pies
of the classics. It had hardly been realized that few of the Renaissance
classical MSS. made in Italy have independent textual value, and
collectors like Askew, Drury, Canonici, Burney, thought that the more of
them they had the better. Lord Fitzwilliam (d. 1816), who devoted
himself to buying French Books of Hours for the sake of the pictures,
was something of a pioneer (at least in England) in this respect.
Francis Douce (d. 1834) was another; his treasures are in the Bodleian.
As for Sir Thomas Phillipps, he must have bought by the cart-load:
_Nihil manu scriptum a se alienum putabat_. In spite of the large amount
of rubbish among his 30,000 odd volumes, I can never hear without a
bitter pang the tale that the University of Oxford many years ago shied
at his offer of them, accompanied as it was by some tiresome conditions;
their fate has been gradual dispersion to every part of Europe and to
America.

I have said that I cannot embark here upon the history of sales of MSS.
in the last hundred years. But my abstention, due to considerations of
space, must not be imitated by my readers. Those who deal with modern
collections or make collections of their own--a thing still possible for
quite modest purses, in spite of the inflated prices which the great
books command--are not absolved from the study of sale catalogues; that
they will pay attention to book-plates, bindings, and names of owners, I
need not repeat. The list of such catalogues issued by the British
Museum they will find invaluable; the catalogues themselves, alike those
of dealers and of sales, will often enable them to trace a particular
MS. back through a whole century to some Italian palace or Flemish
abbey, sold up or secularized under the stress of revolution. This
period of MS. history has been less well worked than the earlier ones;
it is but just ripening, in fact; but to anyone who is bitten with the
passion for the books it will prove just as fascinating as the others.

CURIOSITIES OF RESEARCH

By way of conclusion let me come back from generalities to particulars,
and attempt to kindle interest and stir the imagination by a few words
on waifs and strays--the curiosities of MS. research. Some few leading
instances have been mentioned, but in thinking over the collections I
have examined and the documents I have had to copy or edit, others, less
immediately showy, occur to my memory.

What has become of the Red Book of Eye in Suffolk? It