OLD ENGLISH LIBRARIES.*
Ix is to the advantage of his readers that Mr. Savage does not strictly observe the limitation of his title. It is to Irish libraries that his first chapter is given. While our island, sub- merged by barbarian invasion, was almost wholly in darkness, a part of Wales being the only exception, Ireland was a country of light and learning. It was more than thirty years before the mission of Augustine when Columba came from Ireland to Iona, the original cause of his voluntary exile being, curiously enough, a quarrel about a book—he had surrep- titiously copied a Psalter, and resented the decision of the arbitrator by which the copy was awarded to the owner of the original. England, indeed, was not long in following the lead. When the first centenary of Augustine's landing came round, it possessed in Bede a prodigy of learning. A man cannot become learned without books, and Bede found these neces- saries in the library collected by Benedict Biscop, collected at the cost of such labour as we can scarcely realize. He made six journeys to Rome for this purpose, and to travel from Britain to Rome was no trifling matter in the seventh century. A library even finer than that which Bede used at Jarrow was to he found at York. This had its most distin- guished student in Alcuin, whom Charlemagne, with all Western Europe to choose from, invited to take charge of his newly established school. Then came a great set-back. Another invasion from Eastern Europe did for English learning what the English themselves had done for Roman civilization in Britain. Among other precious things the great libraries of York, Jarrow, and Peterborough disappeared. Then, under Alfred, the tide began to flow the right way again. Alfred himself seems to have had very few books. " During the leisure of one period of eight months Asser seems to have read to him all the congenial books at hand," says Mr. Savage ; the great work which he did for his country was another kind. He promoted the vernacular literature which was to fill to overflowing the colossal libraries of the present time.
The Norman Conquest was soon followed by another revival, closely connected with the golden age of English monasticism, which we may roughly describe as coinciding
• 014 Hagfish Libraries. By Ernest A. Savage. London : Methuen and Co, [7s. dd. net.]
with the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Between 1066 and 1200 Mr. Savage reckons that 430 religious houses were founded, being more than three times as many as had come into existence in the period three times as long which began with the conversion of England and ended with the landing of William. Of what the monasteries did in the collecting and preserving of books may be conveniently seen in the history of St. Albans, a foundation of the Benedictine Order, itself illustrious among all its rivals for its patronage of learning. " From Paul (1077) to Whethamstede (1465)," writes Mr. Savage, "nearly all its abbots were book-lovers." It would take too long to enumerate their good deeds, but Abbot Simon, elected in 1167, deserves a special mention, because he made provision that the abbot should always have attached to him a man of learning who should write the history of the foundation in the first place and incidentally of the world. There were exceptions, it is true. But the very worst of them, Richard of Wallingford, gives us an interesting glimpse of another kind of library-makers. He sold thirty volumes to Richard de Bury, the most famous of pre- Reformation book-collectors. The price was fifty pounds of silver (equivalent, possibly, to something between one and two thousand pounds of modern value). Half of this he kept for himself, half he devoted to bettering the monastic fare. But the last of the learned line, Whethamstede, was the greatest. He built a new library for £150—he had already built one for Gloucester Hall at Oxford for £60. It is not irrelevant to mention that this home of learning possessed one of the earliest of printing presses. This was a strange meeting of the Old and the New.
