"[1] Surely the implication is unjust.
Stationers used to let out on hire parts of books or quires.
Manuscript volumes were also often made up of parts of
works by several authors. Books being scarce, it was
preferable to make some volumes select miscellanies, little
libraries in themselves. Hear Chaucer himself--
"And eek ther was som-tyme a clerk at Rome,
A cardinal, that highte Seinte Jerome,
That made a book agayn Jovinian;
In whiche book eek ther was Tertulan,
Crisippus, Trotula, and Helowys,
That was abbesse net fer fro Parys;
And eek the Parables of Salomon,
Ovydes Art, and bokes many on,
And alle thise were bounder in o volume."[2]
[1] Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, ii. 265.
[2] Wife of Bath's Prologue, ll. 673-81.
In composite volumes often only the earlier parts of
authors' works were included. If Chaucer owned a few
books of this kind, his familiarity with parts of authors--
and oftenest with the earlier parts--is accounted for
satisfactorily; so also is the range and variety of his
reading. Examine the Christ Church Canterbury catalogue
in Henry Eastry's time, and note what a remarkable
variety of subjects is comprised in what we nowadays
consider rather a paltry number of books.
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