ell, Provost of Wells;
and _their books_ (for many of them were learned) to divers
of our scholars; among whom, as is verily supposed, ROGER
BACON was one: and that he furnished himself with such
Hebrew rarities, that he could not elsewhere find. Also
that, when he died, he left them to the Franciscan library
at Oxon, which, being not well understood in after-times,
were condemned to moths and dust!" Weep, weep, kind-hearted
bibliomaniac, when thou thinkest upon the fate of these poor
Hebrew MSS.!]

Unfortunately, my friends, little is known with certainty, though much
is vaguely conjectured, of the labours of this great man. Some of the
first scholars and authors of our own and of other countries have been
proud to celebrate his praises; nor would it be considered a disgrace
by the most eminent of modern experimental philosophers--of him, who
has been described as "unlocking the hidden treasures of nature, and
explaining the various systems by which air, and earth, and fire, and
water, counteract and sustain each other"[259]--to fix the laureate
crown round the brows of our venerable Bacon!

[Footnote 259: See a periodical paper, entitled _The
Director_! vol. ii., p. 294.]

We have now reached the close of the thirteenth century and the reign
of EDWARD THE FIRST;[260] when the principal thing that strikes us,
connected with the history of libraries, is this monarch's insatiable
lust of strengthening his title to the kingdom of Scotland by
purchasing "the libraries of all the monasteries" for the securing of
any record which might corroborate the same. What he gave for this
tremendous book-purchase, or of what nature were the volumes
purchased, or what was their subsequent destination, is a knot yet
remaining to be untied.

[Footnote 260: "King Edward the first caused and committed
divers copies of the records, and much concerning the realm
of Scotland, unto divers abbies for the preservance thereof;
which for the most part are now perished, or rare to be had;
and which privilie by the dissolution of monasteries is
detained. The same king caused the libraries of all
monasteries, and other places of the realm, to be purchased,
for the further and manifest declaration of his title, as
chief Lord of Scotland: and the record thereof now extant,
doth alledge divers leger books of abbeys for the
confirmation th