the single exception of
the illustration from Boethius (fig. 63), I have not found any library,
properly so called. This is no doubt strange, having regard to the great
variety of scenes depicted. It must be remembered, however, that these are
used for the most part to illustrate some action that is going forward,
for which a library would be a singularly inappropriate background. Single
figures, on the other hand, are frequently shewn with their books about
them, either reading or writing. Such illustrations most frequently occur
in _Books of Hours_, in representations of the Evangelists; or in
portraits of S. Jerome, who is painted as a scholar at his desk surrounded
by piles of books and papers; and I think we may safely take these as
representations of ordinary scholars, because, by the beginning of the
fifteenth century, when most of the pictures to which I refer were drawn,
it had become the custom to surround even the most sacred personages with
the attributes of common life.

In the twelfth century, when books were few, they were kept in chests, and
the owners seem to have used the edge as a desk to lean their book on. My
illustration (fig. 134) shews Simon, Abbat of S. Albans 1167-1183, seated
in front of his book-chest[521]. The chest is set on a frame, so as to
raise it to a convenient height; and the Abbat is seated on one of those
folding wooden chairs which are not uncommon at the present day. Simon was
a great collector of books: "their number," writes his chronicler, "it
would take too long to name; but those who desire to see them can find
them in the painted aumbry in the church, placed as he specially directed
against the tomb of Roger the hermit[522]."

Chests, as we have seen above at the Vatican library, were used for the
permanent storage of books in the fifteenth century; and a book-chest
frequently formed part of the travelling luggage of a king. For example,
when Charles V. of France died, 16 September, 1380, at the Chateau de
Beaute-sur-Marne, thirty-one volumes were found in his chamber "in a chest
resting on two supports, which chest is by the window, near the fireplace,
and it has a double cover, and in one of the divisions of the said chest
were the volumes that follow." His son, Charles VI., kept the thirteen
volumes which he carried about with him in a carved chest, within which
was an inlaid box (_escrin marquete_) to contain the more precious
books[523].

[Illustration: Fig. 134. Si