Note 142 — The Cabinet.

The principal biographical labours of this clever man have the following titles: "Histoire de l'Imprimerie," La Haye, 1740, 4to.—an elegant and interesting volume, which is frequently consulted by typographical antiquaries. Of Mercier's supplement to it, see note in the ensuing pages under the word "Mercier." His "Dictionnaire Historique, ou Memoires Critiques et Littéraires," in two folio volumes, 1758, was a posthumous production; and a very extraordinary and amusing bibliographical common-place book it is! My friend Mr. Douce, than whom few are better able to appreciate such a work, will hardly allow any one to have a warmer attachment to it, or a more thorough acquaintance with its contents, than himself—and yet there is no bibliographical work to which I more cheerfully or frequently turn! In the editor's advertisement we have an interesting account of Marchand: who left behind, for publication, a number of scraps of paper, sometimes no bigger than one's nail; upon which he had written his remarks in so small a hand-writing that the editor and printer were obliged to make use of a strong magnifying glass to decypher it—"et c'est ici (continues the former) sans doute le premier livre qui n'ait pu être imprimé sans le secours continuel du Microscope." Marchand died in 1753, and left his MSS. and books, in the true spirit of a bibliomaniac, to the University of Leyden. I see, from the conclusion of this latter authority, that a new edition of Marchand's History of Printing was in meditation to be published, after the publication of the Dictionary. Whether Mercier availed himself of Marchand's corrected copy, when he put forth his supplement to the latter's typographical history, I have no means of ascertaining. Certainly there never was a second edition of the Histoire de l'Imprimerie, by Marchsnd.