INTRODUCTORY RETROSPECT

From the days of English feudal barons and of English cloistered monks, we have instances,–here and there,–of a strong love of books and of the pleasing toils of collectorship, combined with a generous desire to diffuse that love far and wide, and to extend a collector's pleasures, at least in some measure, to persons whose path in life debarred them from all share in his willing toils. It would not be difficult to cite certain conspicuous instances, even in the so-called ‘Dark Ages,’ of a liberal zeal of this sort, which looked beneath as well as around. A few such are to be found among the barons; many such among the monks. In the ‘Scriptorium’ the monk of noble blood, and the monk of peasant blood, toiled side by side; and it was not always the man of lowly origin who was first to think of contrivances by which something of the stores of knowledge laid up in books might be made to spread even into the cottage of the labourer. But in those days such far-looking and onward-looking cares were, necessarily, exceptional. They were so amongst those to whom literature was already becoming a profession; as well as amongst those to whom it was, and could be, nothing more than a relaxation.

If from castle and convent we turn aside to glance at what was going on amidst the burghers of the growing towns,–keeping still within the mediæval times,–we meet but very sparsely with examples of the establishment of libraries, having any wider aim than a merely professional one.