On the lending and losing of books: "how many more of your books I daily make use of:"

I have written before about John Locke's long friendship with James Tyrrell from his time at Christ Church, Oxford, who lived at nearby Oakley.    I knew Tyrrell's maternal grandfather was James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh and revered as a biblical scholar, by both King James I and Oliver Cromwell.  He was best known for his Latin history, Annals of the Old and New Testaments, which dated the creation of the world from 4004 BC.  

James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, 1641    Cornelis Janssens van Ceulen

© Jesus College, Oxford

But  I gave Archbishop Ussher no further thought until I was reading about the Book of Kells in Christopher de Hamel's "Meetings with  Remarkable Manuscripts".  It was Ussher who first studied Ireland's world-renowned late 8th century Latin manuscript of the four Gospels as a key historic book, and not just as a monumental religious icon of Ireland.  (It is now on the Unesco Memory of the World Register.)

Illuminated page from the  Book of Kells  

© Trinity College Library, Dublin

His grandson James himself was a respected Whig historian (e.g. Bibliotheca Politica 1694). It is not surprising then that the Tyrrells were a family of serious readers, lending and borrowing books amongst themselves and friends.  

Locke entrusted Tyrrell with the storage of his furniture and books from Christ Church when he had to move abroad in 1683.  Back in England seven years later under William III,  by 1691 he  was moving from London lodgings to a more permanent home with Sir Francis and Lady Masham at Oates in Essex, and asked for his Oxford belongings to be returned to him.  This took a long time,  because of the problems of transporting safely furniture, household goods, and valuable items as well as numerous heavy books.  Much was sent by the newly restored river-barge route between Oxford and London:

 A Victorian photo of the new style pound lock at Culham
Originally built by the 17th century Oxford-Burcot Commission; the first commercial barge from London for centuries reached Oxford in 1635, after work to add gated poundlocks and improve the passage over the many weirs and sluices (i.e. flashlocks). 

Even this was not easy:  

"John could not get a Cart before last week to bring them hither [from Shotover to Oxford], nor was there ever a barge ready to carry them till today….I hope they will come safely to your hands for I have given the bargeman great charge of your chair."  Tyrrell to Locke, 15th October 1691

A week later Tyrrell writes, "Your boxes layn here this fortnight waiting for a passage, for the locks being at fault the barges could not passe till they were mended."

This consignment included six large boxes,  two smaller and a trunk, plus a large bundle of linens, and a cane chair.  Locke's goods from Christ Church included a very large number of books as well as items awkward to pack (two carpets were too big to go in the bundle). 

Christ Church College, Oxford   Frederick Nash 

The other problem was that over the years the Tyrrell family had dipped in to Locke's library and used his trunks and boxes, furniture and other items: "having taken the books; and other things out of it, I lent my wife the box to put some linen in:"  30 June 1691

Tyrrell's difficulties sound familiar to anyone who has moved house and had to store belongings with friends or relatives for a long time, or vice-versa.  He has constant problems finding overlooked items at the family homes at Shotover and Oakley and then packing them for transport.

"I would have sent you your telescope if the box had been long enough….I find since the writing of the Catalogue [of Locke's Oxford books] that I have omitted some books which I left at Oxford: and were among my books there, and so were forgot till now….I have bin forced to take the second part of the 'State of France' out of the box: because it would not hold it and the bottle."  

I have sent you all your bookes, except…such bookes (he lists over a dozen) as I have made bold to borrow of you for some longer time.…your Telescope is on top of the bookes in one of the boxes;" 
15 October 1691

"I have also sent you up the 2 first Tomes of your French Herodotus; and the last [Volume III] which I lent my daughter, is come as far as Oxford, but I cannot have it to send up this returne, but you shall have it the next week; when I send up some other things to James:" [Tyrrell's son]  November 1691 

His despatches continue into 1692 with an insight into family life at Oakley:  "as for books not medicinal, James had in his keeping unknown to me Oglebyes Japan, and my Father had borrowed Africa of the same Authours but they shall both be sent to you with the boxes". 

