"
As a postscript to this story, Mr. Timmins, of Birmingham,
informs me that the treasures of the Monte Cassino Library are
better cared for now than in Boccaccio's days, the worthy prior
being proud of his valuable MSS. and very willing to show them.
It will interest many readers to know that there is now a complete
printing office, lithographic as well as typographic, at full work
in one large room of the Monastery, where their wonderful MS.
of Dante has been already reprinted, and where other fac-simile
works are now in progress.
CHAPTER V.
IGNORANCE AND BIGOTRY.
IGNORANCE, though not in the same category as fire and water,
is a great destroyer of books. At the Reformation so strong was
the antagonism of the people generally to anything like the old
idolatry of the Romish Church, that they destroyed by thousands books,
secular as well as sacred, if they contained but illuminated letters.
Unable to read, they saw no difference between romance and a psalter,
between King Arthur and King David; and so the paper books with all
their artistic ornaments went to the bakers to heat their ovens,
and the parchment manuscripts, however beautifully illuminated,
to the binders and boot makers.
There is another kind of ignorance which has often worked destruction,
as shown by the following anecdote, which is extracted from a letter
written in 1862 by M.
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