prior to the reign of Henry VII., for until that time libraries
consisted almost entirely of manuscripts; and I have also excluded men
who, like Sir Thomas Bodley, collected books for the express purpose of
forming, or adding to, public libraries.

My friend, Mr. Walter Stanley Graves, has in an appendix to this volume
compiled a list of the principal sales of libraries in this country from
an early period to the present time, which will be found to supply
useful information about many of those collectors who are not otherwise
mentioned in the book.

Mr. Locker-Lampson in the introduction to the catalogue of his library
very pertinently remarks: 'It is a good thing to read books, and it need
not be a bad thing to write them; but it is a pious thing to preserve
those that have been some time written.' To collectors scholars owe a
deep debt of gratitude, for innumerable are the precious manuscripts and
rare printed books which they have rescued from destruction, and not a
few of them have enriched by their gifts and bequests the public
libraries of their country. Every lover of books must feel how greatly
indebted he is to Archbishops Cranmer and Parker, the Earl of Arundel,
Lord Lumley, Sir Robert Cotton, and other early collectors, for saving
so many of the priceless manuscripts from the libraries of the
suppressed monasteries and religious houses which, at the Reformation,
intolerance, ignorance, and greed consigned to the hands of the tailor,
the goldbeater, and the grocer. A large number of the treasures once to
be found in these collections have been irrecoverably lost, but many a
volume, now the pride of some great library, bears witness to the pious
and successful exertions of these eminent men.

A love of book-collecting has always prevailed in this country, and
since the end of the seventeenth century it has become very widely
diffused. In the early days of the eighteenth century the Duke of
Devonshire, the Earls of Oxford and Sunderland, and several other
collectors, employed themselves during the winter months in rambling
through various quarters of the town in search of additions to their
libraries, and with some of these collectors the acquisition of books
became a positive passion. In 1813 Dr. Dibdin thought that the
thermometer of bibliomania had reached its highest point, and it would
certainly appear to have been very high indeed, judging from the prices
obtained at the Roxburghe and other sales of the