(4) Did not write Philobiblon. The authorship was claimed for Robert Holkot, a Dominican, who for some time was a member of the bishop’s household.
It is certain that the evidence is such as to force us to lower our estimate of the prelate’s merits, but these four charges are certainly not all proved. He may not have been so learned and so unselfish a lover of books as was supposed, but there is no satisfactory reason for depriving him of the credit of being the author of the Philobiblon.
Mr. Thomas shows that Richard de Bury was born on 24th January 1287, and not 1281, as stated in the “Dictionary of National Biography.” He completed the Philobiblon, and on the 14th April of the same year Dominus Ricardus de Bury migravit ad Dominum.
A singularly appropriate chapter from the earliest “book about books” may here be quoted:—
“What we are to Think of the Price in The Buying of Books.
(Chapter III. of the Philobiblon of Richard de Bury.2)
“From what has been said we draw this corollary, welcome to us, but (as we believe) acceptable to few; namely, that no dearness of price ought to hinder a man from the buying of books, if he has the money that is demanded for them, unless it be to withstand the malice of the seller, or to await a more favourable opportunity of buying. For if it is wisdom only that makes the price of books, which is an infinite treasure to mankind, and if the value of books is unspeakable, as the premises show, how shall the bargain be shown to be dear where an infinite good is being bought? Wherefore that books are to be gladly bought and unwillingly sold, Solomon, the sun of men, exhorts in the Proverbs: Buy the truth, he says, and sell not wisdom. But what we are trying to show by rhetoric or logic, let us prove by examples from history. The arch-philosopher Aristotle, whom