A more austere kind of learning came in with the Norman Conquest. Lanfranc and Anselm introduced at Canterbury a devotion to science, to the doctrines of theology and jurisprudence, and to the new discoveries which Norman travellers were bringing back from the schools at Salerno. Lanfranc imported a large quantity of books from the Continent. He would labour day and night at correcting the work of his scribes; and Anselm, when he succeeded to the See, used often to deprive himself of rest to finish the transcription of a manuscript. Lanfranc, we are told, was especially generous in lending his books: among a set which he sent to St. Alban's we find the names of twenty-eight famous treatises, besides a large number of missals and other service-books, and two 'Books of the Gospels,' bound in silver and gold, and ornamented with valuable jewels.

A historian of our own time has said that England in the twelfth century was the paradise of scholars. Dr. Stubbs imagined a foreign student making a tour through the country and endeavouring to ascertain its proper place in the literary world. He would have seen a huge multitude of books, and 'such a supply of readers and writers' as could not have been found elsewhere, except perhaps in the University of Paris. Canterbury was a great literary centre. At Winchester there was a whole school of historians; at Lincoln he might listen to Walter Map or learn at the feet of St. Hugh. 'Nothing is more curious than the literary activity going on in the monasteries; manuscripts are copied; luxurious editions are recopied and illuminated; there is no lack of generosity in lending or of boldness in borrowing; there is brisk competition and open rivalry.'

The Benedictines were ever the pioneers of learning: the regular clergy were still the friends of their books, and 'delighted in their communion with them,' as the Philobiblon phrased it. We gather from the same source the lamentation of the books in the evil times that followed. The books complain that they are cast from their shelves into dark corners, ragged and shivering, and bereft of the cushions which propped up their sides. 'Our vesture is torn off by violent hands, so that our souls cleave to the ground, and our glory is laid in the dust.' The old-fashioned clergy had been accustomed to treat religious books with reverence, and would copy them out most carefully in the intervals of the canonical hours. The monks used to give even their time of rest to the decoration of the volumes which added a splendour to their monasteries. But now, it is complained, the Regulars even reject their own rule that books are to be asked for every day. They carry bows and arrows, or sword and buckler, and play at dice and draughts, and give no alms except to their dogs. 'Our places are taken by hawks and hounds, or by that strange creature, woman, from whom we taught our pupils to flee as from an asp or basilisk. This creature, ever jealous and implacable, spies us out in a corner hiding behind some ancient cabinet, and she wrinkles her forehead and laughs us to scorn, and points to us as the only rubbish in the house; and she complains that we are totally useless, and recommends our being bartered away at once for fine caps and cambrics or silks, for double-dyed purple stuffs, for woollen and linen and fur.' 'Nay,' they add, 'we are sold like slaves or left as unredeemed pledges in taverns: we are given to cruel butchers to be slaughtered like sheep or cattle. Every tailor, or base mechanic may keep us shut up in his prison.' Worst of all was the abominable ingratitude that sold the illuminated vellums to ignorant painters, or to goldsmiths who only wanted these 'sacred vessels' as receptacles for their sheets of gold-leaf. 'Flocks and fleeces, crops and herds, gardens and orchards, the wine and the wine-cup, are the only books and studies of the monks.' They are reprehended for their banquets and fine clothes and monasteries towering on high like a castle in its bulwarks: 'For such things as these,' the supplication continues, 'we, their books, are cast out of their hearts and regarded as useless lumber, except some few worthless tracts, from which they still pick out a mixture of rant and nonsense, more to tickle the ears of their audience than to assuage any hunger of the soul.'

