The Great Book-Collectors Part 2

_Pet._ I have innumerable books.

_Crit._ Yes, and innumerable errors of ignorant authors and of the copyists who corrupt all that they touch.

_Pet._ I have a good provision of books.

_Crit._ What does that matter, if your intellect cannot take them in? Do you remember the Roman Sabinus who plumed himself on the learning of his slaves? Some people think that they must know what is in their own books, and say, when a new subject is started: 'I have a book about that in my library!' They think that this is quite sufficient, just as if the book were in their heads, and then they raise their eyebrows, and there is an end of the subject.

_Pet._ I am overflowing with books.

_Crit._ Why don't you overflow with talent and eloquence? Ah! but these things are not for sale, like books, and if they were I don't suppose there would be many buyers, for books do make a covering for the walls, but those other wares are only clothing for the soul, and are invisible and therefore neglected.

_Pet._ I have books which help me in my studies.

_Crit._ Take care that they do not prove a hindrance. Many a general has been beaten by having too many troops. If books came in like recruits one would not turn them away, but would stow them in proper quarters, and use the best of them, taking care not to bring up a force too soon which would be more useful on another occasion.

_Pet._ I have a great variety of books.

_Crit._ A variety of paths will often deceive the traveller.

_Pet._ I have collected a number of fine books.

_Crit._ To gain glory by means of books you must not only possess them but know them; their lodging must be in your brain and not on the book-shelf.

_Pet._ I keep a few beautiful books.

_Crit._ Yes, you keep in irons a few prisoners, who, if they could escape and talk, would have you indicted for wrongful imprisonment. But now they lie groaning in their cells, and of this they ever complain, that an idle and a greedy man is overflowing with the wealth that might have sustained a mult.i.tude of starving scholars.'

Petrarch was in truth a careless custodian of his prisoners. He was too ready to lend a book to a friend, and his generosity on one occasion caused a serious loss to literature. The only known copy of a treatise by Cicero was awaiting transcription in his library; but he allowed it to be carried off by an old scholar in need of a.s.sistance: it was pledged in some unknown quarter, and nothing was ever heard again of the precious deposit.

He returned to Avignon in 1337, and made himself a quiet home at Vaucluse. His letters are full of allusions to his little farm, to the poplars in the horse-shoe valley, and the river br.i.m.m.i.n.g out from the 'monarch of springs.' In these new lawns of Helicon he made a new home for his books, and tried to forget in their company the tumults that had driven him from Italy. In 1340 he received offers of a laureate's crown from Rome, the capital of the world, and from Paris, 'the birth-place of learning.' 'I start to-day,' he wrote to Colonna, 'to receive my reward over the graves of those who were the pride of ancient Rome, and in the very theatre of their exploits.' The Capitol resounded to such cheers that its walls and 'antique dome' seemed to share in the public joy: the senator placed a chaplet on his brow, and old Stephen Colonna added a few words of praise amid the applause of the Roman people.

At Parma, soon afterwards, Petrarch formed another library which he called his 'second Parna.s.sus.' At Padua he busied himself in the education of an adopted son, the young John of Ravenna, who lived to be a celebrated professor, and was nicknamed 'the Trojan Horse,' because he turned out so many excellent Grecians. In a cottage near Milan the poet received a visit from Boccaccio, who was at that time inclined to renounce the world. He offered to give his whole library to Petrarch: he did afterwards send to his host a _Dante_ of his own copying, which is now preserved in the Vatican. The approach of a pestilence led Petrarch to remove his home to Venice: and here he was again visited by Boccaccio, this time in company with Leontio Pilato, a Calabrian Greek trading in books between Italy and Constantinople.

Leontio was the translator of Homer, and expounded his poems from the Chair of Rhetoric at Florence. He was a man of forbidding appearance, and 'more obdurate,' said Petrarch, 'than the rocks that he will encounter in his voyage': 'fearing that I might catch his bad temper, I let him go, and gave him a Terence to amuse him on the way, though I do not know what this melancholy Greek could have in common with that lively African.'

Leontio was killed by lightning on his return voyage; and there was much anxiety until it could be ascertained that his literary stock-in-trade had been rescued from the hands of the sailors. It was not till the end of the century that Chrysoloras renewed the knowledge of the cla.s.sics: but we may regard the austere Leontio as the chief precursor of the crowd of later immigrants, each with a gem, or bronze, or 'a brown Greek ma.n.u.script' for sale, and all eager to play their parts in the restoration of learning.