  John Ogilby's Africa 1670  (Photo Bauman Rare Books)

"..the little hair trunk  I lent to my daughter into Wales...Besides your Carpets, I have an old terrestrial Globe of yours, which would not go well into the trunk…...  2 pair of [your cases for books] were at Shotover, with some books of mine, and I could not prevail with the carter to go out of the way." [from Oakley to Oxford] 30th January 1692

And in August: he sends a book "which my Sister had borrowed;"  but not  "an old Terrestriall Globe which would not got into the box … . and my son desires the use of it a little longer;   I have allso your weather glasse at Shotover which was too long to goe into any of the boxes",  nor another book and a cushion which his son still had. 

John Patrick's Weatherglass: Directions   (see SIS Bulletin 80)

Tyrell entrusts a friend to send this 'last' consignment  to Locke:  Mr: Thomas … haveing first sent all your things together with his owne to Mr: Rushes barge, which I suppose sets out on Thursday "  9th August 1692

Eventually, in slow succession, Locke's precious boxes of books and other belongings arrived in London and were then transported by carrier  (i.e. horse and cart) via Bishop's Stortford to the Masham's home at Oates, High Laver in Essex.

Several items were still missing or remained 'borrowed' by the Tyrrell family.  In the summer of 1701, Locke makes a last attempt to trace the missing volume III from his French edition of Herodotus, which may have gone with James's daughter Mary to Wales and was said to have been returned in November 1691 - it was she who had irretrievably lost the key to one of Locke's small trunks, which caused everyone a deal of trouble in her absence.  Tyrrell replies, "my daughter assures me she never saw more than those 2 volumes of it….which way the third came to be lost I know not….my son may perhaps have borrowed it unbeknownst to me.." August 1701

Pierre du Ryer's French translation of Herodotus' "Histories"  (Photo Sequitur Books) 

Locke's Herodotus Volume III was never found, so is it perhaps buried in some old Welsh library archive, or given the difficulties of transport then, lost forever in a Thames mill pond?

 The Mill at Mapledurham,  part 15th century, the oldest surviving mill on the Thames

Quotations from The Correspondence of John Locke, ed. E.S. De Beer, Clarendon Press Oxford

Islamic art in Qatar

My local market has a very good second-hand bookstall, where I came across the guidebook to the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar.

The building was designed by I.M Pei (probably best known for the Louvre's Glass Pyramid) and its faceted geometric shape,  which changes with the sun, captures the essence of Islamic art.  His inspiration was the ninth century mosque of Ahmed Ibn Tulun in Cairo:
 "If one could find the heart of Islamic architecture, might it not lie in the desert, severe and simple in its design, where sunlight brings forms to life?"

The Doha Museum's interior is more obviously spectacular, with its play on circles, octagons, stars and squares, key motifs in Islamic art, decorating objects and interiors.

The atrium, with double stairway and decorated chandelier

Diamond patterns and facets reflect the interior light  

These changing and intersecting patterns in the architecture are seen more clearly in the interior design and decoration and are repeated in the objects in the Museum's collection.

Detail of inlaid cabinet, with stars and foliage, India, 16th-17th century

Slip decorated plate with Kufic calligraphy, Samarqand or Nishapur,  10th century.*

"Foolish is the person who misses his chance and afterwards reproaches fate."  attrib. Yahya ibn Ziyad

The interior designer, in collaboration with I.M. Pei, was Jean-Michel Wilmotte, who used dark grey porphyry and bronzed exotic wood - Brazilian louro faya,  creating display galleries where the Museum's treasures appear suspended in space and light. 

Treasures of the Museum include an inlaid brass candlestick from Shiraz, an enamelled glass mosque lamp, and the Rothschild silk carpet, probably made in Kashan in the reign of Shah Tahmasp (1524-76).

Many of these and other objects are inscribed with dedications to their owners or, as around the mosque lamps, with verses from the Qur'an;  sophisticated carpet designs are closely related to the designs of book covers, for the highest art after architecture in the Islamic canon is the art of the book or calligraphy, which conveys the word of God.

Book binding, Herat, Afghanistan, 15th century

Kufic Qur'an, Abbasid or Fatimid, N. Africa or Near East, 10th century

Mamluk Qur'an, Egypt or Syria 14th century

Light and shadows on the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, Qatar

(This and other images from mia.org.qa/collections)

*These epigraphic plates from Samarqand and Nishapur are among my favourites, with their spare designs and stylised inscriptions, often blessings or proverbs, providing convivial grace-notes to a meal.
There are good collections of these and other beguiling Islamic arts found in museums such as the Metropolitan New York, the British Museum and the V&A, London, or the Louvre, Paris. 