A great religious revival began with the coming of the Mendicant Friars, who, according to the celebrated GrostÊte, 'illumined our whole country with the light of their preaching and learning.' The Franciscans and Dominicans reached England in 1224, and were established at Oxford within two years afterwards, where the Grey Friars of St. Francis soon obtained as great a predominance as the Dominicans or Black Friars had gained in the University of Paris. St. Francis himself had set his face against literature. Professor Brewer pointed out in the Monumenta Franciscana that his followers were expected to be poor in heart and understanding: 'total absolute poverty secured this, but it was incompatible with the possession of books or the necessary materials for study.' Even Roger Bacon, when he joined the Friars, was forbidden to retain his books and instruments, and was not allowed to touch ink or parchment without a special licence from the Pope. We may quote one or two of the anecdotes about the Saint. A brother was arguing with him on the text 'Take nothing with you on the way,' and asked if it meant 'absolutely nothing'; 'Nothing,' said the Saint, 'except the frock allowed by our rule, and, if indispensable, a pair of shoes.' 'What am I to do?' said the brother: 'I have books of my own,' naming a value of many pounds of silver. 'I will not, I ought not, I cannot allow it,' was the reply. A novice applied to St. Francis for leave to possess a psalter: but the Saint said, 'When you have got a psalter, then you'll want a breviary, and when you have got a breviary you will sit in a chair as great as a lord, and will say to some brother, Friar! go and fetch me my breviary!' And he laid ashes on his head, and repeated, 'I am your breviary! I am your breviary!' till the novice was dumbfounded and amazed; and then again the Saint said that he also had once been tempted to possess books, and he almost yielded to the request, but decided in the end that such yielding would be sinful. He hoped that the day would come when men would throw their books out of the window as rubbish.

A curious change took place when the Mendicants got control of the schools. It was absolutely necessary that they should be the devourers of books if they were to become the monopolists of learning. In the century following their arrival, Fitz-Ralph, the Archbishop of Armagh, complained that his chaplains could not buy any books at Oxford, because they were all snapped up by the men of the cord and cowl: 'Every brother who keeps a school has a huge collection, and in each Convent of Freres is a great and noble library.' The Grey Friars certainly had two houses full of books in School Street, and their brothers in London had a good library, which was in later times increased and richly endowed by Sir Richard Whittington, the book-loving Lord Mayor of London.

There were some complaints that the Friars cared too much for the contents and too little for the condition of their volumes. The Carmelites, who arrived in England after the two greater Orders, had the reputation of being careful librarians, 'anxiously protecting their books against dust and worms,' and ranging the manuscripts in their large room at Oxford at first in chests and afterwards in book-cases. The Franciscans were too ready to give and sell, to lend and spend, the volumes that they were so keen to acquire. A Dominican was always drawn with a book in his hand; but he would care nothing for it, if it contained no secrets of science. Richard de Bury had much to say about the Friars in that treatise on the love of books, 'which he fondly named Philobiblon,' being a commendation of Wisdom and of the books wherein she dwells. The Friars, he said, had preserved the ancient stores of learning, and were always ready to procure the last sermon from Rome or the newest pamphlet from Oxford. When he visited their houses in the country-towns, and turned out their chests and book-shelves, he found such wealth as might have lain in kings' treasuries; 'in those cupboards and baskets are not merely the crumbs that fall from the table, but the shew-bread which is angel's food, and corn from Egypt and the choicest gilts of Sheba.' He gives the highest praise to the Preachers or Friars of the Dominican Order, as being most open and ungrudging, 'and overflowing with a with a kind of divine liberality.' But both Preachers and Minorites, or Grey Friars, had been his pupils, his friends and guests in his family, and they had always applied themselves with unwearied zeal to the task of editing, indexing, and cataloguing the volumes in the library. 'These men,' he cries, 'are the successors of Bezaleel and the embroiderers of the ephod and breast-plate: these are the husbandmen that sow, and the oxen that tread out the corn: they are the blowers of the trumpets: they are the shining Pleiades and the stars in their courses.'

