Where one has the time and the money
to devote to the collection of missals and illuminated
books, the avocation must be a very delightful one.
I never look upon a missal or upon a bit of antique
illumination that I do not invest that object with
a certain poetic romance, and I picture to myself
long lines of monkish men bending over their tasks,
and applying themselves with pious enthusiasm thereto.
We should not flatter ourselves that the enjoyment
of the delights of bibliomania was reserved to one
time and generation; a greater than any of us lived
many centuries ago, and went his bibliomaniacal way,
gathering together treasures from every quarter, and
diffusing every where a veneration and love for books.
Richard de Bury was the king, if not
the father, of bibliomaniacs; his immortal work reveals
to us that long before the invention of printing men
were tormented and enraptured by those very same desires,
envies, jealousies, greeds, enthusiasms, and passions
which possess and control bibliomaniacs at the present
time. That vanity was sometimes the controlling
passion with the early collectors is evidenced in a
passage in Barclay’s satire, “The Ship
of Fools”; there are the stanzas which apply
so neatly to certain people I know that sometimes I
actually suspect that Barclay’s prophetic eye
must have had these nineteenth-century charlatans
in view.
But yet I have them in great reverence
And honor, saving
them from filth and ordure
By often brushing and much diligence.
Full goodly bound
in pleasant coverture
Of damask, satin,
or else of velvet pure,
I keep them sure, fearing lest they should
be lost,
For in them is the cunning wherein I me
boast.
But if it fortune that any learned man
Within my house
fall to disputation,
I draw the curtains to show my books them,
That they
of my cunning should make probation;
I love not to
fall into altercation,
And while they come, my books I turn and
wind,
For all is in them, and nothing in my
mind.
Richard de Bury had exceptional opportunities
for gratifying his bibliomaniac passions. He
was chancellor and treasurer of Edward III., and his
official position gained him access to public and private
libraries and to the society of literary men.
Moreover, when it became known that he was fond of
such things, people from every quarter sent him and
brought him old books; it may be that they hoped in
this wise to court his official favor, or perhaps
they were prompted by the less selfish motive of gladdening
the bibliomaniac soul.
“The flying fame of our love,”
says de Bury, “had already spread in all directions,
and it was reported not only that we had a longing
desire for books, and especially for old ones, but
that any one could more easily obtain our favors by
quartos than by money. Wherefore, when supported
by the bounty of the aforesaid prince of worthy memory,
we were enabled to oppose or advance, to appoint or
to discharge; crazy quartos and tottering folios,
precious however in our sight as in our affections,
flowed in most rapidly from the great and the small,
instead of new year’s gifts and remunerations,
and instead of presents and jewels. Then the
cabinets of the most noble monasteries were opened,
cases were unlocked, caskets were unclasped, and sleeping
volumes which had slumbered for long ages in their
sepulchres were roused up, and those that lay hid
in dark places were overwhelmed with the rays of a
new light. Among these, as time served, we sat
down more voluptuously than the delicate physician
could do amidst his stores of aromatics, and where
we found an object of love we found also an assuagement.”
“If,” says de Bury, “we
would have amassed cups of gold and silver, excellent
horses, or no mean sums of money, we could in those
days have laid up abundance of wealth for ourselves.
But we regarded books, not pounds; and valued codices
more than florins, and preferred paltry pamphlets
to pampered palfreys. On tedious embassies and
in perilous times, we carried about with us that
fondness for books which many waters could not extinguish.”
And what books they were in those
old days! What tall folios! What stout
quartos! How magnificent were the bindings, wrought
often in silver devices, sometimes in gold, and not
infrequently in silver and gold, with splendid jewels
and precious stones to add their value to that of
the precious volume which they adorned. The works
of Justin, Seneca, Martial, Terence, and Claudian
were highly popular with the bibliophiles of early
times; and the writings of Ovid, Tully, Horace, Cato,
Aristotle, Sallust, Hippocrates, Macrobius, Augustine,
Bede, Gregory, Origen, etc. But for the
veneration and love for books which the monks of the
mediaeval ages had, what would have been preserved
to us of the classics of the Greeks and the Romans?
The same auspicious fate that prompted
those bibliomaniacal monks to hide away manuscript
treasures in the cellars of their monasteries, inspired
Poggio Bracciolini several centuries later to hunt
out and invade those sacred hiding-places, and these
quests were rewarded with finds whose value cannot
be overestimated. All that we have of the histories
of Livy come to us through Poggio’s industry
as a manuscript-hunter; this same worthy found and
brought away from different monasteries a perfect
copy of Quintilian, a Cicero’s oration for Caecina,
a complete Tertullian, a Petronius Arbiter, and fifteen
or twenty other classics almost as valuable as those
I have named. From German monasteries, Poggio’s
friend, Nicolas of Treves, brought away twelve comedies
of Plautus and a fragment of Aulus Gellius.