1968-2018 - Fifty years of "unlocking the word-hoard"

I have just been reading  Short! a book of very Short stories,  Kevin Crossley-Holland's incisive retelling of ghost stories, urban myths and folk tales,  and was reminded of his other tales such as The Green Children, an East Anglian legend (which began as an opera libretto in 1966 and won an Arts Council award in 1968),  Wordhoard, and his thrilling translation of the Anglo-Saxon epic poem, Beowulf.  

Poet, academic, translator and author, he has won many prestigious literature awards, particularly his books for children, with the Carnegie Children's Book prize for Storm in 1984, which was also among the top ten past Carnegie Medal winners in 2007, and his Arthurian trilogy beginning with  The Seeing Stones in 2000.   

As long ago as January 1966,  his storytelling (in Winter's Tales for Children) was praised by Anne Wood for, "his rare gift for making the distant past seem at once so immediate to bear on the story of Caedmon".  

This review was in her new brainchild,  Books for Your Children magazine,  which introduced me to Crossley-Holland's books and many others.  This originally home-produced and cyclostyled magazine sparked enthusiastic parent-led Children's Book Groups,  which joined together with Anne as Chairman for the founding of the Federation of Children's Book Groups in London in October 1968.

For this pioneering movement in bringing together parents with teachers, librarians, publishers and authors to promote children's pleasure in books and reading, Anne won the Eleanor Farjeon Award in 1969.  Like Crossley-Holland,  Anne has continued to work bringing stories to children, through charities as well as through her well-known television programmes, and has won numerous awards.

"keeping children's imagination alive through the power of story"

Anne Wood speaking to FCBG members and supporters on 6th June, 2018

© www.fcbg.com  

This year the Federation of Children's Book Groups celebrates 50 years since Anne led that founding meeting in London, with its publication "Bringing Children and Books Together 1968-2018".  As one of the Children's Book Groups' regular supporters, the story-teller, the man of the "word-hoard", Kevin Crossley-Holland declares the Federation is "one of a kind".

Kevin Crossley-Holland and illustrator Jane Ray at the Norfolk Book Centre

© thebookseller.com

Hpe, Lve, Valur and ?

"Black stared into his tankard, while the tavern clock ticked sixty times. ' I hate things with an O in their names, ' cried Black.  'That goes for clocks and parrots.'  He threw his tankard at the clock and broke it open, but there was nothing inside but works, no rubies, no emeralds, and no sapphires and no map.

Littlejack, the man with the map. (by Ronald Searle)

'The parrot's name is Magraw,' said Littlejack. ' There aint no O in that.'
…
Black stood up and smote the table with his fist. ' I'll get rid of O, in upper case and lower,' cried the man in black.  'I'll issue an edict.  All words in books or signs with an O in them shall have the O erased or painted out. We'll print new books and paint new signs without an O in them.'

And so the locksmith became a lcksmith, and the bootmaker a btmaker, and people whispered like conspirators when they said the names. Loves Labours Lost  and Mother Goose flattened out like a pricked balloon.  Books were bks and Robin Hood was Rbinhd.  Little Goody Two shoes lost her O's and so did Goldilocks, and the former became a whisper, and the latter sounded like a key jiggled in a clock.  It was impossible to read 'cockadoodledoo' aloud and parents gave up reading to their children, and some gave up reading altogether, and their search for the precious jewels went on."

Hope, Love, Valour and Freedom!  and a Happy New Year

The Wonderful O  James Thurber
© the estate of James Thurber,
Ronald Searle illustration for Penguin Books

Black or red

"For he was lever have at his beddes heed
Twenty bokes, clad in blak or reed,
Of Aristotle and his philosophy,
Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautry.
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre."

Canterbury Tales, Prologue (the Clerk)  Geoffrey Chaucer

A Load of Unicorn

Caxton's Unicorn paper watermark






"In the middle of the workshop stood the press, a great wooden erection secured between two upright posts that ran from floor to ceiling.  Bendy gazed at it, full of awe.  He had seen a press before; the binder who bound books for the Crowing Cock had one of the same shape -- with a heavy board that moved up and down by a big vertical screw.  But the binder's press was tiny.  This was a monster."