This flagging influence of the monasteries was reinforced, as is well known, on the advent of the friars. These too had libraries when they began to establish themselves in homes of their own. They were, of course, bound by the rule which forbade them to own private property ; nevertheless it is not without good reasons that Mr. Savage includes in the title of one of his chapters "Book-lovers among the Mendicants." But more important as certainly more permanent rivals of the monasteries were to be found in the universities and colleges. We read much that is most interesting under the heading of " Academic Libraries." The university of course preceded the college. So at Oxford the first academic library of which we hear is in the University Church. Some books were kept in chests, from which they could be taken and lent to readers on due security ; others—books of refer- ence, we may call them—were chained to desks. The first great benefactor was Bishop Cobham (Worcester, 1317-1327), who left to the University his library and 300 marks to build a chamber for them. Unfortunately he died in debt, and the books were pawned to set things straight. Adam de Brome, the founder of Oriel, redeemed them and gave them to his college. In 1337 the University took forcible possession of them, taking advantage, we are told, of the fact that Oriel had but a scanty number of Fellows to defend its possessions. A still more munificent benefactor was Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. His benefactions extended over a period of more than thirty-four years (between 1413-14t7). Of the earlier donations we do not know the particulars, but it is recorded that in 1439 were sent 120 volumes, 16 in the next two years, and a little later 135. Theology, of course, claimed the greater part of the collection, but there were a few Greek and many Latin classics. A large bequest of Latin books which the Duke had been unwilling to part with in his lifetime somehow failed to reach their destination. Perhaps it was as well that they did not, particularly if it is true that they really went to King's College, Cambridge, and Eton. For the Duke's splendid library, augmented as it was by the gifts of later benefactors, came to a miserable end. In 1550 a commission sat to determine what was to be done with the Oxford libraries. All illuminated manuscripts were cast away as rubbish. Some of the college libraries suffered, others escaped with trifling loss. Private interest had some- thing, doubtless, to say ; the University Library perished. There must have been some s:x hundred or seven hundred books at the very least: three are now in the Bodleian; Corpus, Oriel, and Magdalen have one each. Nine are in the British Museum, one in Cambridge, and two more in British libraries, while ten more are in France. Among the colleges which suffered was Lincoln, which lost six manuscripts given to it in very early days by Dr. Gascoigne. The
manner' of the gift is so significant that it is worth describing. The donor kept the books, not in the usual way, in which a testator keeps what he intends to dispose of by will, but as a loan from the Rector and Fellows of the College, the agreement including a money penalty on the executors if they failed to deliver them up after the testator's death. Wills were somewhat doubtful things in those days, partly because no one dreamt of making one till he was near to death.
It will be asked, Of what books did these libraries consist? The majority were religions. Whole Bibles were comparatively rare, gospels more frequent, and missals, lectionaries, and psalters yet more numerous. The list of books which a great bishop of the ninth century required his clergy to possess includes a missal, a lectionary, the gospels, a martyrology, an antiphonary, a 'Asher, and a book of St. Gregory's homilies. The position of the classical writers is not easily described. G reek books were, of course, rare ; as to the great Latin authors we might almost use the phrase which Tacitus uses of the profession of astrology, "et vetabitur semper et retinebitur." The ideal was that they should be banished, but as a matter of fact, they were read. So the great Jerome renounced them as vanities, yet used them for his school at Bethlehem. In the last resource they might be treated as allegories. In this spirit nuns might read the De Arts Ataancli. But they were comparatively rare. Taking three great divisions, Theology would be a long way first, Law would be second, the Classics third long° intervallo. Here is a specimen from the list which Mr. Savage has compiled with admirable industry. It is the library of the Friars Eremites at York. Theology 133, Logic and Philosophy 100, Grammar and Latin Poets 50, Law 49, Astronomy and Astrology 36, Medicine 22; the total was 646. The date of the catalogue is 1372. Half a century later a library now at Peterhouse, Cambridge, contained: Theology 124, Law 66, Philosophy 53, Logic 20, Grammar and Poetry 23 ; Science, Mathematics, &c., with miscellanous books, made up a total of 380.
Not the least interesting part of the volume is the list of prices. The biggest is for La Bible Hystoriaus, a volume taken from the French King at Poitiers. William Montagu bought it for 100 marks (266 13s. 4d.). We must multiply this by ten to get present value. Possibly the price was enhanced by the circumstances of the capture. As to materials we find a quire of paper priced in 1467 at 9d., while a quire of writing is priced at 16d., a very small remuneration indeed. Imagine a copyist paid rather less than double the value of the paper I Mr. Savage has given us a book of rare value.
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