LATER ENGLISH COLLECTORS 202

INDEX 221

List of Illustrations

PORTRAIT OF PEIRESC _Frontispiece_
(From an engraving by Claude Mellan.)

INITIAL LETTER FROM THE 'GOSPELS OF ST. CUTHBERT' 18

SEAL OF RICHARD DE BURY 38

PORTRAIT OF THE DUKE OF BEDFORD PRAYING BEFORE ST. GEORGE 59
(From the Book of Hours commonly known as the 'Bedford Missal.')

PORTRAIT OF MAGLIABECCHI 74
(From an engraving in the British Museum.)

BINDING EXECUTED FOR QUEEN ELIZABETH 112
(English jeweller's-work on a cover of red velvet. From a
copy of 'Meditationum Christianarum Libellus,' Lyons,
1570, in the British Museum.)

PORTRAIT OF SIR ROBERT COTTON 117
(From an engraving by R. White after C. Jonson.)

PORTRAIT OF SIR THOMAS BODLEY 126
(From an engraving in the British Museum.)

BINDING EXECUTED FOR GROLIER 141
(From a copy of Silius Italicus, Venice, 1523, in the British
Museum.)

PORTRAIT OF DE THOU 168
(From an engraving by Morin, after L. Ferdinand.)

CHAPTER I.

CLASSICAL.

In undertaking to write these few chapters on the lives of the
book-collectors, we feel that we must move between lines that seem
somewhat narrow, having regard to the possible range of the subject. We
shall therefore avoid as much as possible the description of particular
books, and shall endeavour to deal with the book-collector or
book-hunter, as distinguished from the owner of good books, from
librarians and specialists, from the merchant or broker of books and the
book-glutton who wants all that he sees.

Guillaume Postel and his friends found time to discuss the merits of the
authors before the Flood. Our own age neglects the libraries of Shem, and
casts doubts on the antiquity of the Book of Enoch. But even in writing
the briefest account of the great book-collectors, we are compelled to go
back to somewhat remote times, and to say at least a few words about the
ancient book-stories from the far East, from Greece and Rome, from Egypt
and Pontus and Asia. We have seen the brick-libraries of Nineveh a