neral joy knew
no bounds'; and the title of 'Duke Humphrey's Library' was gratefully
given to the whole assemblage of books which from several different
quarters had come into the University's possession.

The catalogue shows that the Duke's store had consisted mainly of the
writings of the Fathers and Arabian works on science: there were a few
classics, including a Quintilian, and Aristotle and Plato in Latin: the
works of Capgrave and Higden were the only English chronicles; but the
Duke was a devotee of the Italian learning, and his gifts to Oxford
included more than one copy of the _Divina Commedia_, three separate
copies of _Boccaccio_, and no less than seven of _Petrarch_.

The fate of the libraries founded by De Bury and Duke Humphrey of
Gloucester was to perish at the hands of the mob. Bishop Bale has told
the sad story of the destruction of the monastic libraries. The books
were used for tailors' measures, for scouring candlesticks and cleaning
boots; 'some they sold to the grocers and soap-sellers'; some they sent
across the seas to the book-binders, 'whole ships-full, to the wondering
of foreign nations': he knew a merchant who bought 'two noble libraries'
for 40_s._, and got thereby a store of grey paper for his parcels which
lasted him for twenty years. The same thing happened at Oxford. The
quadrangle of one College was entirely covered 'with a thick bed of torn
books and manuscripts.' The rioters in the Protector Somerset's time
broke into the 'Aungerville Library,' as De Bury's collection was called,
and burnt all the books. Some of De Bury's books had been removed into
Duke Humphrey's Library, and met the same fate at the Schools, with
almost every other volume that the University possessed. So complete was
the destruction that in 1555 an order was made to sell the desks and
book-shelves, as if it were finally admitted that Oxford would never have
a library again.

Some few of the Duke's books escaped the general destruction. Of the
half-dozen specimens in the British Museum three are known by the ancient
catalogues to have been comprised in his gifts to the University. Two
more remain at Oxford in the libraries of Oriel and Corpus Christi. We
learn from Mr. Macray that only three out of the whole number of his MSS.
are now to be found in the Bodleian. One of them contains the Duke's
signature: another is of high interest as being a translation out of
_Aristotle_ by Leonardo Aretino, with an original