The Great Book-Collectors | Page 4

to an embassy at Bagdad. His
brother wrote to remind him of their pleasant evenings in the library
when they explored the writings of the ancients and made an analysis
of their contents. Photius was about to embark on a dangerous journey,
and he was implored to leave a record of what had been done since his
brother had last taken part in the readings. The answer of Photius was
the book already mentioned: he reviews nearly three hundred volumes
of the historians and orators, the philosophers and theologians, the
travellers and the writers of romance, and with an even facility
'abridges their narrative or doctrine and appreciates their style and
character.'
The great Imperial library which stood by St. Sophia had been
destroyed in the reign of Leo the Iconoclast in the preceding age, and in
an earlier conflagration more than half a million books are said to have
been lost from the basilica. The losses by fire were continual, but were
constantly repaired. Leo the Philosopher, who was educated under the
care of Photius, and his son and successor Constantine, were renowned
as the restorers of learning, and the great writers of antiquity were
collected again by their zeal in the square hall near the Public Treasury.
The boundaries of the realm of learning extended far beyond the limits
of the Empire, and the Arabian science was equally famous among the
Moors of Spain and in the further parts of Asia. We are told of a doctor
refusing the invitation of the Sultan of Bokhara, 'because the carriage of
his books would have required four hundred camels.' We know that the
Ommiad dynasty formed the gigantic library at Cordova, and that there
were at least seventy others in the colleges that were scattered through
the kingdom of Granada. The prospect was very dark in other parts of
Western Europe throughout the whole period of barbarian settlement.
We shall not endeavour to trace the slight influences that preserved
some knowledge of religious books at the Court of the Merovingian
kings, or among the Visigoths and Ostrogoths and Burgundians. We

prefer to pause at a moment preceding the final onslaught. The letters
of Sidonius afford us a few glimpses of the literary condition of
Southern Gaul soon after the invasion of Attila. The Bishop of
Clermont gives us a delightful picture of his house: a verandah leads
from the atrium to the garden by the lake: we pass through a
winter-parlour, a morning-room, and a north-parlour protected from the
heat. Every detail seems to be complete; and yet we hear nothing of a
library. The explanation seems to be that the Bishop was a close
imitator of Pliny. The villa in Auvergne is a copy of the winter-refuge
at Laurentum, where Pliny only kept 'a few cases contrived in the wall
for the books that cannot be read too often.' But when the Bishop writes
about his friends' houses we find many allusions to their libraries.
Consentius sits in a large book-room when he is composing his verses
or 'culling the flowers of his music.' When he visited the Prefect of
Gaul, Sidonius declared that he was whirled along in a stream of
delights. There were all kinds of out-door amusements and a library
filled with books. 'You would fancy yourself among a Professor's
book-cases, or in a book-shop, or amid the benches of a lecture-room.'
The Bishop considered that this library of the Villa Prusiana was as
good as anything that could be found in Rome or Alexandria. The
books were arranged according to subjects. The room had a 'ladies'
side'; and here were arranged the devotional works. The illuminated
volumes, as far as can now be judged, were rather gaudy than brilliant,
as was natural in an age of decadence; but St. Germanus was a friend of
the Bishop, and as we suppose of the Prefect, and his copy of the
Gospels was in gold and silver letters on purple vellum, as may still be
seen. By the gentlemen's seats were ranged the usual classical volumes,
all the works of Varro, which now exist only in fragments, and the
poets sacred and profane; behind certain cross-benches was the literary
food of a lighter kind, more suited to the weaker vessels without regard
to sex. Here every one found what would suit his own liking and
capacity, and here on the day after their arrival the company worked
hard after breakfast 'for four hours by the water clock.' Suddenly the
door was thrown open, and in his uniform the head cook appeared and
solemnly warned them all that their meal was served, and that it was as
necessary to nourish the body as to stuff the mind with learning.

When the barbarians were established through Gaul and Italy the
libraries in