Towards the end of his life Petrarch became tired of carrying his books about. When he broke up the libraries at Parma and Vaucluse he had formed the habit of travelling with bales of ma.n.u.scripts in a long cavalcade; but he determined afterwards to offer the collection to Venice, on condition that it should be properly housed, and should never be sold or divided. The offer was accepted by the Republic, and the Palazzo Molina was a.s.signed as a home for the poet and his books. Petrarch, however, had other plans for himself. He wished to be near Padua, where he held a canonry; and he accordingly built himself a cottage at Arqua, among the Euganean Hills, about ten miles from the city. A few olive-trees and a little vine-yard sufficed for the wants of his modest household; and there, as he wrote to his brother, broken in body but easy in his mind, he pa.s.sed his time in reading, and prepared for his end. His only regret was that there was no monastery near in which he might see his beloved Gerard fulfilling his religious duties. He seems to have given up his love for fine books with other worldly vanities. He offers excuses for the plain appearance of a volume of 'St. Augustine' which he was sending as a present. 'One must not,' said he, 'expect perfect ma.n.u.scripts from scholars who are engaged on better things. A general does not sharpen the soldiers' swords. Apelles did not cut out his own boards, or Polycletus his sheets of ivory; some humble person always prepares the material on which a higher mind is to be engaged. So is it with books: some polish the parchment, and others copy or correct the text; others again do the illumination, to use the common phrase; but a loftier spirit will disdain these menial occupations.' The scholar's books are often of a rough and neglected appearance, for abundance of anything makes the owner 'careless and secure'; it is the invalid who is particular about every breath of air, but the strong man loves the rough breeze. 'As to this book of the _Confessions_, its first aspect will teach you all about it. Quite new, quite unadorned, untouched by the corrector's fangs, it comes out of my young servant's hands. You will notice some defects in spelling, but no gross mistakes. In a word, you will perhaps find things in it which will exercise but not disturb your understanding. Read it then, and ponder upon it. This book, which would enflame a heart of ice, must set your ardent soul on fire.'

On a summer night of the year 1374, Petrarch died peacefully at Arqua, alone in his library. His few remaining books were sold, and some of them may still be seen in Rome and Paris. Those which he had given to Venice suffered a strange reverse of fortune. How long the gift remained in the Palazzo Molina we cannot tell. We conjecture that it was discarded in the next century, before Bessarion presented his Greek books to the senate, and became the actual founder of the library of St. Mark. The antiquary Tomasini found Petrarch's books cast aside in a dark room behind the Horses of Lysippus. Some had crumbled into powder, and others had been glued into shapeless ma.s.ses by the damp. The survivors were placed in the Libraria Vecchia, and are now in the Ducal Palace; but it was long before they were permitted to enter the building that sheltered the gift of Bessarion.

CHAPTER V.

OXFORD--DUKE HUMPHREY'S BOOKS--THE LIBRARY OF THE VALOIS.

The University Library at Oxford was a development of Richard de Bury's foundation. The monks of Durham had founded a hall, now represented by Trinity College, in which Richard had always taken a fatherly interest.

He provided the ordinary texts and commentaries for the students, and was extremely anxious that they should be instructed in Greek and in the languages of the East. A knowledge of Arabic, he thought, was as necessary for the study of astronomy as a familiarity with Hebrew was requisite for the understanding of the Scriptures. The Friars had bought a good supply of Hebrew books when the Jews were expelled from England; Richard not only increased the available store, but supplied the means of using it. 'We have provided,' he said, 'a grammar in Greek and Hebrew for the scholars, with all the proper aids to instruct them in reading and writing those languages.' He formed the ambitious design of providing a.s.sistance to the whole University out of the books presented to the hall. The rules which he drew up were not unlike those already in use at the Sorbonne. Five students were chosen as wardens, of whom any three might be a quorum for lending the ma.n.u.scripts. Any book, of which they possessed a duplicate, might be lent out on proper security: but copying was not allowed, and no volume was on any account to be carried beyond the suburbs. A yearly account was to be taken of the books in store, and of the current securities; and if any profit should come to the wardens'

hands it was to be applied to the maintenance of the library.

