Lis. If Lorenzo have not any thing which he may conceive more interesting to propose, I move that you, good Lysander, now resume the discussion of a subject which you so pleasantly commenced last night.
Phil. I rise to second the motion.
Loren. And I, to give it every support in my power.
Lysand. There is no resisting such adroitly levelled attacks. Do pray tell me what it is you wish me to go on with?
Phil. The history of book-collecting and of book-collectors in this country.
Lis. The history of Bibliomania, if you please.
Lysand. You are madder than the maddest of book-collectors, Lisardo. But I will gossip away upon the subjects as well as I am able.
I think we left off with an abuse of the anti-bibliomaniacal powers of chivalry. Let us pursue a more systematic method; and begin, as Lisardo says, "at the beginning."
In the plan which I may pursue, you must forgive me, my friends, if you find it desultory and irregular: and, as a proof of the sincerity of your criticism, I earnestly beg that, like the chivalrous judge, of whom mention was made last night, you will cry out "Ho!" when you wish me to cease. But where shall we begin? From what period shall we take up the history of Bookism (or, if you please, Bibliomania) in this country? Let us pass over those long-bearded gentlemen called the Druids; for in the various hypotheses which sagacious antiquaries have advanced upon their beloved Stone-henge, none, I believe, are to be found wherein the traces of a Library, in that vast ruin, are pretended to be discovered. As the Druids were sparing of their writing,[227] they probably read the more; but whether they carried their books with them into trees, or made their pillows of them upon Salisbury-plain, tradition is equally silent. Let us therefore preserve the same prudent silence, and march on at once into the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries; in which the learning of Bede, Alcuin, Erigena, and Alfred, strikes us with no small degree of amazement. Yet we must not forget that their predecessor Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, was among the earliest book-collectors in this country; for he brought over from Rome, not only a number of able professors, but a valuable collection of books.[228] Such, however, was the scarcity of the book article, that Benedict Biscop (a founder of the monastery of Weremouth in Northumberland), a short time after, made not fewer than five journeys to Rome to purchase books, and other necessary things for his monastery—for one of which books our immortal Alfred (a very Helluo Librorum! as you will presently learn) gave afterwards as much land as eight ploughs could labour.[229] We now proceed to Bede; whose library I conjecture to have been both copious and curious. What matin and midnight vigils must this literary phenomenon have patiently sustained! What a full and variously furnished mind was his! Read the table of contents of the eight folio volumes of the Cologne edition[230] of his works, as given by Dr. Henry in the appendix to the fourth volume of his history of our own country; and judge, however you may wish that the author had gone less into abstruse and ponderous subjects, whether it was barely possible to avoid falling upon such themes, considering the gross ignorance and strong bias of the age? Before this, perhaps, I ought slightly to have noticed Ina, king of the West Saxons, whose ideas of the comforts of a monastery, and whose partiality to handsome book-binding, we may gather from a curious passage in Stow's Chronicle or Annals.[231]
[227] Julius Cæsar tells us that they dared not to commit their laws to writing. De Bell. Gall., lib. vi., § xiii.-xviii.