ancient world were followed; and that private libraries were arranged upon the Roman model in presses, with busts, mottoes, and the like. Such was the library of Isidore, Bishop of Seville (601–636). He was a voluminous writer, and seems to have had a voluminous library, divided, if I interpret the arrangements correctly, among fourteen presses, each ornamented by one or more portrait-busts or medallions with suitable verses beneath them. The series concludes with a notice Ad interventorem, a person whom we may call A talkative intruder:
Non patitur quenquam coram se scriba loquentem:
Non est hic quod agas, garrule, perge foras.
How useful such an admonition would be in modern libraries, if only it could be enforced!
So late as the end of the twelfth century I find a Bishop who bequeathed his library to a church describing it as "the contents of my press (plenarium armarium meum)."
Gradually, however, other methods came
