However clumsy this invention in “Paradise” may seem to us, it was not more so than the custom of chaining their books to the shelves, allowing a sufficient length of chain to reach the reading-desk—a mode which long prevailed when printing multiplied the cares of the librarian.
| London, Frederick Warne & Co. |
All these libraries, consisting of manuscripts, were necessarily limited in their numbers; their collectors had no choice, but gladly received what occurred to their hands; it was when books were multiplied by the press, that the minds of owners of libraries shaped them to their own fancies, and stamped their characters on these companions of their solitude.
We have a catalogue of the library of Mary Queen of Scots, as delivered up to her son James the Sixth, in 1578,[10] very characteristic of her elegant studies; the volumes chiefly consist of French authors and French translations, a variety of chronicles, several romances, a few Italian writers, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Ariosto, and her favourite poets, Alain Chartier, Ronsard, and Marot. This library forms a striking contrast with that of Elizabeth of England, which was visited in 1598 by Hentzner, the German traveller. The shelves at Whitehall displayed a more classical array; the collection consisted of Greek, Latin, as well as Italian and French books.
The dearness of parchment, and the slowness of the scribes, made manuscripts things only purchasable by princely munificence. It was the discovery of paper from rags, and the novel art of taking copies without penmen, which made books mere objects of commerce, and dispersed the treasures of the human mind free as air, and cheap as bread.
[1] “Essai Historique sur la Bibliothèque du Roi,” par M. Le Prince.
[2] This Gilles Malet, who was also the king’s reader, had great strength of character; he is thus described by Christine de Pise:—“Souverainement bien lisoit, et bien ponttoit, et entendens homs estoit;” “he read sovereignly well, with good punctuation, and was an understanding man.” She has recorded a personal anecdote of him. One day a fatal accident happened to his child, but such was the discipline of official duties, that he did not interrupt his attendance on the king at the usual hour of reading. The king having afterwards heard of the accident which had bereaved the father of his child, observed, “If the intrepidity of this man had not exceeded that which nature bestows upon ordinary men, his paternal emotion would not have allowed him to conceal his misfortune.”
[3] The reader may form some idea of the discordant arrangement of a volume of manuscripts by the following entries:—“Un Livre qui commence de Genesis, et aussi traite des fais Julius Cesar, appelle Suetoine.” “Un Livre en François, en un volume, qui ce commence de Genesis, et traite du fait des Romains, de la vie des SS. Peres Hermites, et de Merlin.”
[4] “Hist. de l’Académie Royale des Inscriptions,” tome i. 421, 12mo.