ended
materially to spread far and wide the spirit of bibliomania. It certainly
operated powerfully on the monks of Durham, who not only by transcribing,
but at the cost of considerable sums of money, greatly increased their
library. A catalogue of the collection, taken some forty years after the
death of De Bury, is preserved to this day at Durham, and shows how
considerably they augmented it during a space of two hundred years, or
from the time when the former list was written. If the bibliomaniac can
obtain a sight of this ancient catalogue, he will dwell over it with
astonishment and delight--immaculate volumes of Scripture--fathers and
classics bespeak its richness and extent, and Robert of Langchester, the
librarian who wrote it, with pious preference places first on the list
the magnificent Bible which bishop Hugo gave them many years before. This
rare biblical treasure, then the pride and glory of the collection, is
now in the Durham Library; but to look upon that fair manuscript will
make the blood run cold--barbarous desecration has been committed by some
bibliopegistical hand; the splendid illuminations so rich and spirited,
which adorned the beauteous tomes, dazzled an ignorant mind, who cut them
out and robbed it of half its interest and value.

From near 600 volumes which the list enumerates, I cannot refrain from
naming two or three. I have searched over its biblical department in vain
to discover mention of the celebrated "Saint Cuthbert's Gospels." It is
surprising they should have forgotten so rich a gem, for although four
copies of the Gospels appear, not one of them answers to its description;
two are specified as "_non glos_;" it could not have been either of
those, another, the most interesting of the whole, is recorded as the
venerable Bede's own copy! What bibliophile can look unmoved upon those
time-honored pages, without indeed all the warmth of his booklove
kindling forth into a very frenzy of rapture and veneration! So fairly
written, and so accurately transcribed, it is one of the most precious of
the many gems which now crowd the shelves of the Durham Library, and is
well worth a pilgrimage to view it.[207] But this cannot be St.
Cuthbert's Gospels, and the remaining copy is mentioned as "_Quarteur
Evangelum_," fol. ii. "_se levantem_;" now I have looked at the splendid
volume in the British Museum, to see if the catchword answered to this
description, but it does not; so it cannot be this,