LIS. If you can convert me to be an admirer of such a subject, or even to endure it, you will work wonders; and, unless you promise to do so, I know not whether I shall suffer you to begin. PHIL. Begin, my dear Lysander. A mind disposed to listen attentively is sometimes half converted. O, how I shall rejoice to see this bibliographical incendiary going about to buy up copies of the very works which he has destroyed! Listen, I entreat you, Lisardo. LIS. I am all attention; for I see the clouds gathering in the south, and a gloomy, if not a showery, mid-day, promises to darken this beauteous morning. 'Twill not be possible to attend the antiques at Malvolio's sale. LYSAND. Whether the sun shine, or the showers fall, I will make an attempt--not to convert, but to state simple truths: provided you "lend me your ears." PHIL. And our hearts too. Begin: for the birds drop their notes, and the outlines of the distant landscape are already dimmed by the drizzling rain. LYSAND. You call upon me as formally as the shepherds call upon one another to sing in Virgil's eclogues. But I will do my best. It is gratifying to the English nation--whatever may have been the strictures of foreigners[99] upon the paucity of their bibliographico-literary works in the 16th century--that the earliest printed volume upon the love and advantages of book-collecting was the _Philobiblion_[100] of RICHARD DE BURY; who was bishop of Durham at the close of the 14th century, and tutor to Edward III. I will at present say nothing about the merits and demerits of this short treatise; only I may be permitted to observe, with satisfaction, that the head of the same see, at the present day, has given many proofs of his attachment to those studies, and of his reward of such merit as attracted the notice of his illustrious predecessor. It is with pain that I am compelled to avow the paucity of publications, in our own country, of a nature similar to the _Philobiblion_ of De Bury, even for two centuries after it was composed; but while Leland was making his library-tour, under the auspices of that capricious tyrant Henry VIII., many works were planned _abroad_, which greatly facilitated the researches of the learned. [Footnote 99: "Anglica gens longe fuit negligentior in consignandis ingeniorum monumentis; nihil enim ab illis prodiit, quod mereatur nominari, cum tamen sint extentque pene innumera ingeniossimae gentis in omnibus doctrinis scripta, prodeantque quotidie, tam Latina, quam vernacula lingua, plura," Morhof: _Polyhist. Literar._ vol. i. 205, edit. 1747.