Ruth Shepard Granniss

“ It was during his stay in Rome, that Naudé entered upon the wearying controversy over the authorship of De Imitatione Christi, and it was while there that he espoused the cause of Campanella.
But it is not for all these things that we love to remember Gabriel Naudé. The real work of his life was to come. Recalled to Paris by Cardinal Richelieu to become his librarian, he hastened to accept the post, and on the death of the great Cardinal he received the same office from his successor. This was in 1642, and the next ten years must have been the happiest of Naudé's life. ”

“ On the death of his patron, Naudé remained in Rome as librarian to Cardinal Barberini. His twelve years' sojourn in Rome, while placing him in the midst of a society which knew how to value his abilities, and increasing his remarkable insight into the workings of the human mind, had an injurious effect upon Naudé's character. "Forced to bend at every instant his doubting spirit and his philosophical mind, in a country where there was no medium between faith and incredulity, . ”

“ The library was under the direcftion of the Sorbonne from 1688 to 1791; but since the Revolution it has been controlled by the state. Among its celebrated administrators may be mentioned MM. Petit-Radel, de Sacy, and Sainte-Beuve. For more than twenty years, until his resignation a few months since, the Mazarin's librarian has been the eminent bibliophile, M. Alfred Franklin, to whose history of the library we are indebted for most of the facts mentioned here. It is he who writes of Naudé as "above all the creator of our beautiful and beloved Mazarin Library." ”

“ The writers of this school, however, though disdained and eclipsed by their great successors of the era of Louis XIV, were the pioneers who at a difficult period "bridged over the transition stage between two epochs of art," and their place in literature is not a mean one. ”

“ The famous three hundred and fifty folio volumes of manuscripts of Loménie de Brienne, bound by Le Gascon in flesh-coloured morocco, though obtained by questionable means, made a wonderful foundation for the manuscript collection, while the purchase of the library of the bibliophile, Canon Descordes, provided six thousand well chosen printed books, largely on history and theology, already catalogued by Naudé. ”