1430 we know nothing: in 1435 he gave books and money, but how many books or how much money is not recorded. Three years later the University sought another gift from him, and he forthwith sent no fewer than 120 volumes (1439).[351] The University’s gratitude was unbounded. On certain festivals during the Duke’s lifetime prayers were to be said for him, within ten days after he died a funeral service was to be celebrated, and on every anniversary of his death he and his consort were to be commemorated.[352] Their letters were fulsome: as a founder of libraries he was compared with Julius Cæsar—a compliment also paid him about the same time by Pier Candid Decembrio; Parliament was besought to thank him “hertyly, and also prey Godd to thanke hym in tyme commyng, wher goode dedys ben rewarded”;[353] as a prince he was most serene and illustrious, lord of glorious renown, son of a king, brother of a king, uncle of a king, “the very beams of the sun himself”; as a donor, as greatly and munificently liberal as the recipients were lowly and humble.[354]
Congregation further marked its appreciation by decreeing a fresh set of library regulations. A new register, containing a list of the books already given, was to be made, and deposited in the chest “of five keys”; lists were also to be written in the statute books. No volume was to be sold, given away, exchanged, pledged, lent to be copied, or removed from the library—except when it needed repair, or when the Duke himself wanted to borrow it, as he could, though only under indenture.[355] All books for the study of the seven liberal arts—the trivium and the quadrivium—and the three philosophies were to be kept in a chest called the “chest of the three philosophies and the seven sciences”; a name suggesting a talisman, like the golden fleece or the Holy Grail, for which one would exchange the world and all its ways. The librarian had charge of this wonderful chest. From it, by indenture, he could lend books—apparently these books were excepted from the general rule—to masters of arts lecturing in these subjects, or, if there were no lecturers, to principals of halls and masters. And, following older custom, a stationer set upon each book a price greater than its real value, to lead borrowers to take more care of it.[356] From a manuscript preserved in the library of Earl Fitzwilliam at Wentworth Woodhouse are taken the following curious lines indicating the character and arrangement of his books:—
“At Oxenford thys lord his bookis fele [many]
Hath eu’y clerk at werk. They of hem gete
Metaphisic; phisic these rather feele;
They natural, moral they rather trete;
Theologie here ye is with to mete;
Him liketh loke in boke historial.
In deskis XII hym selve as half a strete
Hath boked their librair uniu’al.”[357] [universal]
A year later Gloucester sent 7 more books; then after a while 9 more (1440-41);[358] and a little later still his largest gift, amounting to 135 volumes. These handsome accessions made the collection the finest academic library in England, not excepting the excellent library of 380 volumes then at Peterhouse. It had a character of its own. The usual overwhelming mass of Bibles, of church books, of the Fathers and the Schoolmen does not depress us with its disproportion. The collection was strong in astronomy and medicine: Ptolemy, Albumazar, Rhazes, Serapion, Avicenna, Haly Abenragel, Zaæl, and others were all represented. Besides these, there was a fine selection of the classics—Plato, Aristotle, including the Politica and Ethica, Æschines’ orations, Terence, Varro’s De Originae linguae Latinae, Cicero’s letters, Verrine and other orations, and “opera viginti duo Tullii in magno volumine,” Livy, Ovid, Seneca’s tragedies, Quintilian, Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, the Golden Ass of Apuleius, and Suetonius. But the most interesting items in the list of his books are the new translations of Plato, and of Aristotle, whose Ethica was rendered by Leonardo Bruni; the Greek and Latin dictionary; and the works of Dante, Petrarch (de Vita solitaria, de Rebus memorandis, de Remediis