SKETCHES OF BOOKWORMS-COLLECTORS-BIBLE STUDENTS-SCRIBES-AND ILLUMINATORS, FROM THE ANGLO SAXON AND NORMAN PERIODS, TO THE INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING INTO Monastic Libraries of Great Britain, IN The Olden Time, BY F. SOMNER MERRYWEATHER. LONDON: MERRYWEATHER, 14, KING STREET, HOLBORN. MDCCCXLIX. 38070.5 HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY ERNEST LEWIS QAY VARTY, Printer, 27, Camomile Street, Bishopsgate. PREFACE. I MUST say something I suppose, on offering a book with so strange a title to the reading world; but I could find no better for the little odd antiquities of early literature which much research has enabled me to collect together, and which principally treat of the love of books in monkish days. Perhaps the reader will suspect that my own mind is slightly tinged with the bibliomania of which I write; it may be so, and I trust he will indulgently receive the supposition as a fit apology for any undue warmth and admiration I may hereafter express in speaking of monastic learning, and monkish book-worms, and believe me when I once for all affirm, that if I admire the monk, I feel no sympathy with the evils of his system; but award praise only when I deem it due to the erudition of the scholar, or to the piety of the Christian. To him who feels no interest in the things of the past, who thinks it worthless and unprofitable to inquire into the ways and habits of the old time before us, I fear my book will be a dull volume to his mind, and receive but harsh censure at his hand. Can the reader view a grey old ruined pile, some crumbling fabric over which the ivy grows tri |