All these libraries, consisting of manuscripts, were necessarily limited
in their numbers; their collectors had no choice, but gladly received
what occurred to their hands; it was when books were multiplied by the
press, that the minds of owners of libraries shaped them to their own
fancies, and stamped their characters on these companions of their
solitude.
We have a catalogue of the library of Mary Queen of Scots, as delivered
up to her son James the Sixth, in 1578,[10] very characteristic of her
elegant studies; the volumes chiefly consist of French authors and
French translations, a variety of chronicles, several romances, a few
Italian writers, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Ariosto, and her favourite
poets, Alain Chartier, Ronsard, and Marot. This library forms a striking
contrast with that of Elizabeth of England, which was visited in 1598 by
Hentzner, the German traveller. The shelves at Whitehall displayed a
more classical array; the collection consisted of Greek, Latin, as well
as Italian and French books.
The dearness of parchment, and the slowness of the scribes, made
manuscripts things only purchasable by princely munificence. It was the
discovery of paper from rags, and the novel art of taking copies without
penmen, which made books mere objects of commerce, and dispersed the
treasures of the human mind free as air, and cheap as bread.