lated a spirit of inquiry among the more wealthy laymen. Guy
Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, collected a very fine library of early
romances, which about 1359, he left to the monks of Bordesley Abbey, in
Worcestershire. A list of this library will be found in Todd's
_Illustrations of Gower and Chaucer_.

Mr. J. W. Clark has, with quite wonderful learning, drawn a picture of
student-life of the past with such graphic vigour that we can almost
reinstate Colet, Casaubon, and Erasmus, and picture them exactly as they
worked among their books. In Macaulay's chapter upon _The State of
England in 1685_, are given numerous facts about the difficulty the
clergy had in getting books, and the little desire there was among the
squires to possess libraries. Few knights of the shire had libraries so
good as may now perpetually be found in a servants' hall, or in the back
parlour of a small shopkeeper. An esquire passed among his neighbours
for a great scholar if _Hudibras_ and _Baker's Chronicle_, _Tarleton's
Jests_, and the _Seven Champions of Christendom_, lay in his hall window
among the fishing rods and fowling pieces. No circulating library, no
book society, then existed, even in the capital; but in the capital
those students who could not afford to purchase largely had a resource.
The shops of the great booksellers, near St. Paul's Churchyard, were
crowded every day and all day long with readers. In the country there
was no such accommodation, and every man was under the necessity of
buying whatever he wished to read. Macaulay further points out that
Cotton seems, from his _Angler_, to have found room for his whole
library in his hall window; and Cotton was a man of letters. In the
_Life of Dr. John North_ there is an account of that delightful person's
dealings with Mr. Robert Scott, of Little Britain, a very famous
bookseller in the seventeenth century.

Dr. John North is really a fascinating personality.[30] His soul was
'never so staked down as in an old bookseller's shop, for, having taken
orders, he was restless till he had compassed some of that sort of
furniture as he thought necessary for his profession.

'I have borne him company,' says his biographer, 'at shops for hours
together, and, minding him of the time, he hath made a dozen proffers
before he would quit. By this care and industry he made himself master
of a very considerable library, wherein the choicest collection was
Greek.'

Pepys wished that his name shoul