OF THE MANIFOLD OPPORTUNITY WE HAVE HAD FOR GATHERING A MULTITUDE OF BOOKS

S to everything there is a time and an opportunity, as the wise Preacher testifieth in his Eighth Chapter, we now proceed to tell in order the manifold opportunities by which, with the divine favour aiding our intentions, we were helped in the acquiring of books. Though even from our youth up we were ever delighted to hold friendly communion with men of letters and lovers of books, yet when our affairs became prosperous on attaining the notice of the King's Majesty, being received into his household, we obtained a larger opportunity of visiting wheresoever we would, and of hunting, as it were, through certain very choice preserves, to wit, the private and public libraries, both of the regulars and seculars. Indeed, while we held various offices under the invincible and ever gloriously triumphant King of England, Edward, the Third since the Conquest (whose times may the Most High deign long to make serene and peaceful!), first of all in offices concerning the Court, and after that as Chancellor and Treasurer, which concerned the State, there was opened to us through regard for the king's favour, a ready entrance for freely searching into the hiding-places of books. Indeed the flying rumour of our love for books now spread everywhere—so much so that we were reported to be even languishing from our desire for them, chiefly for ancient books, and that any one could easier obtain our favour by quartos than by money. Wherefore, being supported by the goodness of the aforesaid Prince of ever to be cherished memory, we could notably advance or hinder, promote or obstruct both the great and the small, and there consequently flowed to us in place of pledges and presents, in place of gifts and prizes, bleared quartos and decrepit books, precious alike in our sight and our affection.

Then the chests of the noblest monasteries were opened; cases were brought forth, and caskets were unlocked, and volumes that had slumbered long ages in their tombs awakened astonished and those that had lain hidden in places of darkness were overwhelmed with rays of new light. Books once most dainty, but now become corrupted and disgusting, strewn over with the litters of mice and bored with the gnawings of worms, were lying about almost lifeless; and those that once were clothed in purple and fine linen, now prostrate in sackcloth and in ashes seemed given over to oblivion as habitations of moths. Nevertheless, seizing on every moment of leisure we sat down among them with greater pleasure than a dainty physician would have done amidst stores of spices, for there we found both the object and incitement of our love. Thus the vessels of sacred wisdom came into the control of our stewardship, some by gift, others by sale, and some by loan for a time.

No wonder when many saw that we were contented with gifts of this sort, they strove of their own accord to furnish for our uses their books which they themselves would more gladly lose, rather than the things which they might hope to obtain by assisting in our service. We graciously made it our care, however, so to expedite their affairs that gain accrued to them, and yet justice suffered no harm. Truly, had we loved gold and silver cups, spirited horses, or no small sums of money, we might at that time have stored up a rich treasure for ourselves. But, indeed, we preferred books to pounds, and loved parchments more than florins, and cared more for lean pamphlets than fat palfreys. Moreover, in performing frequent embassies for the same illustrious Prince of everlasting memory, we were sent on tedious embassies in times of peril, now to the Roman See, now to the Court of France, and now to divers kingdoms of the world, yet bearing with us everywhere that love of books which many waters could not quench. This like a honeyed drink sweetened the bitterness of all our travel. This, after the perplexing intricacies and troublesome difficulties of cases and almost interminable labyrinths of public affairs, opened to us for a little the balminess of a gentle atmosphere to breathe.

O Blessed God of Gods in Zion! how great a flood of pleasure delighted our heart as often as we had leisure to visit and sojourn at Paris, the paradise of the world, where the days always seemed to us but few for the greatness of the love that we had. There are delightful libraries, fragrant beyond stores of spices; there are green pleasure-gardens of all kinds of volumes. There are academic meadows shaking beneath the tread of scholars, lounging-seats of Athens, walks of the Peripatetics, jutting peaks of Parnassus and porches of the Stoics. There is to be seen the measurer of all art and science, Aristotle, whose is all that is best in doctrine so far as concerns this passing sublunary world. There Ptolemy marks out his epicycles and the eccentric Auges and the Dragon of the planets with figures and numbers. There Paul reveals the mysteries; there his near neighbour Dionysius arranges and distinguishes the hierarchies; there the virgin Carmentis represents in Latin characters all that Cadmus had gathered up in Phoenician grammar. There, indeed, did we open out our treasures and loosen our purse strings, and, scattering money with a glad heart, purchased priceless books with dirt and sand.

It is naught, it is naught, in vain said every buyer; for behold how good and how pleasant it is to gather together in unity the arms of the clerical soldiery, that there may be furnished us wherewithal to crush the assaults of heretics, should they arise. Furthermore, we recognize that we obtained very great advantage from this, in that from their tender years we had attached to our following, with rarest solicitude, and without partiality, those masters and scholars and professors of the different arts, whom their subtleness of mind or celebrity of teaching had rendered famous.

Strengthened by their comforting conversation, we were pleasantly refreshed as by a varied and abundant feast of reason, now by demonstrative courses of reasoning, now by the recital of physical processes and treatises of Catholic doctors, and now by quickening conferences on questions of morals. Such we had as comrades in our following, such as companions in our chamber, such as attendants on our journeys, such as partakers of our board, and such as associates in all our fortunes. But as no happiness is permitted long to last, we were at times deprived of the bodily presence of some of these bright lights, when, as justice looked forth from heaven, they were advanced to promotions and dignities in the Church, by which it happened that applying themselves, as behooved them, to their proper cares, they were constrained to absent themselves from our attendance.

