In the thirteenth century, Bartholomew or Glanville compiles one of the oldest of the general cyclopædias. Of this, many manuscripts have been preserved, eighteen of which are in the National Library in Paris.[406] John of Gaddesden, court physician under Edward II. (1310-1312), writes a medical cyclopædia, or compendium of prescriptions, which not only secures a European reputation at the time, but retains its prestige for nearly three centuries, and is issued in print in Augsburg, in 1595, in two quarto volumes. As early as the reign of Henry II. (1154-1189) an important group of law books had appeared, and the law treatises of Henry of Bracton, issued early in the thirteenth century, retained their value sufficiently to appear two centuries later in a printed edition, abridged from the original text. These few typical writers are referred to simply as presenting some indication of the variety and of the extent of the literary activities of England during the centuries preceding the beginning of printing. The popular interest in the works of such writers, and the great influence exerted by them upon the opinions of their own and of succeeding generations, is evidence of a considerable multiplication of copies and of an extended circulation, and this evidence is corroborated by the fact that of many of the books of the period so large a number of copies have been preserved to the present time through the perils and vicissitudes of the intervening centuries. The most noteworthy example of the literary interests of Britain during the manuscript period is afforded by Richard Aungerville, better known as Richard de Bury, Bishop Palatine of Durham, whose famous _Philobiblon_ was given to the world in 1345. In his various travels, and through his correspondents in England, France, and Italy, he was able to get together a great collection of books, which were later bequeathed to the University of Oxford. His eloquent tribute to his beloved books must, I judge, be taken rather as expressing the enthusiasm of an exceptionally devoted scholar than as fairly representing the literary spirit of the time: “Thanks to books, the dead appear to me as though they still lived.... Everything decays and falls into dust by the force of time: Saturn is never weary of devouring his children, and the glory of the world would be buried in oblivion, had not God as a remedy conferred on mortal man the benefit of books.... Books are the masters that instruct us without rods or ferules, without reprimands or anger, without the solemnity of the gown or the expense of lessons. Go to them, you will not find them asleep: if you err, no scoldings on their part: if you are ignorant, no mocking laughter.”[407] In 1344, (the year before his death) Richard writes as follows: