to it belong the
two men to whom perhaps Oxford owes most. Thomas Bodley was a fellow
and lecturer in Greek there, before he left Oxford for diplomacy, and
accumulated that wealth which he used to endow the oldest and the
most fascinating, if not the largest, of British libraries. And among
the men who have gained from "the rare books in the public library" a
way to a "perfect elysium," none better deserves remembrance than the
Mertonian, Antony Wood, whose monument stands in Merton Chapel, but
who has raised /monumentum aere perennius/ to himself, in his
/History of the University of Oxford/ and his /Athenae Oxonienses/.

[Plate VII. Merton College : The Library Interior]

MERTON LIBRARY

"Hail, tree of knowledge! thy leaves fruit; which well
Dost in the midst of Paradise arise,
Oxford, the Muses' paradise,
From which may never sword the blest expel.
Hail, bank of all past ages! where they lie
To enrich, with interest, posterity."
COWLEY.

"The appearance of the library" (at Merton), says the great Cambridge
scholar, J. Willis Clark, in his /Care of Books/, "is so venerable,
so unlike any similar room with which I am acquainted, that it must
always command admiration."

He classes it with the libraries at Oxford of Corpus, St. John's,
Jesus, and Magdalen, and he regretfully adds that no college library
in his own University has retained the same old features as these
have done. But none of the four can compare with Merton, either in
antiquarian interest or in picturesqueness; it stands in a class by
itself.

The Library was built by the munificence of Bishop Reed of Chichester
between 1377 and 1379; the dormer windows, however (seen in Plate
VII), are later in date. The bookcases in the larger room were made
in 1623; one of the original half cases, however, was spared, that
nearest to the entrance on the north side, and this is the most
interesting single feature in the whole library. It need hardly be
said that the reading-desk in early times was actually attached to
the bookcase; the library then was a place to read in, not one from
which books were taken to be read. The books were to be kept "in some
common and secure place," and they were "chained in the library
chamber for the common use of the fellows" (J. W. Clark).

The old case that has been retained still has its chained books, and
traces of the arrangement for