venteenth Century_, before the Library
Association. See _Library Chronicle_, vol. i. p. 1 (1884).

CHAPTER I.

HOW MEN HAVE FORMED LIBRARIES.

As long as books have existed there have been book collectors. It is easy
now to collect, for books of interest are to be found on all sides; but in
old times this was not so, and we must therefore admire the more those men
who formed their libraries under the greatest difficulties. In a book
devoted to the formation of libraries it seems but fair to devote some
space to doing honour to those who have formed libraries, and perhaps some
practical lessons may be learned from a few historical facts.

Englishmen may well be proud of Richard Aungerville de Bury, a man
occupying a busy and exalted station, who not only collected books with
ardour united with judgment, but has left for the benefit of later ages a
manual which specially endears his memory to all book lovers.

He collected books, and often took them in place of corn for tithes and
dues, but he also produced books, for he kept copyists in his house. Many
of these books were carefully preserved in his palace at Durham, but it is
also pleasant to think of some of them being carefully preserved in the
noble mansion belonging to his see which stood by the side of the Thames,
and on the site of the present Adelphi.

Petrarch was a book-loving poet, and he is said to have met the
book-loving ecclesiastic Richard de Bury at Rome. He gave his library to
the Church of St. Mark at Venice in 1362; but the guardians allowed the
books to decay, and few were rescued. Boccaccio bequeathed his library to
the Augustinians at Florence, but one cannot imagine the books of the
accomplished author of the _Decameron_ as very well suited for the needs
of a religious society, and it was probably weeded before Boccaccio's
death. The remains of the library are still shown to visitors in the
Laurentian Library, the famous building due to the genius of Michael
Angelo.

Cardinal John Bessarion gave his fine collection (which included about 600
Greek MSS.) to St. Mark's in 1468, and in the letter to the Doge which
accompanied his gift, he tells some interesting particulars of his early
life as a collector. He writes, "From my youth I have bestowed my pains
and exertion in the collection of books on various sciences. In former
days I copied many with my own hands, and I have employed on the purchase
of others such small means as a frugal