The private libraries of the fifteenth century were restricted to some French tomes of chivalry, or to "a merrie tale in Boccace;" and their science advanced not beyond "The Shepherd's Calendar," or "The Secrets of Albert the Great." There was an intermixture of legendary lives of saints, and apocryphal adventures of "Notre Seigneur" in Egypt; with a volume or two of physic and surgery and astrology. A few catalogues of our monastic libraries still remain, and these reflect an image of the studies of the middle ages. We find versions of the Scriptures in English and Latin--a Greek or Hebrew manuscript is not noted down; a commentator, a father, and some schoolmen; and a writer on the canon law, and the mediæval Christian poets who composed in Latin verse. A romance, an accidental classic, a chronicle and legends--such are the usual contents of these monastic catalogues. But though the subjects seem various, the number of volumes were exceedingly few. Some monasteries had not more than twenty books. In such little esteem were any writings in the vernacular idiom held, that the library of Glastonbury Abbey, probably the most extensive in England, in 1248, possessed no more than four books in English,[7] on religious topics; and in the later days of Henry the Eighth, when Leland rummaged the monasteries, he did not find a greater number. The library of the monastery of Bretton, which, owing to its isolated site, was among the last dissolved, and which may have enlarged its stores with the spoils of other collections which the times offered, when it was dissolved in 1558, could only boast of having possessed one hundred and fifty distinct works.[8] In this primitive state of book-collecting, a singular evidence of their bibliographical passion was sometimes apparent in the monastic libraries. Not deeming a written catalogue, which might not often be opened, sufficiently attractive to remind them of their lettered stores, they inscribed verses on their windows to indicate the books they possessed, and over these inscriptions they placed the portraits of the authors. Thus they could not look through their windows without being reminded of their volumes; and the very portraits of authors, illuminated by the light of heaven, might rouse the curiosity which many a barren title would repel.[9] To us accustomed to reckon libraries by thousands, these scanty catalogues will appear a sad contraction of human knowledge. The monastic studies could not in any degree have advanced the national character; they could only have kept it stationary; and, excepting some scholastic logomachies, in which the people could have no concern, one monkish writer could hardly ever have differed from another.