would have been a pleasant thing to look upon the actual collection of
manuscripts which awakened so much recorded zeal and tenderness in the
great ecclesiastic of five hundred years ago; but in later troubles they
became dispersed, and all that seems to be known of their whereabouts
is, that some of them are in the library of Baliol.[57] Another eminent
English prelate made a worthy, but equally ineffectual, attempt to found
a great university library. This was the Rev. John Fisher, Bishop of
Rochester, who gave what was called "the noblest library in England" to
the newly founded college of St John's. It was not a bequest. To make
his gift secure, it was made over directly to the college, but as he
could not part with his favourites while he lived, he borrowed the whole
back for life. This is probably the most extensive book loan ever
negotiated; but the Reformation, and his own tragic destiny, were
coming on apace, and the books were lost both to himself and his
favourite college.[58]

[Footnote 57: Edwards on Libraries, vol. i. p. 586.]

[Footnote 58: Edwards on Libraries, vol. i. p. 609.]

The Preservation of Literature.

The benefactors whose private collections have, by a generous act of
endowment, been thus rendered at the same time permanent and public,
could be counted by hundreds. It is now, however, my function to
describe a more subtle, but no less powerful influence which the
book-hunter exercises in the preservation and promulgation of
literature, through the mere exercise of that instinct or passion which
makes him what he is here called. What has been said above must have
suggested--if it was not seen before--how great a pull it gives to any
public library, that it has had an early start; and how hard it is, with
any amount of wealth and energy, to make up for lost time, and raise a
later institution to the level of its senior. The Imperial Library of
Paris, which has so marvellously lived through all the storms that have
swept round its walls, was founded in the fourteenth century. It began,
of course, with manuscripts; possessing, before the beginning of the
fifteenth century, the then enormous number of a thousand volumes. The
reason, however, of its present greatness, so far beyond the rivalry of
later establishments, is, that it was in active operation at the birth
of printing, and received the first-born of the press. There they have
been sheltered and preserved, while their unprotected