ampler facilities for visiting everywhere as we would, and of
hunting as it were certain most choice preserves, libraries
private as well as public, and of the regular as well as of the
secular clergy. And indeed while we filled various offices to
the victorious Prince and splendidly triumphant King of England,
Edward the Third from the Conquest--whose reign may the Almighty
long and peacefully continue--first those about his court, but
then those concerning the public affairs of his kingdom, namely
the offices of Chancellor and Treasurer, there was afforded to
us, in consideration of the royal favour, easy access for the
purpose of freely searching the retreats of books. In fact, the
fame of our love of them had been soon winged abroad everywhere,
and we were reported to burn with such desire for books, and
especially old ones, that it was more easy for any man to gain
our favour by means of books than of money. Wherefore, since
supported by the goodness of the aforesaid prince of worthy
memory, we were able to requite a man well or ill, to benefit or
injure mightily great as well as small, there flowed in, instead
of presents and guerdons, and instead of gifts and jewels, soiled
tracts and battered codices, gladsome alike to our eye and heart.
Then the aumbries of the most famous monasteries were thrown
open, cases were unlocked and caskets were undone, and volumes
that had slumbered through long ages in their tombs wake up and
are astonished, and those that had lain hidden in dark places are
bathed in the ray of unwonted light. These long lifeless books,
once most dainty, but now become corrupt and loathsome, covered
with litters of mice and pierced with the gnawings of the worms,
and who were once clothed in purple and fine linen, now lying in
sackcloth and ashes, given up to oblivion, seemed to have become
habitations of the moth. Natheless among these, seizing the