"I understand that all the book-printers or stationers of the Commonwealth are bound of every book that is printed, to send a copy into the University Library; and it is impossible for one man to read all the books in all faculties, to judge of them what worth there is in them; nor hath every one ability to judge of all kind of sciences what every author doth handle, and how sufficiently; therefore I would have at this time of giving accounts, the library keeper also bound to produce the catalogue of all the books sent unto the University's library by the stationers that printed them; to the end that every one of the doctors in their own faculties should declare whether or no they should be added, and where they should be placed in the catalogue of additionals. For I do not think that all books and treatises, which in this age are printed in all kinds, should be inserted into the catalogue, and added to the stock of the library; discretion must be used and confusion avoided, and a course taken to distinguish that which is profitable from that which is useless; and according to the verdict of that society, the usefulness of books for the public is to be determined. Yet because there is seldom any books wherein there is not something useful, and books freely given are not to be cast away, but may be kept, therefore I would have a peculiar place appointed for such books as shall be laid aside to keep them in, and a catalogue of their titles made alphabetically in reference to the author's name and a note of distinction to show the science to which they are to be referred." It seems then, that if Dury could have advised Bodley, and Bodley had listened to him, the Bodleian would have been rich in early Shakespeares, and might have preserved many publications now entirely lost.
Dury's second letter on the subject merely repeats the ideas of the first with less practical suggestion and in a more declamatory style. It contains a striking passage on the ruin of the library of Heidelberg, a terrible warning to librarians. It had books, it had manuscripts, but it had no catalogue, and its candlestick was taken away.
"What a great stir hath been heretofore, about the eminency of the library of Heidelberg, but what use was made of it? It was engrossed into the hands of a few, till it became a prey unto the enemies of the truth. If the library keeper had been a man that would have traded with it for the increase of true learning, it might have been preserved unto this day in all the rareties thereof, not so much by the shuttings up of the multitude of books, and the rareness thereof for antiquity, as by the understandings of men and their proficiency to improve and dilate knowledge upon the grounds which he might have suggested unto others of parts, and so the library rareties would not only have been preserved in the spirits of men, but have fructified abundantly therein unto this day, whereas they are now lost, because they were but a talent digged in the ground."