ard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, and Chancellor of England
so early as 1341, perhaps raised the first private library in our
country. He purchased thirty or forty volumes of the Abbot of St. Albans
for fifty pounds' weight of silver. He was so enamoured of his large
collection, that he expressly composed a treatise on his love of books,
under the title of _Philobiblion_; and which has been recently
translated.[6]

He who passes much of his time amid such vast resources, and does not
aspire to make some small addition to his library, were it only by a
critical catalogue, must indeed be not more animated than a leaden
Mercury. He must be as indolent as that animal called the Sloth, who
perishes on the tree he climbs, after he has eaten all its leaves.

Rantzau, the founder of the great library at Copenhagen, whose days were
dissolved in the pleasures of reading, discovers his taste and ardour in
the following elegant effusion:--

Salvete aureoli mei libelli,
Meae deliciae, mei lepores!
Quam vos saepe oculis juvat videre,
Et tritos manibus tenere nostris!
Tot vos eximii, tot eruditi,
Prisci lumina saeculi et recentis,
Confecere viri, suasque vobis
Ausi credere lucubrationes:
Et sperare decus perenne scriptis;
Neque haec irrita spes fefellit illos.

IMITATED.

Golden volumes! richest treasures!
Objects of delicious pleasures!
You my eyes rejoicing please,
You my hands in rapture seize!
Brilliant wits, and musing sages,
Lights who beamed through many ages,
Left to your conscious leaves their story,
And dared to trust you with their glory;
And now their hope of fame achieved,
Dear volumes! you have not deceived!

This passion for the enjoyment of _books_ has occasioned their lovers
embellishing their outsides with costly ornaments;[7] a fancy which
ostentation may have abused; but when these volumes belong to the real
man of letters, the most fanciful bindings are often the emblems of his
taste and feelings. The great Thuanus procured the finest copies for his
library, and his volumes are still eagerly purchased, bearing his
autograph on the last page. A celebrated amateur was Grollier; the Muses
themselves could not more ingeniously have ornamented their favourite
works. I have seen several in the libraries of curious collectors. They
are gilded and stamped with peculiar neatness; the compartments on the
binding are drawn, and pa