The Great Book-Collectors

In describing the English collections of the eighteenth century we have the advantage of using the memoranda of William Oldys for the earlier part of the period. D'Israeli deplo...

Gabriel Naudé was a Doctor of Medicine, and held an appointment at one time as physician in ordinary to Louis XIII. But even as a student he manifested that passion for books wh...

Jean Grolier, the prince of book-collectors, was born at Lyons in 1479. His family had come originally from Verona, but had long been naturalised in France. Several of his relat...

The University of Oxford still offers public thanks for Bodley's generosity upon his calendar-day. The ancient library of Duke Humphrey and his pious predecessors had, as we hav...

The knowledge of books might almost have disappeared in the seventh century, when the cloud of ignorance was darkest, but for a new and remarkable development of learning in the...

It was long a saying among the French that a man had never seen Paris who had not looked upon the books of Thuanus. The historian Jacques-Auguste de Thou held a leading place in...

A more austere kind of learning came in with the Norman Conquest. Lanfranc and Anselm introduced at Canterbury a devotion to science, to the doctrines of theology and jurisprude...

The study of the classics had languished for a time after the deaths of Petrarch and Boccaccio. It revived again upon the coming of Chrysoloras, who is said to have lighted in I...

Henry VII. was the founder of a royal collection which in time became a constituent portion of the library at the British Museum. Careful as he was of his money, the King endeav...

Almost immediately after the invention of printing in Germany there arose a vast public demand for all useful kinds of knowledge. The study of Greek was essential to those who w...

The enlightenment of an age of ignorance cannot be attributed to any single person; yet it has been said with some justice, that as the mediæval darkness lifted, one figure was...

We shall take Budæus as our first example of the French bookmen in the period that followed the invention of printing. Of Guillaume Budé, to give him his original name, it was s...

In undertaking to write these few chapters on the lives of the book-collectors, we feel that we must move between lines that seem somewhat narrow, having regard to the possible...

We have still to notice one or two of Grolier's contemporaries, who may be classed as great book-collectors of an old-fashioned type. They knew the whole history of 'the Book,'...

The memory of many great book-collectors has been preserved in the libraries established from ancient times in several of the Italian cities. There are two at Padua, of which th...

The University Library at Oxford was a development of Richard de Bury's foundation. The monks of Durham had founded a hall, now represented by Trinity College, in which Richard...