through Poggio's industry as a
manuscript-hunter; this same worthy found and brought away from
different monasteries a perfect copy of Quintilian, a Cicero's oration
for Caecina, a complete Tertullian, a Petronius Arbiter, and fifteen or
twenty other classics almost as valuable as those I have named. From
German monasteries, Poggio's friend, Nicolas of Treves, brought away
twelve comedies of Plautus and a fragment of Aulus Gellius.

Dear as their pagan books were to the monkish collectors, it was upon
their Bibles, their psalters, and their other religious books that
these mediaeval bibliomaniacs expended their choicest art and their
most loving care. St. Cuthbert's "Gospels," preserved in the British
Museum, was written by Egfrith, a monk, circa 720; Aethelwald bound the
book in gold and precious stones, and Bilfrid, a hermit, illuminated it
by prefixing to each gospel a beautiful painting representing one of
the Evangelists, and a tessellated cross, executed in a most elaborate
manner. Bilfrid also illuminated the large capital letters at the
beginning of the gospels. This precious volume was still further
enriched by Aldred of Durham, who interlined it with a Saxon Gloss, or
version of the Latin text of St. Jerome.

"Of the exact pecuniary value of books during the middle ages," says
Merryweather, "we have no means of judging. The few instances that
have accidentally been recorded are totally inadequate to enable us to
form an opinion. The extravagant estimate given by some as to the
value of books in those days is merely conjectural, as it necessarily
must be when we remember that the price was guided by the accuracy of
the transcription, the splendor of the binding (which was often
gorgeous to excess), and by the beauty and richness of the
illuminations. Many of the manuscripts of the middle ages are
magnificent in the extreme; sometimes inscribed in liquid gold on
parchment of the richest purple, and adorned with illuminations of
exquisite workmanship."

With such a veneration and love for books obtaining in the cloister and
at the fireside, what pathos is revealed to us in the supplication
which invited God's blessing upon the beloved tomes: "O Lord, send the
virtue of thy Holy Spirit upon these our books; that cleansing them
from all earthly things, by thy holy blessing, they may mercifully
enlighten our hearts and give us true understanding; and grant that by
thy teachings they may brightly preserve