Croix Du Maine, Francis De Grude' La

, was born in the province of Maine in 1552. He was sieur or lord of the manor of Croix du Maine, and of Vieille Cour, four leagues from Mans. From his youth he. had a passionate inclination for learning and books, and collected so large a library at the university in Greek and Latin authors, and | most European languages, that, as he says himself, the catalogue of them would make a volume. He began to make this collection in his seventeenth year; and in his thirty-second, viz. in 1584, he published his “French Library,” being a general account of all authdfs that wrote in that language, fol. Of this we shall take particular notice under the article Verdier. In 1519 he addressed a discourse to viscount de Pauliny, and speaks of a great many works which he had written, none of which, however, are known, except a small 4to, *' Dessems ou projets, &c. pour dresser une bibliotheque parfaite," Paris, 1583, and a long Latin epitaph on the poet Monin, who was assassinated at Paris in 1586, a fate which befell himself at Tours in 1592. ¹