" 'Of course the press is no new thing,' said Caxton. 'It is the type which is new.  The old way of pressing paper on to a carved block is useless for books; you need a new block for every page. Now we have all the letters of the alphabet cast in metal, each letter separate, and we build up a page word by word and letter by letter.  When we have printed enough copies we pull the type to pieces again ready to set up for another page.  Come and see for yourselves.'  "

The Load of Unicorn  Cynthia Harnett  (text and illustrations) 

The Kelmscott Albion press

Floor model Albion Press No. 6551, made by Hopkinson & Cope 1891, and used at the Kelmscott Press to print Morris's edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

Photo detail © Christies Fine Art  (Press sold by Christies at auction in New York, 2013)

"When I first knew Morris nothing would content him but being a monk, and getting to Rome, and then he must be an architect, and apprenticed himself to Street, and worked for two years, but when I came to London and began to paint he threw it all up, and must paint too, and then he must give it up and make poems, and then he must give it up and make window hangings and pretty things, and when he had achieved that, he must be a poet again, and then two or three years of Earthly Paradise time, he must learn dyeing, and lived in a vat, and learned weaving, and knew all about looms, and then made more books,  and learned tapestry, and then wanted to smash everything up and begin the world anew, and now it is printing he cares for, and to make wonderful rich-looking books and all things he does splendidly -- and if he lives the printing will have an end -- but not I hope, before Chaucer and the Morte d'Arthur are done; and then he'll do I don't know what, but every minute will be alive."

Edward Burne-Jones on Morris, quoted by Fiona MacCarthy in William Morris, V& A Museum exhibition catalogue 1996

Gilded spines

"…I  to  Paul's churchyard to treat with a bookbinder to come and gild the backs of all my books to make them handsome, to stand up in my new presses when they come."
Samuel Pepys,  13 August 1666

The Shorter Pepys,  edited R. Latham.   

A shadow of love

"That morning in my bunk I had read Wordsworth's great Ode in Palgrave's Golden Treasury.  Palgrave like Scott carried signs of my father's reading in the form of dog-eared pages and knowing so little about him I had followed every clue and so learned enjoy what he enjoyed.  Thus when I first entered the bank as junior clerk I had thought of it in Wordsworth's terms as a 'prison-house' -- what  was it my father had found a prison, so that he double-marked the passage?  Perhaps our home, and my stepmother and I had been the warders.

One's life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than by human beings: it is out of books one learns about love and pain at second hand.  Even if we have the happy chance to fall in love, it is because we have been conditioned by what we have read, and if I had never known love at all, perhaps it was because my father's library had not contained the right books.  (I don't think there was much passionate love in Marion Crawford, and only a shadow of it in Walter Scott.)"

Travels With My Aunt  Grahame Greene

"The Way We Live Now"

"It was an unusually respectable bookshop for this area of Soho, quite unlike the bookshop which faced it across the street and bore the simple sign 'Books' in scarlet letters.  The window below the scarlet sign displayed girlie magazines which nobody was ever seen to buy -- they were like a signal in an easy code long broken; they indicated the nature of private wares and interests inside.  But the shop of Halliday & Son confronted the scarlet 'Books' with a window full of Penguins and Everyman and second-hand copies of World's Classics.  The son was never seen there, only old Mr Halliday himself, bent and white-haired, wearing an air of courtesy like an old suit in which he would probably like to be buried.  He wrote all his business letters in long-hand: he was busy on one of them now.

'A fine autumn morning, Mr Castle,' Mr Halliday remarked, as he traced with great care the phrase 'Your obedient servant'.  …
'I wonder if you've got a copy of War and Peace?  I've never read it.  It seems about time for me to begin. … I need a change.'

'The Macmillan edition is out of print, but I think I think I have a clean second-hand copy in the World's Classics in one volume.  The Aylmer Maude translation.  You can't beat Aylmer Maude for Tolstoy.   He wasn't a mere translator, he knew the author as a friend.'  He put down his pen and looked regretfully at 'Your obedient servant'.  The penmanship was obviously not up to the mark.

'That's the translation I want.  Two copies of course.'  "

[Postscript:]  "Mr Halliday said, 'I have a little present.  A copy of that Trollope you asked for.  You won't need a second copy now.  It's a long book, but there'll be a lot of waiting.  There always is in war. It's called The Way We Live Now. ' "

The Human Factor   Graham Greene

"Lacon, or Many Things in few Words.."

