Bibliontania in the Middle Ages is a useful and agreeable
collection of antiquarian gossip. The author's object is to vindicate the monks from the charges of ignorance and sloth that have been so often brought against them by modern philosophical writers. His plan of vindication is first to exhibit the conventual discipline adopted to procure and preserve their manuscripts, then to prove the value attached to books by biographical accounts of many monkish bibliomaniacs, and by notices of the principal monasteries in this country remarkable for their libraries, with select catalogues of their books when the lists have been preserved. Mr. Sumner Merryweather is animated by a similar zeal to that which burned in the breasts of the bibliomaniacs whose deeds he commemorates ; his labour of love has enabled him to dig out from various quarries a great mass of curious information; and his cumulative process certainly impresses the reader with a favourable opinion of the mental activity of the middle ages in ancient and scholastic reading, if the readers did not imbibe much of a classical taste from their study of the classics. The general character of Mr. Merryweather's information is not new; the volume derives its value and character from the number of particulars brought together in a small compass. The author excels more in exposition than discussion : in a new edition, some of his Incubrationa might advantageously be omitted.
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