Puritan government merely wanted an overseer. So, by the determination of others, the post of deputy keeper of the King's Library was little but a sinecure for Dury, leaving him free to pursue his many other interests but powerless to implement the reforms he advocated in his pamphlet within the only library over which he ever had direct control. Though he retained the post until the Restoration, he left the library itself early in 1654, never to return.

The DNB notes that Dury's life was "an incessant round of journeyings, colloquies, correspondence, and publications." The account might also have added that, sadly, it was a life of many failures and frustrations, since his visionary scheme for the wholeness of life was so out of touch with the jealousies and rivalries of those he encountered. But if the larger vision that underlay The Reformed Librarie-Keeper is now merely a historical curiosity, the specific reforms that Dury advocated, as seemingly impractical in his own time as his other schemes, proved to be of lasting importance. Shorn of the millenarian vision that gave them their point in Dury's own day, his ideas have become the accepted standards of modern librarianship. Dury himself would not have been heartened by his secular acceptance: "… For except Sciences bee reformed in order to this Scope [of the Christian and millenarian vision], the increas of knowledg will increas nothing but strife, pride and confusion, from whence our sorrows will bee multiplied and propagated unto posteritie…." (p. 31).

Thomas F. Wright William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION

[Footnote 1: For Dury's biography, see J. Minton Batten, John Dury, Advocate of Christian Reunion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944).]

[Footnote 2: On the relation of Dury, Hartlib, and Comenius, see G.H.
Turnbull, Hartlib, Dury and Comenius (Liverpool: University Press of
Liverpool, 1947).]

[Footnote 3: Hugh Trevor-Roper, "Three Foreigners: The Philosophers of the Puritan Revolution," in his Religion, the Reformation, and Social Change, and Other Essays, 2d ed. (London: Macmillan, 1972), 240.]

[Footnote 4: On the philosophical and theological theories of Dury,
Hartlib, and Comenius, see Richard H. Popkin, "The Third Force in
Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, Scepticism, Science, and Biblical
Prophecy," Nouvelles de la République des Lettres (Spring 1983), and
Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine, and Reform,
1626-1660 (London: Duckworth, 1975).]

[Footnote 5: Quoted in Turnbull, 257.]

[Footnote 6: Athenae Oxonienses, vol. 2 (London, 1692), col. 400.]

[Footnote 7: The omitted works are An Idea of Mathematicks by John Pell (pp. 33-46) and The description of one of the chiefest Libraries which is in Germanie, attributed either to Julius Scheurl or J. Schwartzkopf (pp. [47]-65, in Latin). This seems to be the first printing of The description, which was published separately at Wolfenbuttel in 1653. John Pell's essay was written around 1630-34 and was prepared for publication in 1634 by Hartlib, but was only actually published as an addition to The Reformed Librarie-Keeper. It was of some importance in making mathematics better known at the time.]

[Footnote 8: "John Durie's Reformed Librarie-Keeper and Its Author's
Career as a Librarian," The Library, 1st ser. 4 (1892), 82.]

[Footnote 9: Ruth Shepard Granniss, "Biographical Sketch," The Reformed
Librarie-Keeper (Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1906), 31-32.]

[Footnote 10: See "John Durie's Reformed Librarie-Keeper," 83.]

[Footnote 11: Richard Garnett, "Librarianship in the Seventeenth
Century," in his Essays in Librarianship and Bibliography (New York:
F.P. Harper, 1899), 187.]

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The Reformed Librarie Keeper With a Supplement to the Reformed School (1650) is reproduced from the copy in the Folger Shakespeare Library (Shelf Mark D2882/Bd w/D2883). A typical type page (p. 7) measures 107 x 56 mm. Not reproduced here are two additional parts in the original volume: An Idea of Mathematicks by John Pell and The description of one of the chiefest Libraries which is in Germanie, attributed either to Julius Scheurl or J. Schwartzkopf.

THE REFORMED LIBRARIE-KEEPER

With a Supplement to the

Reformed-School,

As subordinate to Colleges in Universities.

BY

JOHN DURIE.

Whereunto is added

I. An idea of Mathematicks.

II. The description of one of the chiefest Libraries which is in Germanie, erected and ordered by one of the most Learned Princes in Europe.

LONDON,

Printed by William Du-Gard, and are to bee sold by Rob. Littleberrie at the sign of the Unicorn in Little Britain. 1650.

To the Reader.

Learned Reader!

These Tracts are the fruits of som of my Sollicitations and Negotiations for the advancement of Learning. And I hope they may in time becom somwhat effectual to rais thy Spirit to the exspectation of greater things, which may bee raised upon such grounds as these. All which are but preparatives towards that perfection which wee may exspect by the advancement of the Kingdom of Christ, wherein the Communion of Saints, by the graces of the Spirit, will swallow up all these poor Rudiments of knowledg, which wee now grope after by so manie helps; and till then in those endeavors I rest in the Truth.

Thy faithfull and unwearied servant

SAMUEL HARTLIB.

A SUPPLEMENT TO THE Reformed School.

Loving freind!

You have offered to mee that which I confess I did not reflect upon, when I wrote the discours you have Published under the name of a Reformed School; which is, that som may think by the waie of Education, which I propose all Universities and eminent places of Learning might subtilly bee undermined and made useless, becaus therein a waie is shew'd how to initiate youths not onely to the Principles of all Religious and Rational knowledg, and in the Exercises of all Moral virtues, but in the grounds of all Civil emploiments, so far, as will make them fit for all profitable undertakings in humane societies, whence this will follow (in their apprehensions) that they shall have no advantage by beeing sent to anie Universities, to attein anie further perfection: becaus the Universities will not bee able to add anie thing unto them, which by their own Industrie, they may not afterward attein anie where els, as well as there. Truly it never came into my thoughts, either directly or indirectly to make Universities useless; nor can it bee rationally infer'd from anie thing in the matter form or end of that discours of mine: but I will grant that such as can see no farther then what wee now ordinarily attein unto; and withal think that there is no Plus ultra in nature atteinable above that which they have conceived, such as I saie may frame to themselv's this jealousie