(quoting d'Achery's
Spicilegium, ii. 310), "of the library in the abbey of St. Riquier,
written in 831; it consists of 256 volumes, some containing several
works. Christian writers are in great majority; but we find also the
Eclogues of Virgil, the Rhetoric of Cicero, the History of Homer, that
is, the works ascribed to Dictys and Dares." Ampere, iii. 236. Can
anything be lower than this, if nothing is omitted more valuable than
what is mentioned? The Rhetoric of Cicero was probably the spurious
books Ad Herennium. But other libraries must have been somewhat better
furnished than this; else the Latin authors would have been still less
known in the ninth century than they actually were.

In the gradual progress of learning, a very small number of princes
thought it honourable to collect books. Perhaps no earlier instance can
be mentioned than that of a most respectable man, William III., duke of
Guienne, in the first part of the eleventh century. Fuit dux iste, says
a contemporary writer, a pueritia doctus literis, et satis notitiam
Scripturarum habuit; librorum copiam in palatio suo servavit; et si
forte a frequentia causarum et tumultu vacaret, lectioni per seipsum
operam dabat longioribus noctibus elucubrans in libris, donec somno
vinceretur. Rec. des Hist. x. 155.

[518] Robertson, Introduction to Hist. Charles V. note 13; Schmidt,
Hist. des Allemands, t. ii. p. 380; Hist. Litteraire de la France, t.
vi.

[519] Duelling, in the modern sense of the word, exclusive of casual
frays and single combat during war, was unknown before the sixteenth
century. But we find one anecdote which seems to illustrate its
derivation from the judicial combat. The dukes of Lancaster and
Brunswick, having some differences, agreed to decide them by duel before
John king of France. The lists were prepared with the solemnity of a
real trial by battle; but the king interfered to prevent the engagement.
Villaret, t. ix. p. 71. The barbarous practice of wearing swords as a
part of domestic dress, which tended very much to the frequency of
duelling, was not introduced till the latter part of the 15th century. I
can only find one print in Montfaucon's Monuments of the French monarchy
where a sword is worn without armour before the reign of Charles VIII.:
though a few, as early as the reign of Charles VI., have short daggers
in their girdles. The exception is a figure of Charles VII. t. iii. pl.
47.

[520] Baluzii Capitularia, p. 444. It was