their tasks,
and applying themselves with pious enthusiasm thereto. We should not
flatter ourselves that the enjoyment of the delights of bibliomania was
reserved to one time and generation; a greater than any of us lived
many centuries ago, and went his bibliomaniacal way, gathering together
treasures from every quarter, and diffusing every where a veneration
and love for books.

Richard de Bury was the king, if not the father, of bibliomaniacs; his
immortal work reveals to us that long before the invention of printing
men were tormented and enraptured by those very same desires, envies,
jealousies, greeds, enthusiasms, and passions which possess and control
bibliomaniacs at the present time. That vanity was sometimes the
controlling passion with the early collectors is evidenced in a passage
in Barclay's satire, "The Ship of Fools"; there are the stanzas which
apply so neatly to certain people I know that sometimes I actually
suspect that Barclay's prophetic eye must have had these
nineteenth-century charlatans in view.

But yet I have them in great reverence
And honor, saving them from filth and ordure
By often brushing and much diligence.
Full goodly bound in pleasant coverture
Of damask, satin, or else of velvet pure,
I keep them sure, fearing lest they should be lost,
For in them is the cunning wherein I me boast.

But if it fortune that any learned man
Within my house fall to disputation,
I draw the curtains to show my books them,
That they of my cunning should make probation;
I love not to fall into altercation,
And while they come, my books I turn and wind,
For all is in them, and nothing in my mind.

Richard de Bury had exceptional opportunities for gratifying his
bibliomaniac passions. He was chancellor and treasurer of Edward III.,
and his official position gained him access to public and private
libraries and to the society of literary men. Moreover, when it became
known that he was fond of such things, people from every quarter sent
him and brought him old books; it may be that they hoped in this wise
to court his official favor, or perhaps they were prompted by the less
selfish motive of gladdening the bibliomaniac soul.

"The flying fame of our love," says de Bury, "had already spread in all
directions, and it was reported not only that we had a longing desire
for books, and especially for old ones, but that any one could more
easily o