Middle English Literature

The degree of affection that is properly due to books.
. . . Let us next dwell a little on the recital of the wrongs with which they
requite us, the contempts and cruelties of which we cannot recite an ex-
ample in each kind, nay, scarcely the main classes of the several wrongs. In the
first place, we are expelled by force and arms from the homes of the clergy,
which are ours by hereditary right, who were used to have cells of quietness in
the inner chamber, but alas! in these unhappy times we are altogether exiled,
suffering poverty without the gates. For our places are seized now by dogs,
now by hawks, now by that biped beast whose cohabitation with the clergy
was forbidden of old, from which we have always taught our nurslings to flee
more than from the asp and cockatrice; wherefore, she, always jealous of the
love of us and never to be appeased, at length seeing us in some corner pro-
tected only by the web of some dead spider, with a frown abuses and reviles
us with bitter words, declaring us alone of all the furniture in the house to be
unnecessary and complaining that we are useless for any household purpose,
and advises that we should speedily be converted into rich caps, sendal and
silk and twice-dyed purple, robes and furs, wool and linen; and, indeed, not
without reason if she could see our inmost hearts, if she had listened to our
secret counsels, if she had read the book of Theophrastus or Valerius, or only
heard the twenty-fifth chapter of Ecclesiasticus with understanding ears.
2
2
The book of Theophrastus is the Aureolus liber Theophrasti de nuptiis, a text against mar-
riage attributed to him by Jerome in his Epistola adversus Jovinianum. In De nugis curialium
Walter Map claims that Valerius Maximus’ Dissuasio Valerii ad Rufinum Philosophum ne uxorem
ducat is his own composition.

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And hence it is that we have to mourn for the homes of which we have
been unjustly robbed . . . Now we would pursue a new kind of injury, by
which we suffer alike in person and in fame, the dearest thing we have. Our
purity of race is diminished every day, while new authors’ names are imposed
upon us by worthless compilers, translators, and transformers and, losing
our ancient nobility while we are reborn in successive generations, we become
wholly degenerate; and thus against our will the name of some wretched
step-father is affixed to us, and the sons are robbed of the names of their
true fathers. The verses of Virgil, while he was yet living, were claimed by
an impostor, and a certain Fidentinus mendaciously usurped the works of
Martial, whom Martial thus deservedly rebuked:
“The book you read is, Fidentinus! mine,
Though read so badly, ’t well may pass for thine!”
What marvel then, if, when our authors are dead, clerical apes use us to
make broad their phylacteries since even while they are alive they try to
seize us as soon as we are published? Ah! how often ye pretend that we who
are ancient are but lately born and try to pass us off as sons who are really
fathers, calling us who have made you clerks the production of your studies.
Indeed, we derived our origin from Athens, though we are now supposed
to be from Rome, for Carmentis was always the pilferer of Cadmus, and
we who were but lately born in England will tomorrow be born again in
Paris, and thence being carried to Bologna, will obtain an Italian origin
based upon no affinity of blood. Alas! how ye commit us to treacherous
copyists to be written, how corruptly ye read us and kill us by medication
while ye supposed ye were correcting us with pious zeal. Oftentimes we
have to endure barbarous interpreters, and those who are ignorant of
foreign idioms presume to translate us from one language into another,
and thus all propriety of speech is lost and our sense is shamefully mutilated
contrary to the meaning of the author! Truly noble would have been the
condition of books if it had not been for the presumption of the tower of
Babel, if but one kind of speech had been transmitted by the whole human
race.
We will add the last clause of our long lament, though far too short for
the materials that we have. For in us the natural use is changed to that
which is against nature, while we who are the light of faithful souls every-
where fall a prey to painters knowing nought of letters and are entrusted to
goldsmiths to become, as though we were not sacred vessels of wisdom,
repositories of gold-leaf. We fall undeservedly into the power of laymen,
Books
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240
Textualities
which is more bitter to us than any death, since they have sold our people
for nought, and our enemies themselves are our judges . . .