"Mr Redding draws the following picture of Mr. Colton's lodgings in [Princes Street], London.

'His sitting-room was carpetless; a common deal table stood in the centre, and a broken phial placed in a tea-saucer served for an inkstand, surrounded with letter covers and paper scraps.  Four common chairs, one or two rickety, a side table holding a few books, half a quire of foolscap paper, and some discarded pens, on one side of the room, composed nearly all the furniture, fishing-rods and gun excepted.  Here he indited Lacon.  His copy was written on scraps of paper, blank sides of letters, and but rarely on bran-new paper.  It is untrue that his rooms were as bad as some penny-a-line scribbler made out in a newspaper sketch of him.  They were always clean …'  "

Village London. part 4,  Edward Walford,  quoting Cyrus Redding's Recollections on C.C. Colton, Vicar of Kew and Petersham

"the sincerest of flattery"

"Elizabeth thanked [Bingley] from her heart, and then walked towards a table where a few books were lying.  He immediately offered to fetch her others; all that his library afforded.

'And I wish my collection were larger for your benefit and my own credit; but I am an idle fellow, and though I have not many, I have more than I ever look into.'
Elizabth assured him that she could suit herself perfectly with those in the room.

'I am astonished,' said Miss Bingley, 'that my father should have left so small a collection of books.
--What a delightful library you have at Pemberley, Mr. Darcy!'

'It ought to be good,'  he replied, 'it has been the work of many generations.'

'And then you have added so much to it yourself, you are always buying books.'

'I cannot comprehend the neglect of a family library in such days as these.'

'Neglect! I am sure you neglect nothing that can add to the beauties of that noble place.' "

Pride and Prejudice  Jane Austen

Iscariot Hackney's confession

"And Richard Savage,  in his witty pamphlet called 'An Author to Be Let,' betrays that the abuse is not only of our day.  Iscariot Hackney of that book confesses that:
      'Many a time I wrote obscenity and profaneness, under the names of Pope or Swift.  Sometimes
 I was Mr Joseph Gay, at others Theory Burnet, or Addison. I abridged histories and travels, translated from the French what they never wrote, and was expert at finding out new titles for old books.  When a notorious thief was hanged,  I was the Plutarch to preserve his memory; and when a great man died, mine were his Remains, and mine the account of his last will and testament.'  
That is the whole trade put in a paragraph."

Bohemia in London  Arthur Ransome

The broken-backed "f "

"One of my most loved books -- I return to it again and again -- is that classic of bibliographical detection, a thousandfold more exciting than anything Agatha Christie and her kind ever penned, the majestically entitled An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets by John Carter and Graham Pollard, which nailed one of the greatest bookmen in British history, Thomas J. Wise, as a forger, a swindler, and a thief.  The detection, however, was only made possible because the detectives were versed in every detail of bibliography, printing and the book trade; a lover of books and books' integrity can find tears in his eyes when contemplating the plate between pp. 58 and 59 of An Enquiry, in which the famous 'broken-backed f ', with its missing kern, brought nearer the solution of the mystery."

"Going by the Book"  The Times Saturday Review  Bernard Levin

In Bevis Marks

"There was not much to look at.  A rickety table, with spare bundles of papers, yellow and ragged from long carriage in the pocket, ostentatiously displayed upon its top; a couple of stools, set face to face on opposite sides of this crazy piece of furniture; a treacherous old chair by the fireplace, whose withered arms had hugged full many a client and helped to squeeze him dry; a second-hand wig-box, used as a depository for blank writs and declarations and other small forms of law, once the sole contents of the head which belonged to the wig which belonged to the box, as they were now of the box itself; two or three common books of practice; a jar of ink, a pounce box, a stunted hearth-broom, a carpet trodden to shreds but still clinging with the tightness of desperation to its tacks -- these, with the yellow wainscot of the walls, the smoke-discoloured ceiling, the dust and cobwebs, were among the most prominent decorations of the office of Mr. Sampson Brass."

The Old Curiosity Shop  Charles Dickens

"Hence vain deluded joys…"

"They went up to Proctor-Gould's room, a dark, lofty chamber on the third floor, furnished in the characteristic Imperial  baroque, and looking out over the Kremlin.  Proctor-Gould appeared to be not so much occupying the room as camping in it, like a rambler in some corner of the lawns at Versailles. An open suitcase lay on the floor at the foot of the bed, a tangled heap of possessions straggling out across the carpet.  Suspended on plastic hangers from the dark furniture all about the room were wet shirts and socks, dripping into antique ornamental bowls or on to pages of the Soviet newspapers.