Brother Agnellus of Pisa was the first Franciscan missionary at Oxford, and the first Minister of the Order in this county. He set up a school for poor students, at which Bishop GrostÊte was the first reader or master; but we are told that he afterwards felt great regret when he found his Friars bestowing their time upon frivolous learning. 'One day, when he wished to see what proficiency they were making, he entered the school while a disputation was going on, and they were wrangling and debating about the existence of the Deity. "Woe is me! Woe is me!" he burst forth: "the simple brethren are entering heaven, and the learned ones are debating if there be one"; and he sent at once a sum of £10 sterling to the Court to buy a copy of the Decretals, that the Friars might study them and give over their frivolities.' The great difficulty was to prevent the brethren from studying the doctrine of Aristotle, as it was to be found in vile Latin translations, instead of attending to GrostÊte, who was said to know 'a hundred thousand times more than Aristotle' on all his subjects. GrostÊte himself spent very large sums in importing Greek books. In this he was helped by John Basingstoke, who had himself studied at Athens, and who taught the Greek language to several of the monks at St. Alban's. GrostÊte upheld the eastern doctrines against the teaching of the Papal Court, and indeed was nicknamed 'the hammerer of the Romans.' He based many of his statements upon books which he valued as his choicest possessions; but some of them, such as the Testament of the Patriarchs and the Decretals of Dionysius are now admitted to be forgeries. On GrostÊte's death in 1253 he bequeathed his library, rich in marginal commentaries and annotations, to the Friars for whom he had worked before he became Bishop and Chancellor. Some generations afterwards their successors sold many of the books to Dr. Gascoigne, who used to work on them at the Minorites' Library: and some of those which he bought found their way to the libraries of Balliol, Oriel, and Lincoln; the main body of GrostÊte's books was gradually dispersed by gifts and sales, and dwindled down to little or nothing; so that, when Leland paid his official visit after the suppression of the monasteries, he found very few books of any kind, but plenty of dust and cobwebs, 'and moths and beetles swarming over the empty shelves.'

It has been said that Richard de Bury had not much depth of learning; and it has been a favourite theory for many years that his book might have been written for him by his secretary, the Dominican Robert Holkot. The matter is not very important, since it is certain, in spite of ancient and modern detractors, that Richard de Bury or 'Aungerville' was a most ardent bibliophile and a very devoted attendant in the 'Library of Wisdom.' He was the son of Sir Richard Aungerville, a knight of Suffolk; but in accordance with a fashion of the day he was usually called after his birthplace. He was born at Bury St. Edmunds in the year 1287: he was educated at Oxford, and afterwards took a prominent part in the civil troubles, taking the side of Queen Isabel and Edward of Windsor against the unfortunate Edward ii. He was appointed tutor to the Prince, and soon afterwards became the receiver of his revenues in Wales. When the Queen fled to her own country, Richard followed with a large sum of money, collected by virtue of his office; and he had a narrow escape for his life, being chased by a troop of English lancers as far as Paris itself, where he lay concealed for a week in the belfry of the Minorites' Church. When his pupil came to the throne many lucrative offices were showered on his faithful friend. Richard became Cofferer and Treasurer of the Wardrobe, and for five years was Clerk of the Privy Seal; and during that period he was twice sent as ambassador to the Pope at Avignon, where he had the honour of becoming the friend of Petrarch.

The poet has himself described his meeting with the Englishman travelling in such splendid fashion to lay before his Holiness his master's claims upon France. 'It was at the time,' says Petrarch, 'when the seeds of war were growing that produced such a blood-stained harvest, in which the sickles are not laid aside nor as yet are the garners closed.' He found in his visitor 'a man of ardent mind and by no means unacquainted with literature.' He discovered indeed that Richard was on some points full of curious learning, and it occurred to him that one born and bred in Britain might know the situation of the long-lost island of Thule. 'But whether he was ashamed of his ignorance,' says Petrarch, 'or whether, as I will not suspect, he grudged information upon the subject, and whether he spoke his real mind or not, he only answered that he would tell me, but not till he had returned home to his books, of which no man had a more abundant supply.' The poet complains that the answer never came, in spite of many letters of reminder; 'and so my friendship with a Briton never taught me anything more about the Isle of Thule.'

