to transcribe them if they chose;
if any of them proved imperfect or faulty, they were denounced by the
university, and a fine imposed upon the bookseller who had lent out the
volume.

This potent influence exercised by the universities over booksellers
became, in time, much abused, and in addition to these commercial
restraints, they assumed a still less warrantable power over the
original productions of authors; and became virtually the public censors
of books, and had the power of burning or prohibiting any work of
questionable orthodoxy. In the time of Henry the Second, a book was
published by being read over for two or three successive days, before one
of the universities, and if they approved of its doctrines and bestowed
upon it their approbation, it was allowed to be copied extensively for
sale.

Stringent as the university rules were, as regards the bookselling trade,
they were, nevertheless, sometimes disregarded or infringed; some
ventured to take more for a book than the sum allowed, and, by
prevarication and secret contracts, eluded the vigilance of the laws.[75]
Some were still bolder, and openly practised the art of a scribe and the
profession of a bookseller, without knowledge or sanction of the
university. This gave rise to much jealousy, and in the University of
Oxford, in the year 1373, they made a decree forbidding any person
exposing books for sale without her licence.[76]

Now, considering all these usages of early bookselling, their numbers,
their opulence, and above all, the circulating libraries which the
librarii established, can we still retain the opinion that books were so
inaccessible in those ante-printing days, when we know that for a few
sous the booklover could obtain good and authenticated copies to peruse,
or transcribe? It may be advanced that these facts solely relate to
universities, and were intended merely to insure a supply of the
necessary books in constant requisition by the students, but such was not
the case; the librarii were essentially public _Librorum Venditores_, and
were glad to dispose of their goods to any who could pay for them.
Indeed, the early bibliomaniacs usually flocked to these book marts to
rummage over the stalls, and to collect their choice volumes. Richard de
Bury obtained many in this way, both at Paris and at Rome.

Of the exact pecuniary value of books during the middle ages, we have no
means of judging. The few instances that have accidentally bee