read unto him."[205]

And now in bidding farewell to the illustrious Aungraville--for little
more is known of his biography--let me not forget to pay a passing
tribute of respect to his private character, which is right worthy of a
cherished remembrance, and derives its principal lustre from the eminent
degree in which he was endowed with the greatest of Christian virtues,
and which, when practised with sincerity, covereth a multitude of sins;
his charity, indeed, forms a delightful trait in the character of that
great man; every week he distributed food to the poor; eight quarters of
wheat _octo quarteria frumenti_, and the fragments from his own table
comforted the indigent of his church; and always when he journeyed from
Newcastle to Durham, he distributed twelve marks in relieving the
distresses of the poor; from Durham to Stockton eight marks; and from the
same place to his palace at Aukeland five marks; and and when he rode
from Durham to Middleham he gave away one hundred shillings.[206] Living
in troublous times, we do not find his name coupled with any great
achievement in the political sphere; his talents were not the most
propitious for a statesman among the fierce barons of the fourteenth
century; his spirit loved converse with the departed great, and shone
more to advantage in the quite closet of the bibliomaniac, or in
fulfilling the benevolent duties of a bishop. Yet he was successful in
all that the ambition of a statesman could desire, the friend and
confidant of his king; holding the highest offices in the state
compatible with his ecclesiastical position, with wealth in abundance,
and blessed with the friendship of the learned and the good, we find
little in his earthly career to darken the current of his existence, or
to disturb the last hours of a life of near three score years. He died
lamented, honored, and esteemed, at Aukeland palace, on the fourteenth of
April, in the year 1345, in the fifty-eighth year of his age, and was
buried with all due solemnity before the altar of the blessed Mary
Magdalene, at the south angle of the church of Durham. His bones are now
mingled with the dust and gone, but his memory is engraven on tablets of
life; the hearts of all bibliomaniacs love and esteem his name for the
many virtues with which it was adorned, and delight to chat with his
choice old spirit in the Philobiblon, so congenial to their bookish
souls. No doubt the illustrious example of Richard de Bury t