A.D. 1248.] We may open the eleventh century with CANUTE; upon whose political talents this is not the place to expatiate: but of whose bibliomaniacal character the illuminated MS. of _The Four Gospels_ in the Danish tongue--now in the British Museum, and once this monarch's own book--leaves not the shadow of a doubt! From Canute we may proceed to notice that extraordinary literary triumvirate--Ingulph, Lanfranc, and Anselm. No rational man can hesitate about numbering them among the very first rate book-collectors of that age. As to INGULPH, let us only follow him, in his boyhood, in his removal from school to college: let us fancy we see him, with his _Quatuor Sermones_ on a Sunday--and his _Cunabula Artis Grammaticae_[245] on a week day--under his arm: making his obeisance to Edgitha, the queen of Edward the Confessor, and introduced by her to William Duke of Normandy! Again, when he was placed, by this latter at the head of the rich abbey of Croyland, let us fancy we see him both adding to, and arranging, its curious library[246]--before he ventured upon writing the history of the said abbey. From Ingulph we go to LANFRANC; who, in his earlier years, gratified his book appetites in the quiet and congenial seclusion of his little favourite abbey in Normandy: where he afterwards opened a school, the celebrity of which was acknowledged throughout Europe. From being a pedagogue, let us trace him in his virtuous career to the primacy of England; and when we read of his studious and unimpeachable behaviour, as head of the see of Canterbury,[247] let us acknowledge that a love of books and of mental cultivation is among the few comforts in this world of which neither craft nor misfortune can deprive us. To Lanfranc succeeded, in book-fame and in professional elevation, his disciple ANSELM; who was "lettered and chaste of his childhood," says Trevisa:[248] but who was better suited to the cloister than to the primacy. For, although, like Wulston, Bishop of Worcester, he might have "sung a long mass, and held him _apayred_ with only the offering of Christian men, and was holden a clean _mayde_, and did no outrage in drink,"[249] yet in his intercourse with William II. and Henry I., he involved himself in ceaseless quarrels; and quitted both his archiepiscopal chair and the country. His memory, however, is consecrated among the fathers of scholastic divinity. [Footnote 245: These were the common school books of the period.]