Horace, or a dictum of Quintilian. Still, however, you may say that the intention, in all this, was pure and meritorious; for that such a system excited insensibly a love of quiet, domestic order, and seriousness: while those counsels and regulations which punished a "Clerk for being a hunter," and restricted "the intercourse of Concubines,"[213] evinced a spirit of jurisprudence which would have done justice to any age. Let us allow, then, if you please, that a love of book-reading, and of book-collecting, was a meritorious trait in the monastic life; and that we are to look upon old abbies and convents as the sacred depositories of the literature of past ages. What can you say in defence of your times of beloved chivalry? [Footnote 210: As early as the sixth century commenced the custom, in some monasteries, of copying ancient books and composing new ones. It was the usual, and even only, employment of the first monks of Marmoutier. A monastery without a library was considered as a fort or a camp deprived of the necessary articles for its defence: "claustrum sine armario, quasi castrum sine armentario." Peignot, _Dict. de Bibliolog._, vol. i., 77. I am fearful that this good old bibliomanical custom of keeping up the credit of their libraries among the monks had ceased--at least in the convent of Romsey, in Hampshire--towards the commencement of the sixteenth century. One would think that the books had been there disposed of in bartering for _strong liquors_; for at a visitation by Bishop Fox, held there in 1506, Joyce Rows, the abbess, is accused of _immoderate drinking_, especially in the night time; and of inviting the nuns to her chamber every evening, for the purpose of these excesses, "post completorium." What is frightful to add,--"this was a rich convent, and filled with ladies of the best families." See Warton's cruel note in his _Life of Sir Thomas Pope_, p. 25, edit. 1772. A tender-hearted bibliomaniac cannot but feel acutely on reflecting upon the many beautifully-illuminated vellum books which were, in all probability, exchanged for these inebriating gratifications! To balance this unfavourable account read Hearne's remark about the libraries in ancient monasteries, in the sixth volume of _Leland's Collectanea_, p. 86-7, edit. 1774: and especially the anecdotes and authorities stated by Dr. Henry in book iii., chap, iv., sec. 1.] [Footnote 211: See the first volume of Mr. Roscoe's _Lorenzo de Medici_; and the Rev. Mr. Shepherd's _Life of Poggio Bracciolini_.]