Intro to Bibliomania

"I am one of those who love to seek knowledge in the black lettered folio, and luxuriate in exploring the membraneous volumes of a monastic age -- who love to wander in quiet though among the ruined relics of other days, and delight to glean wisdom and content from the antiquities of a peaceful village sanctuary, and whose very soul is on fire when in thc midst of a library, rich with the literature of old."

-- F. Somner Merryweather, from his "Preface" to Bibliomania in the Middle Ages: or, Sketches of bookworms, collectors, Bible students, scribes, and illuminators from the Anglo Saxon and Norman Periods, to the introduction of printing into England