Excepting kings and some princes, few people possessed a library. The great expense of transcription, the want of facility for procuring originals, and the enormous price of manuscripts left no hope to bibliophiles of moderate fortune. Typography, on the contrary, having multiplied books and put at relatively modest prices reproductions formerly inaccessible, private collections commenced. We have had occasion to speak before of Grolier and Maioli; they were the most illustrious, but not the only ones. At first a public library was an unknown thing. The richest and the most easily got together, that of the King of France, was private. Since John the Good in France the acquisitions were numerous, and Gutenberg's invention contributed to augment the stock of volumes everywhere. Charles VIII. and Louis XII. found or took in their expeditions in Italy, and were able to add to the original nucleus, many rare editions, especially from the Sforzas at Pavia, who had marvels without number. Brought together at Blois, under the care of John de Labarre, the royal library did not yet occupy a very large space, in spite of its increase. Under Charles V. the number of books was about a thousand; about 1500 or 1510 they were nearly doubled, and the printed books did not number more than two hundred. So restricted, the royal library travelled with the other treasures of the Crown; Francis I. transported it from Blois to Fontainebleau, and even parts of it to the Italian wars, as related above. In its new quarters the royal collection, in spite of the successive accessions of the books of John d'Angoulême, grandfather of the King, and of those of the dukes of Orleans, counted but 1,781 manuscripts and a hundred and nine printed books on the shelves. The King, ambitious in literature no less than in arts, nominated an illustrious _savant_, Guillaume Budé, to the office of master of his library; and this qualification was maintained by his successors until the fall of the royal power. With Budé commenced the system of continuous acquisitions. The treasury was liberally opened to vendors of rarities. At this time the books, placed upon their sides, one upon another, gave no idea of a modern library, with its volumes ranged on end, having their titles between the bands of the back. In speaking of Grolier, we remarked that the sides of a binding alone had importance on account of their place on the shelves; it was the same with Francis I.