And now we will explain the very convenient way by which there came to our hands so great a multitude of books both old and new. The poverty of the religious mendicants, which was undertaken for Christ, has never provoked our fastidious disdain, but, wherever in the world we chanced to be, we admitted them to the sheltering arms of our compassion and by friendly familiarity allured them to a love for our person, and when they were allured, cherished them with a bounteous generosity of beneficence for the love of God. Thus we became the common benefactor of all, yet in such a way that we seemed to have adopted certain ones with a peculiar fatherly love. For them at every time we became a place of refuge, and to them we never closed the bosom of our indulgence. Wherefore we deserved to have them as our peculiar favourers and promoters, both in word and work. Traversing sea and land, casting their view over the circuit of the world, and searching the universities and schools of various provinces, they studied to do service for our wishes, for their hope of reward was most certain. What leveret could miss the sight of so many keen-eyed hunters? What fry could escape now their hooks and now their nets and snares?

From the body of the sacred Divine Law up to the quarto of yesterday's sophists, nothing escaped these searchers. If a discourse was uttered at the fountainhead of Christian faith, the ever holy Roman Court, or if some novel question was ventilated in new arguments, if the solidity of Paris, which now leans more to studying antiquity than the discussion of truth with subtlety, or if our Anglican perspicuousness, which, filled with ancient light, ever sends forth new rays of truth, produced aught for the increase of knowledge or the proclamation of the faith, this, while yet fresh, was instantly poured into our ears, befouled by no babbler and spoiled by no trifler, but strained most purely from the wine-press it passed to the vats of our memory to be clarified. And when we happened to turn aside to cities and places where the said poor of Christ had their convents, we were not loth to visit their libraries or any other repositories of books. Nay, there we found in their deepest poverty the greatest riches of wisdom treasured up. And in their bags and baskets we discovered not only crumbs falling from the Master's table for the dogs, but the unleavened shew-bread and angels' food, having in it all that is delicious, nay, the granaries of Joseph filled with corn, and all the furnishing of Egypt, and the richest gifts that the Queen of Sheba brought to Solomon.

These are the ants assiduously gathering food in the harvest and ingenious bees continually fashioning their cells of honey. These are the successors of Bezeleel in devising whatever can be wrought in gold and silver and in gems for adorning the temple of the Church. These are the cunning embroiderers, who make the breastplate and ephod of the High Priest, and all the different vestments of the priests. These sew together the curtains of goats' hair and of fine linen and rams' skins dyed in red, with which to cover the tabernacle of the Church Militant. These are husbandmen ever sowing, oxen that tread out the corn, trumpets that blow, Pleiades that shine, and stars remaining in their courses, that cease not to fight against Sisera. For, to give truth its due, and with prejudice to no one, these, though late in entering the Lord's Vineyard at the eleventh hour, as books, our best lovers, earnestly assured us in the Sixth Chapter above, yet have added more in this short hour to the stock of the sacred books than all the other labourers,—following the footsteps of Paul, who, though last to be called, was foremost in his preaching, and spread more widely than others the Gospel of Christ.

When we reached the episcopal state we had some of these men from both orders, namely, the Preachers and the Minors, as a support to our sides and table companions in our household; men as distinguished in morals as in letters, and they with unwearied zeal applied themselves to the correcting, expounding, collating, and compiling of the various volumes. And though by our manifold intercourse with all the religious we have obtained an abundant store of works, both new and old, yet we extol deservedly with special notice the Preachers in this respect, since we found them free from jealousy in sharing generously their possessions, and imbued with divine liberality, and not avaricious but rightful possessors of luminous wisdom.

Besides all these opportunities set forth above, we obtained the notice of stationers and booksellers not only within the bounds of our native land, but throughout the kingdoms of France and Germany and Italy, for our money flew before us. Nor did any distance stop them, nor any storm at sea deter them, nor did money fail them for their charges, that they should not send or bring to us the books of our desire. They knew full well that their hope resting in our bosom could not fail them, and that there was to be had of us full repayment with usury.

Again, our intercourse, the conqueror of the love of one and all, did not overlook the masters of country schools or the teachers of callow boys; but entering their fields and gardens at our leisure, we plucked the fragrant flowers on the surface and digged out forgotten roots, still serviceable to students, and such as might, if their barbarous rankness were extracted, heal their pectoral arteries with the gift of eloquence. Among many things of this sort we found some worthy to be restored to use, and these, when skilfully cleansed of their foul rust and the ghostly mould of age, became fit to be made over again into graceful forms. Applying all the necessary means, we wakened them again after the fashion of the future resurrection, and restored them to life and health. Besides, we have ever kept in our different manors no small multitude of antiquaries, copyists, correctors, binders, illuminators, and, in general, of all those who could serviceably labour over books.

Finally, all of either sex, and of every estate and condition who had any acquaintance with books, could easily open the door of our hearts by a knock, and obtain a pleasant resting place in the bosom of our favour. So freely did we admit the bearers of books that the multitude of those that had come before made us nothing loth for those that came after, nor did the benefit conferred yesterday endanger the favour of to-day. Wherefore, we used alike all the above mentioned persons as lodestones attractive of books, and so there came to us the greatly desired accession of the vessels of wisdom and a multitudinous flight of the best volumes; and this it is that we have undertaken to relate in the present chapter.