we are describing, the neglecter rather
than the inspector of books, stuffs his volume with firstling violets,
roses, and quadrifoils. He will next apply his wet hands, oozing with
sweat, to turning over the volumes, then beat the white parchment all
over with his dusty gloves, or hunt over the page, line by line, with
his forefinger covered with dirty leather. Then, as the flea bites, the
holy book is thrown aside, which, however, is scarcely closed in a
month, and is so swelled with the dust that has fallen into it, that it
will not yield to the efforts of the closer.

"But impudent boys are to be specially restrained from meddling with
books, who, when they are learning to draw the forms of letters, if
copies of the most beautiful books are allowed them, begin to become
incongruous annotators, and wherever they perceive the broadest margin
about the text, they furnish it with a monstrous alphabet, or their
unchastened pen immediately presumes to draw any other frivolous thing
whatever that occurs to their imagination. There the Latinist, there the
sophist, there every sort of unlearned scribe tries the goodness of his
pen, which we have frequently seen to have been most injurious to the
fairest volumes, both as to utility and price. There are also certain
thieves who enormously dismember books by cutting off the side margins
for letter-paper (leaving only the letters or text), or the fly-leaves
put in for the preservation of the book, which they take away for
various uses and abuses, which sort of sacrilege ought to be prohibited
under a threat of anathema.

"But it is altogether befitting the decency of a scholar that washing
should without fail precede reading, as often as he returns from his
meals to study, before his fingers, besmeared with grease, loosen a
clasp or turn over the leaf of a book. Let not a crying child admire the
drawings in the capital letters, lest he pollute the parchment with his
wet fingers, for he instantly touches whatever he sees.

"Furthermore, laymen, to whom it matters not whether they look at a book
turned wrong side upwards or spread before them in its natural order,
are altogether unworthy of any communion with books. Let the clerk also
take order that the dirty scullion, stinking from the pots, do not touch
the leaves of books unwashed; but he who enters without spot shall give
his services to the precious volumes.

"The cleanliness of delicate hands, as if scabs and postules cou