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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: secular as well as sacred, if they contained but illuminated letters.
Unable to read, they saw no difference between romance and a psalter,
between King Arthur and King David; and so the paper books with all
their artistic ornaments went to the bakers to heat their ovens,
and the parchment manuscripts, however beautifully illuminated,
to the binders and boot makers.
There is another kind of ignorance which has often worked destruction,
as shown by the following anecdote, which is extracted from a letter
written in 1862 by M. Philarete Chasles to Mr. B. Beedham, of Kimbolton:--
"Ten years ago, when turning out an old closet in the Mazarin Library,
of which I am librarian, I discovered at the bottom, under a lot
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