The bishop of Durham wrote a treatise containing rules for the management of the library above-mentioned, describing how the books were to be preserved, and upon what conditions they were to be lent out to scholars, and appointed five keepers, to whom he granted yearly salaries. This treatise he called “_Philobiblion_,” from whence he himself came to be called by the same name, “a lover of books,” and this very justly, if, as he says himself in the preface to it, his love of them was so violent that it put him into a kind of rapture, and made him neglect all his other affairs. He finished it at Auckland, the 24th of January, 1345, being then just 63 years of age. It was printed at Spires in 1483; at Paris, by Badius Ascensius, in 1500; by the learned Thomas James, at Oxford, in 1599, in quarto; and at Leipsic, in 1674, at the end of _Philologicarum Epistolarum Centuria una, ex Bibliotheca Melch. Hamingfeldii_. It appears also in manuscript in the Cottonian library, in the royal library, and in other libraries in Oxford and Cambridge. The “_Philobiblion_,” is written in very indifferent Latin, and in a declamatory style. It is divided into twenty chapters. In chapter 1. the author praises wisdom, and books in which it is contained. 2. That books are to be preferred to riches and pleasure. 3. That they ought to be always bought. 4. How much good arises from books, and that they are misused only by ignorant people. 5. That good monks write books, but the bad ones are otherwise employed. 6. The praise of the ancient begging friars, with a reproof of the modern ones. 7. He bewails the loss of books by fire and wars. 8. He shews what fine opportunities he had had of collecting books, whilst he was chancellor and treasurer, as well as during his embassies. 9. That the ancients outdid the moderns in hard studying. 10. That learning is by degrees arrived at perfection, and that he had procured a Greek and Hebrew grammar. 11. That the law and law books are not properly learning. 12. The usefulness and necessity of grammar. 13. An apology for poetry, and the usefulness of it. 14. Who ought to love books. 15. The manifold advantages of learning. 16. Of writing new books and mending the old. 17. Of using books well, and how to place them. 18. An answer to his calumniators. 19. Upon what conditions books are to be lent to strangers. 20. Conclusion.