While acting as emissary for his “illustrious prince,” de Bury hunts his quarry in the narrow ways of Paris, and captures “inestimable books” by freely opening his purse, the coins of which are, to his mind, “mud and sand” compared with the treasures he gets. He blesses the friars and protects them, and they rout out books from the “universities and high schools of various provinces”; but how, whether rightfully or wrongfully, we do not know. He “does not disdain,” he tells us--in truth, he is surely overjoyed--to visit “their libraries and any other repositories of books”; nay, there he finds heaped up amid the utmost poverty the utmost riches of wisdom. He freely employs the booksellers, but the wiles of the collector are as notorious as the wiles of women, and his chief aim is to “captivate the affection of all” who can get him books;--not even forgetting “the rectors of schools and the instructors of rude boys,” although we cannot think he gets much from them. If he cannot buy books, he has copies made: about his person are scribes and correctors, illuminators and binders, and generally all who can usefully labour in the service of books; in large numbers--in no small multitude. And by these means he gets together more books than all the other English bishops put together: more than five waggon loads; a veritable hoard, overflowing into the hall of his house, and into his bedroom, where he steps over them to get to his couch. He was a man “of small learning,” says Murimuth; “passably literate,” writes Chambre; at the best, according to Petrarch, “of ardent temperament, not ignorant of literature, with a natural curiosity for out-of-the-way lore”: an antiquarian, not of the lovable kind, but unscrupulous, pedantic, and vain, indulging an inordinate taste for collecting and hoarding books, perhaps to satisfy a craving for shreds and patches of knowledge, but more likely to earn a reputation as a great clerk.[453] For De Bury was something of a humbug; the _Philobiblon_, if it is his work, reaches the utmost limit of affectation in the love of books.
The literature of the later part of the fourteenth century affords us glimpses of other readers who were not merely collectors. The author--or authors--of _Piers Plowman_ seems to have had within his reach a fair library. His reading was carelessly done for the most part, his references are vague and incorrect, and his quotations not always exact. But he was well read in the Scriptures, which he knew far better than any other book. From the Fathers he gathered much, perhaps by means of collections of extracts from their works. He used the _Golden Legend_, Huon de Meri’s allegorical poem of the fight between Jesus and the Antichrist, Peter Comestor’s _Bible History_, Rustebeuf’s _La Voie de Paradis_, Grosseteste’s religious allegory of _Le Chastel d’Amour_, the paraded learning of Vincent of Beauvais in _Speculum Historiale_, and other works--numerous and small signs of booklore, which are completely overshadowed by his illuminating comprehension of the popular side in the politics of his day. Gower, too, had at his disposal a little library of some account, including the Scriptures, theological writings and ecclesiastical histories, Aristotle, some of the classics, and a good deal of romance in prose and verse.