Richard was consecrated Bishop of Durham in 1333, after an amicable struggle between the Pope and the King as to the hand that should bestow the preferment. A few months afterwards he became High Treasurer, and in the same year was appointed Lord Chancellor. Within the next three years he was sent on several embassies to France to urge the English claims, and he afterwards went on the same business to Flanders and Brabant. He writes with a kind of rapture of his first expeditions to Paris; in later years he complained that the study of antiquities was superseding science, in which the doctors of the Sorbonne had excelled. 'I was sent first to the Papal Chair, and afterwards to the Court of France, and thence to other countries, on tedious embassies and in perilous times, bearing with me all the time that love of books which many waters could not extinguish.' 'Oh Lord of Lords in Zion!' he ejaculates, 'what a flood of pleasure rejoiced my heart when I reached Paris, the earthly Paradise. How I longed to remain there, and to my ardent soul how few and short seemed the days! There are the libraries in their chambers of spice, the lawns wherein every growth of learning blooms. There the meads of Academe shake to the footfall of the philosophers as they pace along: there are the peaks of Parnassus, and there is the Stoic Porch. Here you will find Aristotle, the overseer of learning, to whom belongs in his own right all the excellent knowledge that remains in this transitory world. Here Ptolemy weaves his cycles and epicycles, and here Gensachar tracks the planets' courses with his figures and charts. Here it was in very truth that with open treasure-chest and purse untied I scattered my money with a light heart, and ransomed the priceless volumes with my dust and dross.'

He shows, as he himself confessed, an ecstatical love for his books. 'These are the masters that teach without rods and stripes, without angry words, without demanding a fee in money or in kind: if you draw near, they sleep not: if you ask, they answer in full: if you are mistaken, they neither rail nor laugh at your ignorance.' 'You only, my books!' he cries, 'are free and unfettered: you only can give to all who ask and enfranchise all that serve you.' In his glowing periods they become transfigured into the wells of living water, the fatness of the olive, the sweetness of the vines of Engaddi; they seem to him like golden urns in which the manna was stored, like the fruitful tree of life and the four-fold river of Eden.

SEAL OF RICHARD DE BURY.

SEAL OF RICHARD DE BURY.

Richard de Bury had more books than all the other bishops in England. He set up several permanent libraries in his manor-houses and at his palace in Auckland; the floor of his hall was always so strewed with manuscripts that it was hard to approach his presence, and his bedroom so full of books that one could not go in or out, or even stand still without treading on them. He has told us many particulars about his methods of collection. He had lived with scholars from his youth upwards; but it was not until he became the King's friend, and almost a member of his family, that he was able 'to hunt in the delightful coverts' of the clerical and monastic libraries. As Chancellor he had great facilities for 'dragging the books from their hiding-places'; 'a flying rumour had spread on all sides that we longed for books, and especially for old ones, and that it was easier to gain our favour by a manuscript than by gifts of coin.' As he had the power of promoting and deposing whom he pleased, the 'crazy quartos and tottering folios' came creeping in as gifts instead of the ordinary fees and New Year's presents. The book-cases of the monasteries were opened, and their caskets unclasped, and the volumes that had lain for ages in the sepulchres were roused by the light of day. 'I might have had,' he said, 'abundance of wealth in those days; but it was books, and not bags of gold, that I wanted; I preferred folios to florins, and loved a little thin pamphlet more than an overfed palfrey.' We know that he bought many books on his embassies to France and Flanders, besides his constant purchases at home. He tells us that the Friars were his best agents; they would compass sea and land to meet his desire. 'With such eager huntsmen, what leveret could lie hid? With such fishermen, what single little fish could escape the net, the hook, and the trawl?' He found another source of supply in the country schools, where the masters were always ready to sell their books; and in these little gardens and paddocks, as chances occurred, he culled a few flowers or gathered a few neglected herbs. His money secured the services of the librarians and bookstall-men on the Continent, who were afraid of no journey by land, and were deterred by no fury of the sea. 'Moreover,' he added, 'we always had about us a multitude of experts and copyists, with binders, and correctors, and illuminators, and all who were in any way qualified for the service of books.' He ends his chapter on book-collecting with a reference to an eastern tale, comparing himself to the mountain of loadstone that attracted the ships of knowledge by a secret force, while the books in their cargoes, like the iron bars in the story, were streaming towards the magnetic cliff 'in a multifarious flight.'