When the Bishop died some of his books went back to Durham; but the monks were generous towards the hall, and on several occasions sent fresh supplies to Oxford. It may also be observed that some of his best MSS.

were returned to the Abbey of St. Alban's. He had bought about thirty volumes from a former abbot for fifty pounds weight of silver; but the monks had continually protested against a transaction which they believed to be illegal, and on Richard's death some of the books were given back, and others were purchased by Abbot Wentmore from his executors.

De Bury's generous care for learning was imitated in several quarters. A few years after his death the Lady Elizabeth de Burgh made a bequest of a small but very costly library to her College of Clare Hall at Cambridge.

Guy Earl of Warwick about the same time gave a collection of illuminated romances to the monks of Bordesley. John de Newton in the next generation divided his collection of cla.s.sics, histories, and service-books, between St. Peter's College at Cambridge and the Minster at York, where he had acted for some years as treasurer. The lending-library at Durham Hall was the only provision for the public, with the exception of a few volumes kept in the 'chest with four keys' at St. Mary's. Thomas Cobham, Bishop of Worcester, had long been anxious to show his filial love for the University: as early as the year 1320 he had begun to prepare a room for a library 'over the old congregation-house in the north churchyard of St. Mary's'; and, though the work was left incomplete, he gave all his books by will to be placed at the disposal of the whole body of scholars.

Owing to disputes that arose between the University and the College to which Cobham had belonged, the gift did not take effect until 1367. The University Library was established in the upper room, which was used as a Convocation House in later times; it is said not to have been completely furnished until the year 1409, more than eighty years after the date of the Bishop's benefaction. According to the first statute for the regulation of Cobham's Library, the best of the books were to be sold so as to raise a sum of 40, which according to the current rate of interest would produce a yearly income of 3 for the librarian; the other books, together with those from the University Chest, were to be chained to the desks for the general use of the students. It was soon found necessary to exclude the 'noisy rabble': and permission to work in the library was restricted to graduates of eight years' standing. Richard de Bury had warned the world in his chapter upon the handling of books, how hardly could a raw youth be made to take care of a ma.n.u.script; the student, according to the great bibliophile, would treat a book as roughly as if it were a pair of shoes, would stick in straws to keep his place, or stuff it with violets and rose-leaves, and would very likely eat fruit or cheese over one page and set a cup of ale on the other. An impudent boy would scribble across the text, the copyist would try his pen on a blank s.p.a.ce, a scullion would turn the pages with unwashed hands, or a thief might cut out the fly-leaves and margins to use in writing his letters; 'and all these various negligences,' he adds, 'are wonderfully injurious to books.'

A generous benefactor gave a copy of De Lyra's 'Commentaries,' which was set upon a desk in St. Mary's Chancel for reference. A large gift of books came from Richard Courteney, the Chancellor of the University; and as a mark of grat.i.tude he was allowed free access to the library during the rest of his life. Among the other benefactors whose good deeds are still commemorated we find King Henry IV., who helped to complete the library, his successor Henry V., who contributed to its endowment as Prince of Wales, and his brothers John Duke of Bedford and Humphrey Duke of Gloucester; and the roll of a later date includes the names of Edmund Earl of March, Philip Repington Bishop of Lincoln, and the munificent Archbishop Arundel.

The good Duke Humphrey has been called 'the first founder of the University Library.' We know from the records of that time that his gifts were acknowledged to be 'an almost unspeakable blessing.' He sent in all about three hundred volumes during his life, which were placed in the chests of Cobham's Library as they arrived, to be transferred to the new Divinity Schools as soon as room could be made for the whole collection. He had intended to bequeath as many more by way of an additional endowment, but died intestate: and there was a considerable delay before the University could procure the fulfilment of his charitable design. When the books at last arrived 'the general joy knew no bounds'; and the t.i.tle of 'Duke Humphrey's Library' was gratefully given to the whole a.s.semblage of books which from several different quarters had come into the University's possession.

The catalogue shows that the Duke's store had consisted mainly of the writings of the Fathers and Arabian works on science: there were a few cla.s.sics, including a Quintilian, and Aristotle and Plato in Latin: the works of Capgrave and Higden were the only English chronicles; but the Duke was a devotee of the Italian learning, and his gifts to Oxford included more than one copy of the _Divina Commedia_, three separate copies of _Boccaccio_, and no less than seven of _Petrarch_.

