Note 148 — The Cabinet.

The mention of De Bure and the Abbé Rive induces me to inform the reader that the Chasse aux Bibliographes, Paris, 1789, 8vo., of the latter, will be found a receptacle of almost every kind of gross abuse and awkward wit which could be poured forth against the respectable characters of the day. It has now become rare. The Abbé's "Notices calligraphiques et typographiques," a small tract of 16 pages—of which only 100 copies were printed—is sufficiently curious; it formed the first number of a series of intended volumes (12 or 15) "des notices calligraphiques de manuscrits des differens siécles, et des notices typographiques de livres du quinziéme siécle," but the design was never carried into execution beyond this first number. The other works of Rive are miscellaneous; but chiefly upon subjects connected with the belles lettres. He generally struck off but few copies of his publications; see the Bibliographie Curieuse, pp. 58-9; and more particularly the Dictionnaire de Bibliologie, vol. iii., p. 277, by the same author, where a minute list of Rive's productions is given, and of which Fournier might have availed himself in his new edition of the Dict. Portatif de Bibliographie. From Peignot, the reader is presented with the following anecdotes of this redoubted champion of bibliography. When Rive was a young man, and curate of Mollèges in Provence, the scandalous chronicle reported that he was too intimate with a young and pretty Parisian, who was a married woman, and whose husband did not fail to reproach him accordingly. Rive made no other reply than that of taking the suspicious Benedick in his arms, and throwing him headlong out of the window. Luckily he fell upon a dunghill! In the year 1789, upon a clergyman's complaining to him of the inflexible determination of a great lord to hunt upon his grounds—"Mettez-lui une messe dans le ventre"—repiled Rive. The clergyman expressing his ignorance of the nature of the advice given, the facetious Abbé replied, "Go and tear a leaf from your mass book, wrap a musket-ball in it, and discharge it at the tyrant." The Duke de la Valliere used to say—when the knowing ones at his house were wrangling about some literary or bibliographical point—"Gentlemen, I'll go and let loose my bull dog,"—and sent into them the Abbé, who speedily put them all to rights. Rive died in the year 1791, aged seventy-one. He had great parts and great application; but in misapplying both he was his own tormentor. His library was sold in 1793.