œuvres de Boulanger, 8vo

5 vols.

Caractères de la Bruyère, 8vo

3 vols.


Œuvres de Brantôme, 8vo

8 vols.


Œuvres de Rabelais, 8vo

2 vols.

Fables de La Fontaine, avec les figures de Fessard, 8vo

6 vols.

Contes de La Fontaine, avec belles figures, 8vo

2 vols.


Œuvres de Scarron, 8vo

7 vols.


Œuvres de Piron, 8vo

7 vols.


Œuvres de Voltaire, i2mo

91 vols.

Lettres de Sévigné, 12mo

8 vols.


Œuvres de Corneille, 12mo

6 vols.


Œuvres de Racine, 12mo

3 vols.


Œuvres de Gresset, 12mo

2 vols.


Œuvres de Molière,12mo

8 vols.


Œuvres de Crébillon, 12mo

3 vols.


Œuvres de Fiévé (sic), 12mo

5 vols.


Œuvres de Regnard, 12mo

4 vols.

Traité des Délits, 12mo

1 vol.

Le Sceau Enlevé, 12mo

3 vols.

Tableau de la Révolution Française,

13 cahiers

Dictionnaire de Bayle, folio

5 vols.

Cé de Turpin, 4to

3 vols.


Œuvres de Pasquier, folio

2 vols.

Histoire de France de Velly, Villaret et Garnier, I2mo

30 vols.

Histoire du P. Hénault, 8vo

25 vols.

Histoire Ecclésiastique de Fleury, 4to

25 vols.

Histoire d’Angleterre de Rapin, 4to

16 vols.

Dictionnaire de l’Académie, 4to

2 vols.

Corpus Doctorum, 4to

1 vol.

Dictionnaire Historique, 8vo

8 vols.

Abrégé de l’Histoire des Voyages, 8vo

23 vols.

Dictionnaire d’Histoire Naturelle de Bomard, 8vo

15 vols.

Virgile de Desfontaines, 8vo

4 vols.


Œuvres de Buffon, 12mo, figures

58 vols.

Hérodote de Larcher, 8vo

7 vols.


Œuvres de Demosthenes et d’Eschyle, par Auger, 4to

4 vols.

Histoire Ancienne de Rollin, 12mo

14 vols.

Cours d’Etudes de Condillac, 12mo

16 vols.

Histoire Moderne, 12mo

30 vols.

Histoire du Bas-Empire, 12mo

22 vols.

Corpus Juris Civilis, folio

2 vols.

Encyclopédie par Ordre de Matières, toutes les livraisons excepté la derniére (1).

 

The whole is valued at just over a hundred pounds (2800 livres).