re. To him it was as essential as the implements of destruction to
the warrior, or the plough to the husbandman. The one had no sympathy,
no connection, with the other, only in so far that the events which
transpired in the battlefield had to be recorded in the _scriptorium_.
Although London was a place of importance at a very early stage of the
Roman occupation, it was not in any sense an intellectual centre for
centuries after that period.

[Illustration: _In a Scriptorium._]

Indeed, it might be laid down as a general principle that the farther
the seeker went from London the more likelihood there was of meeting
with books. To Northumbria, from the end of the sixth to the end of the
seventh century, we shall have to look for the record of book-buying,
for during that period books were imported in very considerable
quantities; abbeys arose all along the coast, and scholars
proportionately increased. In a letter to Charlemagne, Alcuin speaks of
certain 'exquisite books' which he studied under Egbert at York. At
Wearmouth, Benedict Biscop (629-690) was amassing books with all the
fury of half a dozen ordinary bibliomaniacs. He collected everything,
and spared no cost. At York, Egbert had a fine library in the minster.
St. Boniface, the Saxon missionary, was a zealous collector. There were
also collections--and consequently collectors--of books at places less
remote from London--such as Canterbury, Salisbury, Glastonbury, and even
St. Albans; but of London itself there is no mention.

Scarcely any such thing as book-hunting or book-selling could possibly
have existed in London before the accession of Alfred, who, among the
several ways in which he encouraged literature, is said to have given an
estate to the author of a book on cosmography. Doubtless, it was after
the rebuilding of the city by Alfred that, in the famous letter to
Wulfseg, Bishop of London, he takes a retrospective view of the times in
which they lived, as affording 'churches and monasteries filled with
libraries of excellent books in several languages.' Bede describes
London, even at the beginning of the eighth century, as a great market
which traders frequented by land and sea; and from a passage in Gale we
learn that books were brought into England for sale as early as 705.
With the reconstruction of London, the wise government, and the
enthusiastic love for letters which animated the great Saxon King, the
commerce of the capital not only increased w