Читать книгу The Book of Trinity College Dublin 1591-1891 онлайн

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But most probably the great want in Dublin was the want of books. There must have been a very widespread complaint of this, when it occurred to the army which had defeated the Spaniards at Kinsale (in 1601) to give a large sum from their spoil for books to endow the new College.ssss1 This sent the famous James Ussher to search for books in England, and laid the foundation for that splendid collection of which the Archbishop’s own books formed the next great increase, obtained by the new military donation of Cromwell’s soldiers in 1654. There is probably no other so great library in the world endowed by the repeated liberality of soldiers. Still we hear that, even after the founding of the collection, James Ussher thought it necessary to go every third year to England, and to spend in reading a month at Oxford, a month at Cambridge, and a month in London, for the purpose of adding to that mass of his learning which most of us would think already excessive. Yet it is a pity that smaller men, in more recent days, did not follow his example, and so save the College from that provincialism with which it was infected even in our own recollection.