“And thus with love, with honour, and with fame, I did return to London whence I came.” It is a curious list, and shows what legends of former citizens had grown up in the minds of the people. They had clean forgotten the old Patron Saints of London, St. Erkenwald and St. Thomas à Becket; they had forgotten Philpot and his splendid achievement over the pirates of the North Sea; they had forgotten Waleys, Mayor of Bordeaux and of London; they had forgotten Dick Whittington; they had even forgotten Gresham, and in place of the men who had made London and brought wealth, prosperity, and freedom to the town, they remembered mythical adventures and traditions of battle and of victory. One would like to know more about the popular belief in “London Worthies.” The wholesale destruction of MSS. and mediæval libraries, at the Suppression of the Religious Houses, though doubtless a heavy loss from an artistic point of view, considering the loss of illuminated books, may be considered as compensated by the increased activity of the press and the reconstruction of the library. What was actually lost to literature? John Bale tells us, Manuscripts of the Fathers, Schoolmen, and Commentators. Was this a loss? It is quite certain that the monkish commentators regarded their text from a point of view no longer held: the Holy Scriptures, they said, were lost. The manuscript copies were very likely lost, but the press multiplied copies. I think that the greatest loss to literature was the loss of certain chronicles, of which we have so many left, which relate the history of current events as the monkish scribe heard and understood them. In any case, the destruction of so many books made it impossible, henceforward, to consider a library as made up chiefly of manuscripts; the press rapidly restored the books that were wanted; and gave the world a library filled with printed books, while the old commentators were clean forgotten.