a Countess of Anjou bought a favourite book
of homilies for two hundred sheep, some skins of martins, and bushels of
wheat and rye.

In those times, manuscripts were important articles of commerce; they
were excessively scarce, and preserved with the utmost care. Usurers
themselves considered them as precious objects for pawn. A student of
Pavia, who was reduced, raised a new fortune by leaving in pawn a
manuscript of a body of law; and a grammarian, who was ruined by a fire,
rebuilt his house with two small volumes of Cicero.

At the restoration of letters, the researches of literary men were
chiefly directed to this point; every part of Europe and Greece was
ransacked; and, the glorious end considered, there was something sublime
in this humble industry, which often recovered a lost author of
antiquity, and gave one more classic to the world. This occupation was
carried on with enthusiasm, and a kind of mania possessed many, who
exhausted their fortunes in distant voyages and profuse prices. In
reading the correspondence of the learned Italians of these times, their
adventures of manuscript-hunting are very amusing; and their raptures,
their congratulations, or at times their condolence, and even their
censures, are all immoderate. The acquisition of a province would not
have given so much satisfaction as the discovery or an author little
known, or not known at all. "Oh, great gain! Oh, unexpected felicity! I
intreat you, my Poggio, send me the manuscript as soon as possible, that
I may see it before I die!" exclaims Aretino, in a letter overflowing
with enthusiasm, on Poggio's discovery of a copy of Quintilian. Some of
the half-witted, who joined in this great hunt, were often thrown out,
and some paid high for manuscripts not authentic; the knave played on
the bungling amateur of manuscripts, whose credulity exceeded his purse.
But even among the learned, much ill-blood was inflamed; he who had
been most successful in acquiring manuscripts was envied by the less
fortunate, and the glory of possessing a manuscript of Cicero seemed to
approximate to that of being its author. It is curious to observe that
in these vast importations into Italy of manuscripts from Asia, John
Aurispa, who brought many hundreds of Greek manuscripts, laments that he
had chosen more profane than sacred writers; which circumstance he tells
us was owing to the Greeks, who would not so easily part with
theological works, but did not highly va