Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the Protector of Henry VI, was also greatly attached to his library, and bequeathed many hundreds of volumes to the University of Oxford, and to King’s College, Cambridge.” “Owing to these causes the various Artists connected with book-writing and book-binding, as well as the trades necessary to them, received great encouragement, while to ensure speed as well as excellence of workmanship, division of labour was carried out to a great extent. Indeed, so important a branch of commerce had the manufacture of books now become, and so numerous were the various classes of craftsmen employed in this way at Bruges, that there sprang up in that city a Guild,--‘The Guild of St. John the Evangelist,’ the patron Saint of Scribes,--which in 1454 had a formal charter and privileges granted it by the Duke.” Other cities also had similar corporations. Thus, at Antwerp the Society of St. Luke was formed in 1450, and at Brussels there was a guild of Writers called ‘Les Frères de la plume.’ The Guild of St. John the Evangelist contained members of both sexes, and consisted of Book-binders, Book-sellers, Boss-carvers, Cloth-shearers, Curriers, Figure-engravers, Illuminators, Letter-engravers, Painters, Painters of Vignettes, Parchment and Vellum-makers, Printers, Print-sellers, School-masters, School-mistresses, and Scriveners and copyers of books.[31] Coincident with this development of a thirst for classical learning, and a passion for literature amongst the great and wealthy, was the invention of Printing in the Western world. FOOTNOTES: [16] This is shewn, in the history of wood-cutting by Mr. J. JACKSON, not to have been the original title of the work, which was rather, says the writer, a book for the use of preachers than the laity,--“A series of skeleton sermons, ornamented with woodcuts to warm the preacher’s imagination, and stored with texts to assist his memory.” [17] The blocks of the original _Biblia Pauperum_ re-appeared in this city on the revival of wood-engraving in Holland; and it is the opinion of Mr. BRADSHAW, that it was here the earliest of the block-books was produced. This opinion has additional importance attached to it, from the fact that Zwolle was, in the early part of the Fifteenth century, celebrated as a seat of learning. “Thomas à Kempis, according to Meiners, whom Eichhorn and Heeren have followed presided over a school at Zwoll, wherein Agricola, Hegius, Langius, and Dringeberg, the restorers of learning in Germany, were educated.”--HALLAM’S _Introduction to the Literature of Europe_, 8vo. 1837. vol. i. p. 149.