and not appointed until 28 October.[10]

The contents of the letters themselves reveal Dury far ahead of his time
in his conception of the Complete Librarian, but later commentators have
generally not understood that the administrative reforms he advocated
were inseparable from his idea of the sacramental nature of the
librarian's office--and so have tended to dismiss the second letter
because it "merely repeats the ideas of the first with less practical
suggestion and in a more declamatory style."[11] Such a comment
illustrates how far we are from Dury's (and the age's) purposes and
hopes, and it shows a great misunderstanding of the religious and moral
context within which, for Dury, all human activity took place. As
Professor Popkin has shown, Dury considered libraries fundamental to the
preparation for the millennium: they housed the texts indispensable to
the spread of learning, which in turn was prerequisite to religious
unity and peace on earth and ultimately to the millennium itself; for
with enough of the right books, the Christian world could convert the
Jews, that final step which was to herald the reign of Christ on earth.
When, in the second letter, Dury refers to the "stewardship" of the
librarian he is speaking literally, not metaphorically.

But if libraries were to serve their purpose in the grand scheme--that
is, to make texts easily available--extensive reforms were necessary,
and that is the burden of the first letter. Dury's cardinal principle is
that libraries should be _useful_ to people: "It is true that a fair
Librarie, is ... an ornament and credit to the place where it is [the
'jewel box' concept]; ... yet in effect it is no more then a dead Bodie
as now it is constituted, in comparison of what it might bee, if it were
animated with a publick Spirit to keep and use it, and _ordered as it
might bee for publick service_" (p. 17, my emphasis). The public that