These handsome
accessions made the collection the finest academic
library in England, not excepting the excellent library of
380 volumes then at Peterhouse. It had a character
of its own. The usual overwhelming mass of Bibles,
of church books, of the Fathers and the Schoolmen
does not depress us with its disproportion. The collection
was strong in astronomy and medicine: Ptolemy,
Albumazar, Rhazes, Serapion, Avicenna, Haly Abenragel,
Zaael, and others were all represented. Besides these, there
was a fine selection of the classics--Plato, Aristotle, including
the Politica and Ethica, Aeschines' orations, Terence, Varro's
De Originae linguae Latinae, Cicero's letters, Verrine and
other orations, and "opera viginti duo Tullii in magno
volumine," Livy, Ovid, Seneca's tragedies, Quintilian, Aulus
Gellius, Noctes Attacae, the Golden Ass of Apulelus, and
Suetonius. But the most interesting items in the list of
his books are the new translations of Plato, and of Aristotle,
whose Ethica was rendered by Leonardo Bruni; the Greek
and Latin dictionary; and the works of Dante, Petrarch
(de Vita solitaria, de Refiais memorandis, de Remediis
utriusque fortunae), Boccaccio, and of Coluccio Salutati's
letters.
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