bert, and the great scholar Alcuin here acquired, amidst that "infinite
number of excellent books," his life-long devotion to literature. When he
removed to Tours, in France, he lamented the loss of the literary
treasures of York, in a poem composed of excellent hexameters. He begged
of Charlemagne to send into Britain to procure books, "that the garden of
paradise may not be confined to York."

Fine libraries were also gathered at the monasteries of Durham, of
Glastonbury, and of Croyland, and at the Abbeys of Whitby and
Peterborough.

Nor were the orders of Franciscans and Dominicans far behind as
book-collectors, though they commonly preferred to buy rather than to
transcribe manuscripts, like the Benedictines. "In every convent of
friars," wrote Fitzralph to the Pope, in 1350, "there is a large and
noble library." And Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, and Chancellor of
England in 1334, whose "Philobiblon" is the most eloquent treatise in
praise of books ever written, said, when visiting places where the
mendicants had convents; "there amid the deepest poverty, we found the
most precious riches stored up." The Pope, it appears, relaxed for these
orders the rigor of their vows of poverty, in favor of amassing
books--mindful, doubtless, of that saying of Solomon the wise--"Therefore
get wisdom, because it is better than gold."

Richard de Bury, the enthusiast of learning, wrote thus:

"The library, therefore, of wisdom is more precious than all riches, and
nothing that can be wished for is worthy to be compared with it.
Whosoever, therefore, acknowledges himself to be a zealous follower of
the truth, of happiness, of wisdom, of science, or even of the faith,
must of necessity make himself a lover of books."

And said Joseph Hall, Bishop of Norwich--"I can wonder at nothing more
than how a man can be idle--but of all others a scholar; in so many
improvements of reason, in such sweetness of knowledge, in such variety
of studies, in such importunity of thoughts. To find wit in poetry; in
philosophy profoundness; in history wonder of events; in oratory, sweet
eloquence; in divinity, supernatural light and holy devotion--whom would
it not ravish with delight?"

Charles the Fifth of France amassed a fine library, afterwards sold to an
English nobleman. Lorenzo de Medici, of Hungary, and Frederic Duke of
Urbino, each gathered in the 15th century a magnificent collection of
books. All of these became widely dispersed in