graphies,
especially of the Romish prelates, are as monstrously
extravagant as his plays are incorrigibly dull. He had a
certain rough honesty and prompt benevolence of character,
which may be thought to compensate for his grosser failings.
His reputation as a _bibliomaniac_ is fully recorded in the
anecdote mentioned at p. 234, ante. His "magnum opus," the
_Scriptores Britanniae_, has already been noticed with
sufficient minuteness; vide p. 31, ante. It has not escaped
severe animadversion. Francis Thynne tells us that Bale has
"mistaken infynyte thinges in that booke de Scriptoribus
Anglie, being for the most part the collections of Lelande."
_Illustrations of Gower and Chaucer_; p. 23. Picard, in his
wretched edition of _Gulielmus Neubrigensis_ (edit. 1610, p.
672), has brought a severe accusation against the author of
having "burnt or torn all the copies of the works which he
described, after he had taken the titles of them;" but see
this charge successfully rebutted in Dr. Pegge's
_Anonymiana_; p. 311. That Bale's library, especially in the
department of manuscripts, was both rich and curious, is
indisputable, from the following passage in _Strype's Life
of Archbishop Parker_. "The archbishop laid out for BALE'S
rare collection of MSS. immediately upon his death, fearing
that they might be gotten by somebody else. Therefore he
took care to bespeak them before others, and was promised to
have them for his money, as he told Cecil. And perhaps
divers of those books that do now make proud the University
Library, and that of Benet and some other colleges, in
Cambridge, were Bale's," p. 539. It would seem, from the
same authority, that our bibliomaniac "set himself to search
the libraries in Oxford, Cambridge, London (wherein there
was but one, and that a slender one), Norwich, and several
others in Norfolk and Suffolk: whence he had collected
enough for another volume De Scriptoribus Britannicis."
_Ibid._ The following very beautiful wood-cut of Bale's
portrait is taken from the original, of the same size, in
the _Acta Romanorum Pontificum_; Basil, 1527, 8vo. A similar
one, on a larger scale, will be found in the "_Scriptores_,"
&c., published at Basil, 1557, or 1559--folio. Mr. Price,
the principal librarian of the Bodleian L