Jerome's
Commentaries as pledges for its safe return. A similar ceremony, with
a similar entry in the register, marked the replacement of the book
in the library. Though printing was already beginning to multiply
books, yet then, and for long after, a book was a most valuable
possession. The features of these venerable tomes are well described
by Crabbe:
"That weight of wood, with leathern coat o'erlaid,
Those ample clasps, of solid metal made,
The close pressed leaves, unclosed for many an age,
The dull red edging of the well-filled page,
On the broad back the stubborn ridges rolled,
Where yet the title shines in tarnished gold,
These all a sage and laboured work proclaim,
A painful candidate for lasting fame."
Such books are numbered by hundreds in every college library, and it
is only too true of them that:
"Hence in these times, untouched the pages lie
And slumber out their immortality."
The reception of such a book in a library was an event, and the
record of one gift occupies six whole lines in the Merton Register;
its donors are named as "two venerable men," and the entry sweetly
concludes, "Let us, therefore, pray for them.
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