…[Proctor-Gould] rummaged in the suitcase, found a little aluminium camper's kettle with a folding handle, and disappeared with it into the corridor.  Manning sat down in an uncomfortable carved chair, with brass lions' heads beneath his hands, and gazed about him, steeping himself in the profound melancholy of the room.  On a table in the corner were stacked dozens and dozens of English books, all still in their dust jackets.  Manning put his head on his shoulder to read the titles.  He made out Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, The Human Use of Human Beings, Philosophical Investigations, five copies of Lucky Jim, and seven copies of the Concise Oxford Dictionary.

'I see you're looking at my beads,' said Proctor-Gould, coming back into the room holding the kettle, now steaming, at arm's length.
'Your what?'
'My beads.  Presents for the natives.  I always bring a suitcase full of English books when I come over  -- they're like gold-dust here.'
He felt under the clothes in his case again, and produced two stout plastic mugs.  Inside a spare suede shoe he located a Woolworth's apostle spoon, and beneath a pile of dirty socks, the old familiar tin.

'Do you mind Nescafe?' he asked."

The Russian Interpreter  Michael Frayn

A reader at the Lisbon Liceu

"He had slim hands with long, finely shaped fingers, as if they had been created to turn the pages of precious old books.  With these fingers, he now leafed through Prado's book.  But he didn't read it; moving the pages was like a ritual to bring back the distant past.

'All the things he [Amadeu de Prado] had read when he entered crossed the threshold of the Liceu at the age of ten in his small, tailor-made frock coat!  Many of us caught ourselves secretly calculating whether we could keep up with him.  And then, after class, he sat in the library soaking up all the thick books, page after page,  line after line.  He had an incredible memory and an incredibly concentrated, rapt look on his face when reading.  "When Amadeu finishes reading a book," said another teacher, "it has no more letters.  He devours not only the meaning, but also the printer's ink."

'That's how it was: the books seemed to disappear inside him, leaving empty husks on the shelf afterwards'. "

Night Train to Lisbon   Pascal Mercier, trans. B. Harshaw

In the Commander's room

"I raise my hand, knock, on the door of this forbidden room where I have never been, where women do not go.  Not even Serena Joy comes here, and the cleaning is done by Guardians. What secrets, what male totems are kept in here?

I'm told to enter.  I open the door, step in.

What is on the other side is normal life.  I should say: what is on the other side looks like normal life.  There is a desk, of course, with a Computalk on it, and a black leather chair behind it.  There's a potted plant on the desk, a pen-holder set, papers.  There's an oriental rug on the floor, and a fireplace without a fire in it.  There's a small sofa, covered in brown plush, a television set, an end table, a couple of chairs.
But all around the walls there are bookcases,  They're filled with books.  Books and books and books, right out in plain view,  no locks, no boxes.  No wonder we can't come in here.  It's an oasis of the forbidden.  I try not to stare."

The Handmaid's Tale  Margaret Attwood

Gough Square to Gunpowder Alley

For the shade of the author of Rasselas still seems to haunt the scenes of his Titanic labours, and his ponderous but homely and temperate rejoicings.  Every court and alley whispers of books and the making of books; formes of type trundled noisily on trollies by inksmeared boys, salute the wayfarer at odd corners, piles of strawboard, rolls or bales of paper, drums of printing-ink or roller composition stand on the pavement outside dark entries; basement windows give glimpses into Hadean caverns tenanted by legions of printer's devils, and the very air is charged with the hum of press  and with odours of glue and oil.  The entire neighbourhood is given to the printer and binder;..."

Dr. Thorndyke and the Eye of Osiris  R. Austin Freeman

The Royal Library

"The King,  observing with judicious eyes
The state of both his universities,
To Oxford sent a troop of horse, and why?
That learned body wanted loyalty;
To Cambridge books, as very well discerning
How much that loyal body wanted learning."

Epigram (on George I's gift of Bishop Moore's library to Cambridge University)  Rev. Joseph Trapp

"The King to Oxford sent a troop of horse,
For Tories own no argument but force:
With equal skill to Cambridge books he sent,
For Whigs admit no force but argument."

Reply  Sir William Browne