Carelessness and the contempt felt for old books are still the great destructive forces in the East, and the Hon. Robert Curzon, who travelled in search of manuscripts, gives in his “Visits to the Monasteries in the Levant” (1849) a lively account of the irreparable losses that are constantly occurring. (See also Archdeacon Tattam’s and M. Pacho’s narratives of their negotiations with the monks of the Nitrian Desert for Syrian MSS., and the subsequent experiences of Tischendorf and Mrs. Lewis.) One of the most recent literary events is the recovery of a number of Jewish manuscripts from a Genizah or storehouse of old papers and parchments at Cairo, where they were preserved indeed, but entirely neglected.
The late Mr. Thorold Rogers paid considerable attention to the prices of books, and recorded many valuable facts respecting them in his important work, “History of Agriculture and Prices in England.” After commenting on some prices in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, he adds, “such prices indicate that written literature was not wholly inaccessible to the general public” (vol. i. p. 646).
The particulars of the cost of church books give perhaps the best idea of prices, because these were needed by a large number of the population. Some of them were of small price, while others of a more elaborate character were of great price. In the year 1278 the bailiff of Farley spent six shillings and eightpence for books for the church, and in 1300 the monks of Ely paid six shillings for a Decretal, and two shillings for Speculum Gregorianum. In 1329 the precentor received six shillings and sevenpence, with an instruction to go to Balsham to purchase books.14 In 1344 a Bible cost three pounds, and in 1357 a book was bought for Farley church for four shillings.
Mr. Blades printed in his Life of Caxton an inventory of the library of Jean, Duc de Berri, at the château of Mohun sur Yevre, 1416. At the death of the duke the library contained one hundred and sixty-two volumes, valued at 14,909 livres.