his, when we think
of his laudable spirit of BIBLIOMANIA.]

[Footnote 229: Dr. Henry says that "This bargain was
concluded by Benedict with the king a little before his
death, A.D. 690; and the book was delivered, and the estate
received by his successor abbot Ceolfred." _Hist. of Great
Britain_, vol. iv., p. 21. There must be some mistake here:
as Alfred was not born till the middle of the ninth century.
_Bed. Hist. Abbat Wermuthien, edit. Smith_, pp. 297-8, is
quoted by Dr. Henry.]

[Footnote 230: 1612, folio. De Bure (_Bibliogr. Instruct._
no. 353) might have just informed us that the Paris and
Basil editions of Bede's works are incomplete: and, at
no. 4444, where he notices the Cambridge edition of
Bede's _Ecclesiastical History_, (1644, fol.) we may add
that a previous English translation of it, by the celebrated
Stapleton, had been printed at Antwerp in 1565, 4to.,
containing some few admirably-well executed wood cuts.
Stapleton's translation has become a scarce book; and, as
almost every copy of it now to be found is in a smeared and
crazy condition, we may judge that it was once popular and
much read.]

[Footnote 231: The passage is partly as follows--"the sayde
king did also erect a chapell of gold and silver (to wit,
garnished) with ornaments and vesselles likewise of golde
and siluer, to the building of the which chappell hee gaue
2640 pounds of siluer, and to the altar 264 pounde of golde,
a chaleis with the patten, tenne pounde of golde, a censar 8
pound, and twenty mancas of golde, two candlesticks, twelue
pound and a halfe of siluer, A KIVER FOR THE GOSPEL BOOKE
TWENTY POUNDS"! &c. This was attached to the monastery of
Glastonbury; which Ina built "in a fenni place out of the
way, to the end the monkes mought so much the more giue
their minds to heauenly things," &c. _Chronicle_, edit.
1615, p. 76.]

We have mentioned ALCUIN: whom Ashmole calls one of the
school-mistresses to France.[232] How incomparably brilliant and
beautifully polished was this great man's mind!--and, withal, what an
enthusiastic bibliomaniac! Read, in particular, his celebrated letter
to Charlemagne, which Dr. Henry has very ably translated; and see, how
zealous he there shews himself to enrich the library of his
archiepiscopal patron with good books and indu