Dear as their pagan books were to
the monkish collectors, it was upon their Bibles,
their psalters, and their other religious books that
these mediaeval bibliomaniacs expended their choicest
art and their most loving care. St. Cuthbert’s
“Gospels,” preserved in the British Museum,
was written by Egfrith, a monk, circa 720; Aethelwald
bound the book in gold and precious stones, and Bilfrid,
a hermit, illuminated it by prefixing to each gospel
a beautiful painting representing one of the Evangelists,
and a tessellated cross, executed in a most elaborate
manner. Bilfrid also illuminated the large capital
letters at the beginning of the gospels. This
precious volume was still further enriched by Aldred
of Durham, who interlined it with a Saxon Gloss, or
version of the Latin text of St. Jerome.
“Of the exact pecuniary value
of books during the middle ages,” says Merryweather,
“we have no means of judging. The few instances
that have accidentally been recorded are totally inadequate
to enable us to form an opinion. The extravagant
estimate given by some as to the value of books in
those days is merely conjectural, as it necessarily
must be when we remember that the price was guided
by the accuracy of the transcription, the splendor
of the binding (which was often gorgeous to excess),
and by the beauty and richness of the illuminations.
Many of the manuscripts of the middle ages are magnificent
in the extreme; sometimes inscribed in liquid gold
on parchment of the richest purple, and adorned with
illuminations of exquisite workmanship.”
With such a veneration and love for
books obtaining in the cloister and at the fireside,
what pathos is revealed to us in the supplication
which invited God’s blessing upon the beloved
tomes: “O Lord, send the virtue of thy
Holy Spirit upon these our books; that cleansing them
from all earthly things, by thy holy blessing, they
may mercifully enlighten our hearts and give us true
understanding; and grant that by thy teachings they
may brightly preserve and make full an abundance of
good works according to thy will.”
And what inspiration and cheer does
every book-lover find in the letter which that grand
old bibliomaniac, Alcuin, addressed to Charlemagne:
“I, your Flaccus, according to your admonitions
and good will, administer to some in the house of
St. Martin the sweets of the Holy Scriptures; others
I inebriate with the study of ancient wisdom; and
others I fill with the fruits of grammatical lore.
Many I seek to instruct in the order of the stars
which illuminate the glorious vault of heaven, so
that they may be made ornaments to the holy church
of God and the court of your imperial majesty; that
the goodness of God and your kindness may not be
altogether unproductive of good. But in doing
this I discover the want of much, especially those
exquisite books of scholastic learning which I possessed
in my own country, through the industry of my good
and most devout master, Egbert. I therefore
entreat your Excellence to permit me to send into Britain
some of our youths to procure those books which we
so much desire, and thus transplant into France the
flowers of Britain, that they may fructify and perfume,
not only the garden at York, but also the Paradise
of Tours, and that we may say in the words of the song:
’Let my beloved come into his garden and eat
his pleasant fruit;’ and to the young:
‘Eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly,
O beloved;’ or exhort in the words of the prophet
Isaiah: ’Every one that thirsteth to come
to the waters, and ye that have no money, come ye,
buy and eat: yea, come buy wine and milk, without
money and without price.’”
I was meaning to have somewhat to
say about Alcuin, and had intended to pay my respects
to Canute, Alfred, the Abbot of St. Albans, the Archbishop
of Salzburg, the Prior of Dover, and other mediaeval
worthies, when Judge Methuen came in and interrupted
the thread of my meditation. The Judge brings
me some verses done recently by a poet-friend of his,
and he asks me to give them a place in these memoirs
as illustrating the vanity of human confidence.
One day I got a missive
Writ in a dainty
hand,
Which made my manly bosom
With vanity expand.
’T was from a “young admirer”
Who asked me would
I mind
Sending her “favorite poem”
“In autograph,
and signed.”
She craved the boon so sweetly
That I had been
a churl
Had I repulsed the homage
Of this gentle,
timid girl;
With bright illuminations
I decked the manuscript,
And in my choicest paints and inks
My brush and pen
I dipt.
Indeed it had been tedious
But that a flattered
smile
Played on my rugged features
And eased my toil
the while.
I was assured my poem
Would fill her
with delight
I fancied she was pretty
I knew that she
was bright!
And for a spell thereafter
That unknown damsel’s
face
With its worshipful expression
Pursued me every
place;
Meseemed to hear her whisper:
“O, thank
you, gifted sir,
For the overwhelming honor
You so graciously
confer!”
But a catalogue from Benjamin’s
Disproves what
things meseemed
Dispels with savage certainty
The flattering
dreams I dreamed;
For that poor “favorite poem,”
Done and signed
in autograph,
Is listed in “Cheap Items”
At a dollar-and-a-half.