Durham, book lover as he was--for his _Philobiblon_ we all owe him a debt of gratitude--was after all only an ardent amateur and no scholar. When Petrarch had applied to Richard for some information as to the geography of the Thule of the ancients, the Bishop had put him off with the statement that he had not his books with him, but would write fully on his return home. Though more than once reminded of his promise, he left the disappointed poet without an answer. The fact was, that Richard was not so learned that he could afford to confess his ignorance. He corresponds, in fact, to the earlier humanists of Italy--men who collected manuscripts and saw the possibilities of learning, though they were unable to attain to it themselves. There is much in his _Philobiblon_ of the greatest interest, as, for example, his description of the means by which he had collected his library at Durham College, and his directions to students for its careful use, but despite his own fervid love and somewhat rhetorical praise of learning, there is still a certain personal pathos in the expression of his own impatience with the ignorance and superficiality of the younger students of his day. Writing in the _Philobiblon_ of the prevalent characteristics of Oxford at this time, he writes:-- "Forasmuch as (the students) are not grounded in their first rudiment at the proper time, they build a tottering edifice on an insecure foundation, and then when grown up they are ashamed to learn that which they should have acquired when of tender years, and thus must needs even pay the penalty of having too hastily vaulted into the possession of authority to which they had no claim. For these and like reasons, our young students fail to gain by their scanty lucubrations that sound learning to which the ancients attained, however they may occupy honourable posts, be called by titles, be invested with the garb of office, or be solemnly inducted into the seats of their seniors. Snatched from their cradle and hastily weaned, they get a smattering of the rules of Priscian and Donatus; in their teens and beardless they chatter childishly concerning the Categories and the Perihermenias in the composition of which Aristotle spent his whole soul."[33] It is to be feared that the decline of learning, which at this period was characteristic, as we thus see, of Oxford, was equally characteristic of Cambridge. Certainly there was no scholar there of the calibre of William of Ockham, or even of Richard of Bury, or of the Merton Realist, Bradwardine, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. It is not indeed until more than a century later when we have reached the age of Wycliffe, the first of the reformers and the last of the schoolmen, that the name of any Cambridge scholar emerges upon the page of history. [Illustration: Clare College and Bridge]