I have drawn this imperfect view of PEIRESC’S character, that men of letters may be reminded of the capacities they possess.  In the character of PEIRESC, however, there still remains another peculiar feature.  His fortune was not great; and when he sometimes endured the reproach of those whose sordidness was startled at his prodigality of mind, and the great objects which were the result, PEIRESC replied, that “a small matter suffices for the natural wants of a literary man, whose true wealth consists in the monuments of arts, the treasures of his library, and the brotherly affections of the ingenious.”  PEIRESC was a French judge, but he supported his rank more by his own character than by luxury or parade.  He would not wear silk, and no tapestry hangings ornamented his apartments; but the walls were covered with the portraits of his literary friends; and in the unadorned simplicity of his study, his books, his papers, and his letters were scattered about him on the tables, the seats, and the floor.  There, stealing from the world, he would sometimes admit to his spare supper his friend Gassendi, “content,” says that amiable philosopher, “to have me for his guest.”

PEIRESC, like PINELLI, never published any work.  These men of letters derived their pleasure, and perhaps their pride, from those vast strata of knowledge which their curiosity had heaped together in their mighty collections.  They either were not endowed with that faculty of genius which strikes out aggregate views, or were destitute of the talent of composition which embellishes minute ones.  This deficiency in the minds of such men may be attributed to a thirst of learning, which the very means to allay can only inflame.  From all sides they are gathering information; and that knowledge seems never perfect to which every day brings new acquisitions.  With these men, to compose is to hesitate; and to revise is to be mortified by fresh doubts and unsupplied omissions.  PEIRESC was employed all his life on a history of Provence; but, observes Gassendi, “He could not mature the birth of his literary offspring, or lick it into any shape of elegant form; he was therefore content to take the midwife’s part, by helping the happier labours of others.”

Such are the cultivators of knowledge, who are rarely authors, but who are often, however, contributing to the works of others; and without whose secret labours the public would not have possessed many valued ones.  The delightful instruction which these men are constantly offering to authors and to artists, flows from their silent but uninterrupted cultivation of literature and the arts.