Fine Books

dary of the Poultry Compter, but at his sale they were scattered beyond recall, and the unity of one of the most interesting of English collections was thus unkindly destroyed. Both these men, and some others of whom even less is known, worked with a public aim, and already Sir Thomas Bodley had gone a step further by founding anew the University Library at Oxford on lines which at once gave it a national importance. This it preserved and developed for over a century and a half, and has never since lost, though no national help, unfortunately, has ever been given it, save the right already conceded by the Stationers' Company, of claiming a copy of any new English book offered for sale.

Bodley's munificent donation marked an epoch in the history of English book-collecting because its tendency was to make private book-collecting of the kind which was then admired incongruous and even absurd. When there were no public libraries open to scholars, for a great man to maintain a splendid library in his own ho