I.

There is a famous book that remains in the place where it was deposited
in the Saxon period. Leofric, who was the tenth bishop of Crediton, and
the first of Exeter, gave to his new cathedral about sixty books, and
the list of these books is extant in contemporary writing. One of them
is thus described:--"I. mycel englisc boc be gehwilcum thingum on leoth
wisan geworht." = One large English book about various things in lay
(song) wise wrought--that is to say, a large volume of miscellaneous
poetry in English. This is the valuable, or rather, invaluable, Exeter
Song Book, often quoted as "Codex Exoniensis." It is still where Leofric
placed it in or about 1050, and it is in the keeping of his cathedral
chapter. The others are dispersed; but many of them are still well
known, as the "Leofric Missal," in the Bodleian; and others are at
Cambridge.

The general break-up of monastic institutions between 1530 and 1540
caused the dispersion of many old libraries, whose forgotten treasures
were thus restored to air and light. No doubt many valuable books and
records were irrecoverably lost; as it is reasonable to suppose that
among the parchments then cast upon the world, there existed material
for a continuous and complete history of Anglo-Saxon times. This
reflection may make us the more sensible of our penury, but it will not
diminish the praise of those who saved something from the wreck.

Matthew Parker, the twentieth archbishop of Canterbury, 1559-1576, has
been called a mighty collector of books. He gave commissions for
searching after books in England and Wales, and presented the choicest
of his miscellaneous collections to his own college at Cambridge,