Note 246 — The Library.

Though the abbey of Croyland was burnt only twenty-five years after the conquest, its library then consisted of 900 volumes, of which 300 were very large. The lovers of English history and antiquities are much indebted to Ingulph for his excellent history of the abbey of Croyland, from its foundation, A.D. 664, to A.D. 1091: into which he hath introduced much of the general history of the kingdom, with a variety of curious anecdotes that are no where else to be found. Dr. Henry: book iii., chap. iv., § 1 and 2. But Ingulph merits a more particular eulogium. The editors of that stupendous, and in truth, matchless collection of national history, entitled Recueil des Historiens des Gaules, thus say of him: "Il avoit tout vu en bon connoisseur, et ce qu'il rapporte, il l'écrit en homme lettré, judicieux et vrai:" tom. xi., p. xlij. In case any reader of this note and lover of romance literature should happen to be unacquainted with the French language, I will add, from the same respectable authority, that "The readers of the Round Table History should be informed that there are many minute and curious descriptions in Ingulph which throw considerable light upon the history of Ancient Chivalry." Ibid. See too the animated eulogy upon him, at p. 153, note a, of the same volume. These learned editors have, however, forgotten to notice that the best, and only perfect, edition of Ingulph's History of Croyland Abbey, with the continuation of the same, by Peter de Blois and Edward Abbas, is that which is inserted in the first volume of Gale's Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores Veteres: Oxon, 1684. (3 vols.)