Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, in his “Philobiblion,” a treatise on the love of books, written by him in Latin in 1344, gives a good picture of the transcriber, or copyist of the monastery. He says: “As it is necessary for a State to provide military arms, and prepare plentiful stores of provisions for soldiers who are about to fight, so it is evidently worth the labor of the Church to fortify itself against the attacks of pagans and heretics with a multitude of sound books. But, because everything that is of use to mortals decays through lapse of time, it is necessary for volumes corroded by age to be restored by new successors, that books may not cease to exist. Hence it is that Ecclesiastes truly says, in the 12th chapter, ‘There is no end of making many books.’ For, as the bodies of books decay, so a remedy is found out by the prudence of clerks, by which a holy book paying the debt of nature [_i. e._, dying] may have one succeed it, and a seed may be raised up like to the most holy deceased, and that saying of Ecclesiastes, chapter thirtieth, be verified: ‘The father is dead, and as it were not dead, for he hath left behind him a son like unto himself.’” Then he goes on to upbraid the priests for soiling books, giving us rather an unfavorable impression concerning the habits of the monks. One would suppose that they could command the leisure to keep clean. The Bishop just quoted deplores “the unwashed hands, the dirty nails, the greasy elbows leaning upon the volume, the munching of fruit and cheese over the open leaves, which were the marks of careless and idle readers,” and suggestive also, some would say, of lack of culture and refinement, and even that their religion was of a low type; else would it not, at least, have produced the virtue which is next to godliness? Then follow sound and sensible directions how to use books. “Let there be a mature decorum in opening and closing of volumes, that they may neither be unclasped with precipitous haste, nor thrown aside after use without being duly closed.” Says an English writer: “When a volume was at last produced in fair parchment, or vellum, after the arduous labor of years, it was covered with immensely thick lids of wood and leather, studded with large nails, and curiously clasped, and was studiously preserved from the common gaze on the shelves of the monastic library. “The splendid volumes thus made, bore evidence, however, not only of persevering industry, but of great ingenuity; the letters at the beginning of each chapter or section being adorned with curious devices. Frequently, too, a painting called an illumination was introduced radiant with gold, crimson, and azure. But no vulgar or unpriestly eyes looked on their contents, unless, indeed, we except kings and princes; they were only unclasped on days of solemnity, by the abbot or the prior, and then restored, like the jewels of the priesthood, to their dusty cases.”