Note 266 — The Library.

After having intruded, I fear, by the preceding note respecting French Bibliomania, there is only room left to say of our De Bury—that he was the friend and correspondent of Petrarch—and that Mons. Sade, in his Memoirs of Petrarch, tells us that "the former did in England, what the latter all his life was doing in France, Italy, and Germany, towards the discovery of the best ancient writers, and making copies of them under his own superintendence." De Bury bequeathed a valuable library of MSS. to Durham, now Trinity College, Oxford. The books of this library were first packed up in chests; but upon the completion of the room to receive them, "they were put into pews or studies, and chained to them." Wood's History of the University of Oxford, vol. ii., p. 911. Gutch's edit. De Bury's Philobiblion, from which so much has been extracted, is said by Morhof to "savor somewhat of the rudeness of the age, but is rather elegantly written; and many things are well expressed in it relating to bibliothecism." Polyhist. Literar., vol. i., 187. The real author is supposed to have been Robert Holcott, a Dominican friar. I am, however, loth to suppress a part of what Warton has so pleasantly written (as above alluded to by Lysander) respecting such a favourite as De Bury. "Richard de Bury, otherwise called Richard Aungervylle, is said to have alone possessed more books than all the bishops of England together. Beside the fixed libraries which he had formed in his several palaces, the floor of his common apartment was so covered with books that those who entered could not with due reverence approach his presence. He kept binders, illuminators, and writers, in his palaces. Petrarch says that he had once a conversation with him, concerning the island called by the ancients Thule; calling him 'virum ardentis ingenii.' While chancellor and treasurer, instead of the usual presents and new-year's gifts appendant to his office, he chose to receive those perquisites in books. By the favour of Edward III. he gained access to the libraries of most of the capital monasteries; where he shook off the dust from volumes, preserved in chests and presses, which had not been opened for many ages." Philobiblion, cap. 29, 30.—Warton also quotes, in English, a part of what had been already presented to the reader in its original Latin form. Hist. Engl. Poetry, vol. i., Diss. ii., note g., sign. h. 4. Prettily painted as is this picture, by Warton, the colouring might have been somewhat heightened, and the effect rendered still more striking, in consequence, if the authority and the words of Godwyn had been a little attended to. In this latter's Catalogue of the Bishops of England, p. 524-5, edit. 1601, we find that De Bury was the son of one Sir Richard Angaruill, knight: "that he saith of himselfe 'exstatico quodam librorum amore potenter se abreptum'—that he was mightily carried away, and even beside himself, with immoderate love of bookes and desire of reading. He had alwaies in his house many chaplaines, all great schollers. His manner was, at dinner and supper-time, to haue some good booke read unto him, whereof he would discourse with his chaplaines a great part of the day following, if busines interrupted not his course. He was very bountiful unto the poore. Weekely he bestowed for their reliefe, 8 quarters of wheat made into bread, beside the offall and fragments of his tables. Riding betweene Newcastle and Durham he would give 8l. in almes; from Durham to Stocton, 5l.: from Durham to Aukland, 5 marks; from Durham to Middleham, 5l." &c. This latter is the "pars melior" of every human being; and bibliomaniacs seem to have possessed it as largely as any other tribe of mortals. I have examined Richardson's magnificent reprint of Godwyn's book, in the Latin tongue, London, 1743, folio; p. 747; and find nothing worth adding to the original text.