with him and sat surrounded by piles of books so that it was difficult to approach him. He left his large library to Durham College, Oxford; both college and library have passed away, but the treatise which he wrote on the care of books and the proper ordering of a library still remains and gladdens the hearts of librarians. Moreover, Richard visited Italy and was a correspondent of Petrarch. Yet we cannot class him as a Humanist. His conduct towards Petrarch shows a lamentable want of interest in the problems which exercised the men of the New Learning. Petrarch meeting an inhabitant of the distant north inquired eagerly his opinion about the identification of the island of Thule. Richard answered that when he had returned home he would consult his books, and would then be able to satisfy his inquirer's curiosity. This we now know to be the proper answer for a professor to give, but wholly unsuited to a university extension lecturer and still more to a man of letters. Further, though Petrarch frequently wrote to remind Richard of his promise, he received no answer: "so that," he sadly remarks, "my English friendship brought me no nearer to Thule". It may be urged that Richard knew nothing about the subject on which his opinion was asked; but the duty of a scholar was to disguise his ignorance by drawing attention to the beautiful style in which he could clothe it with irrelevant remarks about everything else. Certainly a man who lost an opportunity of writing a long and elegant Latin letter to Petrarch, even though he had nothing to say, has no claim to be considered a Humanist.
