of a
Gallican Missal at Gonville and Caius; of an early Orosius (from
Stavelot) in the British Museum and elsewhere; of an Orosius and
Fortunatus at Pembroke College, Cambridge; and so on. My examples are
set down almost at random.

COLLECTORS OF BOOKS

We pass now from the monastic circle to that of the learned book
collectors before and after the Dissolution. Many of the best medieval
book-buyers were Abbots or Priors, and the history of their collections
is merged in that of their abbeys. Leaving them aside, we find in
fourteenth-century England one name which everyone has heard--that of
Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, and author of the _Philobiblion_. I
am inclined to think that he was a humbug; his book is of the kind that
it is proper to translate, print on hand-made paper, and bind in a
vellum wrapper, but it tells us just nothing of what books De Bury had
or read, and I could not point to a single work of any importance which
he was instrumental in bringing to light or preserving. Persons who take
pains to advertise themselves as book-lovers or bibliomaniacs are rarely
those who render great services to literature.

Perhaps the libraries of the pre-Reformation colleges of Oxford and
Cambridge are the best hunting-grounds for traces of the early
collectors. At Peterhouse, Cambridge is a large bequest from John
Warkworth, Master late in the fifteenth century; another from J.
Dyngley, Fellow, whose books were written expressly for him; yet another
from H. Deynman, Master, who was interested in medicine. Here, too, we
come upon the tracks of Roger Marchall, who must rank, on the whole, as
a student of natural science. Books with his name and his carefully
written tables of contents are at Peterhouse, Gonville and Caius,
Lambeth, the British Museum, King's College; one at Magdalene College
(Pepys Library) came thither from Peterhouse via Dr. John Dee. Walter
Crome was another fifteenth-century benefactor of the University Library
and of Gonville Hall, who, like Dyngley, had books written to his
order. These are Cambridge _data_. Just such another list could be made
out for some Oxford colleges, particularly Merton, Balliol, and New
College. In this Bishops William Rede of Chichester, and John Trillek of
Hereford, and William Gray of Ely, would figure prominently. The mention
of this last name will serve as a pretext for introducing the
Renaissance scholars. Gray, we saw, was one of those who dealt with
Vesp