Bede on the Apocalypse; 1 Bede's Exposition
on the Seven Canonical Epistles; 1 book of Isidore on the Miracles of
Christ; 1 book of Orosius; 1 book of Machabees; 1 book of Persius; 1
Sedulus; 1 Avator; 1 book of Statius with a gloss."

Such were the books forming a part of the private library of a bishop of
Exeter in the year of grace 1073. Few indeed when compared with the vast
multitudes assembled and amassed together in the ages of printed
literature. But these sixty or seventy volumes, collected in those times
of dearth, and each produced by the tedious process of the pen, were of
an excessive value, and mark their owner as distinctly an _amator
librorum_, as the enormous piles heaped together in modern times would do
a Magliabechi. Nor was Leofric an ordinary collector; he loved to
preserve the idiomatic poetry of those old Saxon days; his ancient _sang
bec_, or song books, would now be deemed a curious and precious relic of
Saxon literature. One of these has fortunately escaped the ravages of
time and the fate of war. "The great boc of English Poetry" is still
preserved at Exeter--one of the finest relics of Anglo Saxon poetry
extant. Mark too those early translations which we cannot but regard with
infinite pleasure, and which satisfactorily prove that the Gospels and
Church Service was at least partly read and sung in the Saxon church in
the common language of the people; let the Roman Catholics say what they
will.[331] But without saying much of his church books, we cannot but be
pleased to find the Christian Boethius in his library with Bede, Gregory,
Isidore, Prosper, Orosius, Prudentius, Sedulus, Persius and Statius;
these are authors which retrieve the studies of Leofric from the charge
of mere monastic lore.

But good books about this time were beginning to be sought after with
avidity. The Cluniac monks, who were introduced into England about the
year 1077, more than one hundred and sixty years after their foundation,
gave a powerful impetus to monastic learning; which received additional
force by the enlightened efforts of the Cistercians, instituted in 1098,
and spread into Britain about the year 1128. These two great branches of
the Benedictine order, by their great love of learning, and by their zeal
in collecting books, effected a great change in the monkish literature of
England. "They were not only curious and attentive in forming numerous
libraries, but with indefatigable assiduity transcribed th