would only set Aristotle, and Messrs. Ritter and Preller, "in
Bocardo," many a young gentleman out of Buckinghamshire and other
counties would joyously help in the good work, and use the pages, if
not for blanshers, for other sportive purposes!

"Habent sua fata libelli," as Terentianus Maurus says, in a
frequently quoted verse. If Cromwell's Commissioners were hard on
Duns, the Visitors of Edward VI. were ruthless in their condemnation
of everything that smacked of Popery or of magic. Evangelical
religion in England has never been very favourable to learning.
Thus, in 1550 "the ancient libraries were by their appointment
rifled. Many manuscripts, guilty of no other superstition than red
letters in the front or titles, were condemned to the fire . . . Such
books wherein appeared angles were thought sufficient to be
destroyed, because accounted Papish or diabolical, or both." A cart-
load of MSS., lucubrations of the Fellows of Merton, chiefly in
controversial divinity, was taken away; but, by the good services of
one Herks, a Dutchman, many books were preserved, and, later, entered
the Bodleian Library. The world can spare the controversial
manuscripts of the Fellows of Merton, but who knows what invaluable
scrolls may have perished in the Puritan bonfire! Persons, the
librarian of Balliol, sold old books to buy Protestant ones. Two
noble libraries were sold for forty shillings, for waste paper. Thus
the reign of Edward VI. gave free play to that ascetic and
intolerable hatred of letters which had now and again made its voice
heard under Henry VIII. Oxford was almost empty. The schools were
used by laundresses, as a place wherein clothes might conveniently be
dried. The citizens encroached on academic property. Some schools
were quite destroyed, and the sites converted into gardens. Few men
took degrees. The college plate and the jewels left by pious