was Sir
Robert Cotton, who began as early as 1588, and who had assistance from
such antiquaries as William Camden and Sir Henry Spelman. This library,
after being closed on account of the treasonable character of the
documents contained in it, passed into the possession of Cotton's son,
Sir Thomas, whose house was almost adjoining Westminster Hall. Anthony a
Wood gives a curious account of a visit he paid it, when he found its
owner practising on the lute. The key of the library was in the
possession of one Pearson, who lodged with a bookseller in Little
Britain. Wood was 'forced to walk thither, and much ado there was to
find him.' This library was removed to Essex Street, and again back to
Westminster to Ashburnham House in Little Dean's Yard, where it suffered
greatly from a fire in 1731, and what remains of it is now in the
British Museum. Sir Thomas Bodley was another collector, but few of his
accumulations appear to have come from London. The extraordinary
collection of pamphlets got together by Tomlinson, and now stored in the
British Museum, is too well known to need more than a passing reference.
It is not so generally known that Narcissus Luttrell was a very
voracious collector of broadsides, tracts, and so forth. To nearly every
one of the items he affixed the price he paid for it. In 1820, at the
Bindley sale, this extraordinary collection, ranging in date from 1640
to 1688, and comprising twelve volumes, realized the then large amount
of L781.

[Illustration: _Sir Julius Caesar's Travelling Library._]

Sir Julius Caesar, Master of the Rolls under James I., was a
book-collector of the right sort, and his box of charming little
editions of the classics, with which he used to solace himself on a
journey, is now in the safe keeping of the British Museum. Sir Julius
was born in 1557, and died in April, 1636; he possessed a fine
collection of highly interesting manuscripts, which had the narrowest
possible escape from being destroyed at the latter part of the last
century. The collection was rescued in time by Samuel Paterson, the
auctioneer, and it is now in the British Museum.

Robert Burton (the author of the 'Anatomy of Melancholy') was, like
Luttrell, also a great collector of tracts, and his library, now in the
Bodleian, is peculiarly rich in historical, political, and poetical
pamphlets, and in miscellaneous accounts of murders, monsters, and
accidents. He seems to have purchased and preserved a copy of