These men are as ants.... They have added
more in this brief [eleventh] hour to the stock of the sacred
books than all the other vine-dressers."[7] Instead of declaiming
against the hawks, De Bury trained them to prey
for him, and was well rewarded for his pains. Nor is it
beyond the bounds of probability that he enriched his own
collection at the expense of the Grey Friars' library at
Oxford.[8]
[1] Mon. Fr., i. 391.
[2] Ibid. i. 366.
[3] But see O. H. S., Little, 56; Mon. Fr., ii. 91--Libri fratrum
decedentium.
[4] Mon. Fr., i. 114.
[5] Bodl. MS. Twyne, xxiii. 488; O. H. S., Little, 60.
[6] R. Armachanus, Defensorium Curetorum; cf. Wyclif' English
Works, ed. Matthew, 128, 221.
[7] R. de B., Thomas' ed. 203.
[8] Stevenson, 87.
The friars were not merely collectors. The scholarship
of Bacon and other brethren does not concern us.
But their correction of the texts of Scripture, and their
bibliographical work, are germane to our subject. In mid-
thirteenth century some Black Friars of Paris laboured to
correct the text of the Latin Bible; and to enable copyists
to restore the true text when transcribing, they drew up
manuals, called Correctoria.
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