The fate of the libraries founded by De Bury and Duke Humphrey of Gloucester was to perish at the hands of the mob. Bishop Bale has told the sad story of the destruction of the monastic libraries. The books were used for tailors' measures, for scouring candlesticks and cleaning boots; 'some they sold to the grocers and soap-sellers'; some they sent across the seas to the book-binders, 'whole ships-full, to the wondering of foreign nations': he knew a merchant who bought 'two n.o.ble libraries'

for 40_s._, and got thereby a store of grey paper for his parcels which lasted him for twenty years. The same thing happened at Oxford. The quadrangle of one College was entirely covered 'with a thick bed of torn books and ma.n.u.scripts.' The rioters in the Protector Somerset's time broke into the 'Aungerville Library,' as De Bury's collection was called, and burnt all the books. Some of De Bury's books had been removed into Duke Humphrey's Library, and met the same fate at the Schools, with almost every other volume that the University possessed. So complete was the destruction that in 1555 an order was made to sell the desks and book-shelves, as if it were finally admitted that Oxford would never have a library again.

Some few of the Duke's books escaped the general destruction. Of the half-dozen specimens in the British Museum three are known by the ancient catalogues to have been comprised in his gifts to the University. Two more remain at Oxford in the libraries of Oriel and Corpus Christi. We learn from Mr. Macray that only three out of the whole number of his MSS.

are now to be found in the Bodleian. One of them contains the Duke's signature: another is of high interest as being a translation out of _Aristotle_ by Leonardo Aretino, with an original dedication to the Duke. The third is a magnificent volume of _Valerius Maximus_ prepared, as we know from the monastic annals, under the personal supervision of Abbot Whethamstede, the 'pa.s.sionate bibliomaniac' of St. Alban's. It contains inscriptions, says Mr. Macray, recording its gift for the use of the scholars, with anathemas upon all who should injure it. 'If any one steals this book,' says the Abbot, 'may he come to the gallows or the rope of Judas.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DUKE OF BEDFORD PRAYING BEFORE ST. GEORGE. (_From the "Bedford Missal."_)]

Many of the Duke of Gloucester's books had come to him from the library of the French Kings at the Louvre, which had been purchased and dispersed by John, Duke of Bedford. The Duke himself was in the habit of ordering magnificently illuminated books of devotion, which he gave as presents to his friends. The famous 'Bedford Missal' (really a Book of Hours) was offered by the d.u.c.h.ess in his name to Henry VI.; and Mr. Quaritch possesses another Book of Hours, which the Duke presented to Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, as a wedding gift. The House of Valois was always friendly to literature. King John, who fought at Crecy, began a small collection: he had the story of the Crusades, a tract on the game of chess, and a book containing a French version of _Livy_, which seems to have belonged afterwards to Duke Humphrey, and to have found its way later into the Abbey of St. Genevieve. His son Charles le Sage was the owner of about 900 volumes, which he kept in his castle at the Louvre. The first librarian was Gilles Malet, who prepared a catalogue in 1373, which is still in existence. Another was compiled a few years afterwards by Antoine des Essars, and a third was made for Bedford when he purchased about 850 volumes out of the collection in the year 1423. These lists were so carefully executed that we can form a very clear idea of the library itself and the books in their gay bindings on the shelves. We are told that the King was so devoted to his '_Belle a.s.semblee_,' as Christina of Pisa calls it, that not only authors and booksellers, but the princes and n.o.bles at the court, all vied in making offerings of finely illuminated ma.n.u.scripts.

They were arranged in the three rooms of the Library Tower. The wainscots were of Irish yew, and the ceilings of cypress. The windows were filled with painted gla.s.s, and the rooms were lit at night with thirty chandeliers and a great silver lamp. On entering the lowest room the visitor saw a row of book-cases low enough to be used as desks or tables.

A few musical instruments lay about; one of the old lists tells us of a lute, and guitars inlaid with ivory and enamel, and 'an old rebec' much out of repair. There were 269 volumes in the book-cases. We will only mention a few of the most remarkable. There was Queen Blanche's Bible in red morocco, and another in white boards, Thomas Waley's rhymes from Ovid with splendid miniatures, and Richard de Furnival's _Bestiaire d'Amour_.

