til sent abroad in 1654 as
Cromwell's unofficial agent. Again he traveled all over Protestant
Europe negotiating to reunite the churches. After the Restoration he was
unable to return to England and lived out his life on the Continent
trying to bring about Christian reunion. One of his last works, which
has not been located, was a shady _Touchant l'intelligence de
l'Apocalypse par l'Apocalypse meme_ of 1674. His daughter married Henry
Oldenburg, who became a secretary of the Royal Society of England and
who helped bring about some of the scientific reforms Dury had
advocated.

_Richard H. Popkin
Washington University_

* * * * *

John Dury's place in the intellectual and religious life of
seventeenth-century England and Europe is amply demonstrated in the
preceding part of the introduction. This section focuses on _The
Reformed Librarie-Keeper_ itself, which was printed in 1650 with the
subheading _Two copies of Letters concerning the Place and Office of a
Librarie-Keeper_ (p. 15). The first letter concentrates on practical
questions of the organization and administration of the library, the
second relates the librarian's function to educational goals and, above
all else, to the mission of the Christian religion. The work's two-part
structure is a clue to a proper understanding of the genesis of _The
Reformed Librarie-Keeper_ and to its meaning and puts in ironic
perspective its usefulness for later academic librarianship.

Because _The Reformed Librarie-Keeper_ appeared in the same year that
Dury became deputy librarian of the King's Library in St. James's
Palace, it has been assumed that he probably wrote the pamphlet as a
form of self-promotion to secure the job. An anonymous article in _The
Library_ in 1892, for instance, speculates that the pamphlet may have
been "composed for the special purpose of the Author's advancement" and
that Milton and Samuel Hartlib urged its production "to forward his
claims" while the Council of State was debating what to do with Charles
I's books.[8] Certainly the final sentence of the tract, with its
references to "the Hous" and "the Counsels of leading men in this
Common-wealth" (p. 31), suggests a connection with the debate, but the
tone of religious zeal that permeates the work, and especially the
second letter, seems to transcend any specific occasion. Moreover,
Hartlib, Dury's longtime friend and associate in millenarian causes and
the recipie