Part 7 (1/2)

But there is a better way of love than all of these. One may love the book through which one holds communion with the spirit of its writer, being ready to learn from him by direct learning, or by the learning received through suggestion, or through the rousing of the spirit of enquiry, or the spirit of opposition. Is not this the best kind of love, the love by which the thought of man is used by man, the spirit of man holds communion with the spirit of man?

All through the ages, great things have been handed down by written words, and people of all nations have shared one another's national heritage of written thought, and in that sharing made it larger and greater. We are now considering the earlier story of English Catholic literature, and it is surely well that people should know something of what things were said and sung in the olden time; the time when all art, all literature was fed by the great Mother of all Christian art and all Christian literature, the Holy Catholic Church.

You will find our Catholic literature saturated with sacred lore and knowledge of Holy Scripture. Before printing was invented people could not multiply copies of the Sacred Books as they can now, but they knew them probably much better than many of those who can easily now buy them for a few pence. We have translations of various parts of the Bible in these early times. You will remember how in St Bede's last days he finished his translation of part of St John's Gospel. We have lovely ma.n.u.scripts, such as that of the Lindisfarne Gospels, written in fine clear writing, which can be seen at the British Museum; and facsimiles of parts of them can be had for a small sum. It is simply an uneducated error to suppose that the heretical editing, as I may call it, of Holy Scripture in the mother-tongue of English people, made by Tyndale and Coverdale, was the first attempt to put the Bible into English. We should have had plenty of printed copies of Holy Scripture in the mother-tongue of English people, had these versions never been made and circulated to attack and injure Holy Church, without whom the originals could never have existed.

CHAPTER XIV

Scattering of our old MSS. in Sixteenth Century. Same now in public libraries. Collections. Exeter Book and Vercelli Book.

Where are all our old ma.n.u.scripts, our treasures from days of yore, the work of the cunning scribe, the pages whereon so many of our religious spent hour after hour, in patient and loving toil? They were scattered abroad in the sixteenth century by wholesale. Many of them found their way into private collections, and the collectors often generously gave them to college libraries. Matthew Parker, the Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, was a great book-collector, and gave a good many volumes to Corpus Christi College at Cambridge. Among these is the oldest copy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. John Bale, once a friar, afterwards, alas! a Protestant Bishop, says that some of the books from the monasteries were used to scour candlesticks or to rub boots; some were sold to grocers and soap-vendors; and whole s.h.i.+ps-full went abroad.

[Ill.u.s.trations: SAXON s.h.i.+P As used by our Forefathers in the time of King Alfred

THE ALFRED JEWEL [_Page 114_]

Robert Bruce Cotton was another great book-collector. His library was sold to the nation about seventy years after his death. Many books and MSS. belonging to it were destroyed or injured by a fire that broke out where it had been placed; among those injured was the only copy of the old poem of Beowulf, which I have not talked about because it is apparently outside our _Catholic_ Heritage in literature. The reduced library is now at the British Museum. It includes the beautiful Lindisfarne Gospels, or Durham Book, which once belonged to Durham Cathedral.

There is another collection which was bought for the British Museum, made by Harley, Earl of Oxford.

William Laud, who was Archbishop of Canterbury in Charles the First's time, and, like him, died on the scaffold, was also greatly interested in collecting books. He gave generously to Oxford University, and his books are in the Bodleian Library, with many other valuable literary treasures.

Francis Junius collected Anglo-Saxon literature, and other books. He left them to the Bodleian Library. Among them is the unique ”Caedmon”

Ma.n.u.script, given him by Archbishop Usher, who founded the library of Trinity College, Dublin. People are now alive to the value of these great possessions, and we must be glad that scholars have worked at them, and published many of them, and so made their contents accessible to everyone. But we must never forget our debt to the earliest writers, and chiefly to the monks who wrote and who copied, much and long and well. As we trust, they have their reward.

There are two specially interesting collections of ma.n.u.script Anglo-Saxon poems, known respectively as the Exeter Book and the Vercelli Book. The Exeter Book is one of some sixty volumes acquired by Leofric, Bishop of Crediton, when he was making his library for the cathedral of his new bishopric at Exeter. It is described as ”a large English book of many things wrought in verse.” It is one of the few of Leofric's books that remain at Exeter, where it has been over eight hundred years. It contains various poems by Cynewulf and others. Several leaves are missing, and ink has been spilt over part of one page. This Exeter library was scattered at the ”Reformation.” Some of its treasures are in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, or at Corpus Christi College, at Cambrige.

The Vercelli Book is so called because it was discovered in its home in the cathedral library at Vercelli in Italy a good many years ago. It contains twenty-two sermons in Anglo-Saxon, and six poems, among which is our beautiful ”Dream of the Holy Rood.” Perhaps some English pilgrim or pilgrims, on the way to Rome, left this book as a gift, or through inadvertence, at the hospice where hospitality had been received. Or perhaps Cardinal Guala, who was over here in the days of John and of Henry III, bought the book for his library at Vercelli. Or perhaps it was one of the books of which John Bale tells us whole s.h.i.+ps-full went abroad. We have to be very grateful to the scholars whose researches have recovered for us so much of our old heritage, and to those who have made their contents in various ways so easy to get at.

CHAPTER XV

Runes. An early love-poem