olars;
there are lounges of Athens; walks of the Peripatetics; peaks of
Parnassus; and porches of the Stoics. There is seen the surveyor of
all arts and sciences Aristotle, to whom belongs all that is most
excellent in doctrine, so far as relates to this passing sublunary
world; there Ptolemy measures epicycles and eccentric apogees and the
nodes of the planets by figures and numbers; there Paul reveals the
mysteries; there his neighbour Dionysius arranges and distinguishes the
hierarchies; there the virgin Carmentis reproduces in Latin characters
all that Cadmus collected in Phoenician letters; there indeed opening
our treasuries and unfastening our purse-strings we scattered money
with joyous heart and purchased inestimable books with mud and sand.
It is naught, it is naught, saith every buyer. But in vain; for behold
how good and how pleasant it is to gather together the arms of the
clerical warfare, that we may have the means to crush the attacks of
heretics, if they arise.

Further, we are aware that we obtained most excellent opportunities of
collecting in the following way. From our early years we attached to
our society with the most exquisite solicitude and discarding all
partiality all such masters and scholars and professors in the several
faculties as had become most distinguished by their subtlety of mind
and the fame of their learning. Deriving consolation from their
sympathetic conversation, we were delightfully entertained, now by
demonstrative chains of reasoning, now by the recital of physical
processes and the treatises of the doctors of the Church, now by
stimulating discourses on the allegorical meanings of things, as by a
rich and well-varied intellectual feast. Such men we chose as comrades
in our years of learning, as companions in our chamber, as associates
on our journeys, as guests at our table, and, in short, as helpmates in
all the vicissitudes of life. But as no happiness is permitted to
endure for long, we were sometimes deprived of the bodily companionship
of some of these shining lights, when justice looking down from heaven,
the ecclesiastical preferments and dignities that they deserved fell to
their portion. And thus it happened, as was only right, that in
attending to their own cures they were obliged to absent themselves
from attendance upon us.

We will add yet another very convenient way by which a great multitude
of books old as well as new came into our hands. For we n