is by no means possible
to enumerate and survey infinity, we will here finally set up the Gades
of our complaint, and turn again to the prayers with which we began,
humbly imploring that the Ruler of Olympus and the Most High Governor
of all the world will establish peace and dispel wars and make our days
tranquil under His protection.

CHAPTER VIII

OF THE NUMEROUS OPPORTUNITIES WE HAVE HAD OF COLLECTING A STORE OF BOOKS

Since to everything there is a season and an opportunity, as the wise
Ecclesiastes witnesseth, let us now proceed to relate the manifold
opportunities through which we have been assisted by the divine
goodness in the acquisition of books.

Although from our youth upwards we had always delighted in holding
social commune with learned men and lovers of books, yet when we
prospered in the world and made acquaintance with the King's majesty
and were received into his household, we obtained ampler facilities for
visiting everywhere as we would, and of hunting as it were certain most
choice preserves, libraries private as well as public, and of the
regular as well as of the secular clergy. And indeed while we filled
various offices to the victorious Prince and splendidly triumphant King
of England, Edward the Third from the Conquest--whose reign may the
Almighty long and peacefully continue--first those about his court, but
then those concerning the public affairs of his kingdom, namely the
offices of Chancellor and Treasurer, there was afforded to us, in
consideration of the royal favour, easy access for the purpose of
freely searching the retreats of books. In fact, the fame of our love
of them had been soon winged abroad everywhere, and we were reported to
burn with such desire for books, and especially old ones, that it was
more easy for any man to gain our favour by means of books than of
money. Wherefore, since supported by the goodness of the aforesaid
prince of worthy memory, we were able to requite a man well or ill, to
benefit or injure mightily great as well as small, there flowed in,
instead of presents and guerdons, and instead of gifts and jewels,
soiled tracts and battered codices, gladsome alike to our eye and
heart. Then the aumbries of the most famous monasteries were thrown
open, cases were unlocked and caskets were undone, and volumes that had
slumbered through long ages in their tombs wake up and are astonished,
and those that had lain hidden in dark places are bathed in th