One life of St. Louis stood in a '_chemise blanche_,' and another in cloth of gold. St. Gregory and Sir John Mandeville were clothed in indigo velvet. John of Salisbury had a silk coat and long girdle, and most of the Arabians were in tawny silk ornamented with white roses and wreaths of foliage. Some bindings are noticed as being in fine condition, and others as being shabby or faded. The clasps are minutely described. They would catch a visitor's eye as the books lay flat on the shelves: and we suppose that the librarian intended to show the best way of knowing the books apart rather than to dwell on their external attractions. The Oxford fashion was to catalogue according to the last word on the first leaf, or the first word over the page; but it was also a common custom to distinguish important volumes by such names as _The Red Book of the Exchequer_, or _The Black Book of Carnarvon_.

We need not proceed to describe the other rooms. On the first floor there were 260 books, consisting for the most part of romances with miniature illuminations. One of these was the _Destruction de Thebes_, which at one time belonged to the Duc de la Valliere, and is now in the National Library at Paris. The upper floor contained nearly six hundred volumes mostly concerned with astronomy and natural science.

It appears from the memoranda in the lists that there had been a habit of lending books to public inst.i.tutions and to members of the royal family from the time when the library was first established; and it is estimated that about two hundred of the books must have been saved in this way to form the beginning of a new library in the Louvre, which, after the expulsion of the English, began to attain some importance in the reign of Louis XI.

CHAPTER VI.

ITALY--THE RENAISSANCE.

The study of the cla.s.sics had languished for a time after the deaths of Petrarch and Boccaccio. It revived again upon the coming of Chrysoloras, who is said to have lighted in Italy 'a new and perpetual flame.' Poggio Bracciolini was one of his first pupils; and he became so distinguished in literature that the earlier part of the fifteenth century is known as the age of Poggio. Leonardo Aretino describes the enthusiasm with which the Italians made acquaintance with the ancient learning. 'I gave myself up to Chrysoloras,' he writes, 'and my pa.s.sion for knowledge was so strong that the daily tasks became the material of my nightly dreams.' He told Cosmo de' Medici, when translating Plato's Dialogues, that they alone seemed to be infused with real life, while all other books pa.s.sed by like fleeting and shadowy things.

We are chiefly concerned with Poggio as the discoverer of long-lost treasures. He saved Quintilian and many other cla.s.sics from complete extinction. 'Some of them,' said his friend Barbaro, 'were already dead to the world, and some after a long exile you have restored to their rights as citizens.' As a famous stock of pears had been named after an Appius or Claudius, so it was said that these new fruits of literature ought certainly to be named after Poggio.

The sole remaining copy of an ancient work upon aqueducts was discovered by him in the old library at Monte Ca.s.sino, which had survived the a.s.saults of Lombards and Saracens, but in that later age seemed likely to perish by neglect. We have the record of an earlier visit by Boccaccio, in which the carelessness of its guardians was revealed. The visitor, we are told, asked very deferentially if he might see the library. 'It is open, and you can go up,' said a monk, pointing to the ladder that led to an open loft. The traveller describes the filthy and doorless chamber, the gra.s.s growing on the window-sills, and the books and benches white with dust. He took down book after book, and they all seemed to be ancient and valuable; but from some of them whole sheets had been taken out, and in others the margins of the vellum had been cut off. All in tears at this miserable sight, Boccaccio went down the ladder, and asked a monk in the cloister how those precious volumes had come to such a pa.s.s; and the monk told him that the brothers who wanted a few pence would take out a quire of leaves to make a little psalter for sale, and used to cut off the margins to make 'briefs,' which they sold to the women.

Poggio himself has described his discovery at the Abbey of St. Gall. 'By good fortune,' he says, 'we were at Constance without anything to do, and it occurred to us to go to the monastery about twenty miles off to see the place where the Quintilian was shut up.' The Abbey had been founded by the Irish missionaries who destroyed the idols of Suabia, when according to the ancient legend the mountain-demon vainly called on the spirit of the lake to join in resisting the foe. Its library had been celebrated in the ninth century, when the Hungarian terror fell upon Europe, and the barbarian armies in one and the same day 'laid in ashes the monastery of St. Gall and the city of Bremen on the sh.o.r.es of the Northern ocean'; but the books had been fortunately removed to the Abbey of Reichenau on an island in the Rhine. 'We went to the place,' said Poggio, 'to amuse ourselves and to look at the books. Among them we found the Quintilian safe and sound, but all coated with dust. The books were by no means housed as they deserved, but were all in a dark and noisome place at the foot of a tower, into which one would not cast a criminal condemned to death.' He describes the finding of several other rare MSS., and says: 'I have copied them all out in great haste, and have sent them to Florence.'