was bound to put an
end to his particular industry. We still find, by the way, this
prejudice against print in the very last years of the century. Some rich
persons had MS. copies actually made from printed editions and
elaborately illustrated. Such a one was Raphael de Marcatellis, natural
son of Philip the Good of Burgundy and titular Bishop of Rhossus, near
Antioch.[B] Part of his library may be found at Ghent, part at Holkham,
and stray volumes at Cambridge (Peterhouse) and in the Arundel
collection at the British Museum. They are very handsome books, and many
have full-page paintings by capable artists, but the resulting
impression is on the whole that of decadence.

Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary (d. 1490), is a name famous among old
bibliophiles. He got together a library of fine books, mostly recent
copies made for him, and it was dispersed and sacked by the Turks in
1526. It is spoken of with bated breath by the old writers, as if it had
contained priceless treasures. I am sceptical.

Ferdinand of Aragon and Calabria was a collector of the same kind, whose
beautiful books, adorned with his arms in the lower margin of the first
page, are many of them at Valencia, having passed to the University
there by way of the Abbey of St. Miguel de Los Reyes. These are of
Italian and not of Spanish manufacture, and very fine they are.

These last-mentioned libraries have been scattered, but there are still
some of the Renaissance period which survive in their original homes.
The Laurentian at Florence and the Vatican at Rome stand at the head of
all. With regard to the latter it may be said that though earlier Popes,
of course, had libraries (that of Avignon was quite considerable), yet
Nicholas V. (d. 1455) must be regarded as the founder of the Vatican
library in its present state. So, too, the Marciana at Venice and the
Malatestiana at Cesena must rank as genuine Renaissance collections.

It was not only the great men who loved to have books. The tribe of
scholars, foreign as well as native, who coveted them was numerous.
Every library now has its quota of humbler copies of the classics, often
on paper, in the Roman or the more cursive Italic hand, not written by a
professional scribe. Often these are of infinitesimal value,
transcripts of extant copies of no greater age; but there is always the
possibility that they may be a competent scholar's own careful apograph
of some ancient MS. which a Poggio had unearthe