[Illustration]

=The Drawing Room.=

HISTORY OF THE BIBLIOMANIA, OR ACCOUNT OF BOOK-COLLECTORS, CONTINUED.

Volatile as the reader may comceive [Transcriber's Note: conceive] the character of Lisardo to be, there were traits in it of marked goodness and merit. His enthusiasm so frequently made him violate the rules of severe politeness; and the quickness with which he flew from one subject to another, might have offended a narrator of the gravity, without the urbanity, of Lysander; had not the frankness with which he confessed his faults, and the warmth with which he always advocated the cause of literature, rendered him amiable in the eyes of those who thoroughly knew him. The friends, whose company he was now enjoying, were fully competent to appreciate his worth. They perceived that Lisardo's mind had been rather brilliantly cultivated; and that, as his heart had always beaten at the call of virtue, so, in a due course of years, his judgment would become matured, and his opinions more decidedly fixed. He had been left, very early in life, without a father, and bred up in the expectation of a large fortune; while the excessive fondness of his mother had endeavoured to supply the want of paternal direction, and had encouraged her child to sigh for every thing short of impossibility for his gratification.

In consequence, Lisardo was placed at College upon the most respectable footing. He wore the velvet cap, and enjoyed the rustling of the tassels upon his silk gown, as he paraded the High street of Oxford. But although he could translate Tacitus and Theocritus with creditable facility, he thought it more advantageous to gratify the cravings of his body than of his mind. He rode high-mettled horses; he shot with a gun which would have delighted an Indian prince; he drank freely out of cut-glasses, which were manufactured according to his own particular taste; and wines of all colours and qualities sparkled upon his table; he would occasionally stroll into the Bodleian Library and Picture Gallery, in order to know whether any acquisitions had been recently made to them; and attended the Concerts when any performer came down from London. Yet, in the midst of all his gaiety, Lisardo passed more sombrous than joyous hours: for when he looked into a book, he would sometimes meet with an electrical sentence from Cicero, Seneca, or Johnson, from which he properly inferred that life was uncertain, and that time was given us to prepare for eternity.

He grew dissatisfied and melancholy. He scrambled through his terms; took his degree; celebrated his anniversary of twenty-one, by drenching his native village in ale which had been brewed at his birth; added two wings to his father's house; launched out into coin and picture collecting; bought fine books with fine bindings; then sold all his coins and pictures; and, at the age of twenty-five, began to read, and think, and act for himself.

At this crisis, he became acquainted with the circle which has already been introduced to the reader's attention; and to which circle the same reader may think it high time now to return.

Upon breaking up for THE DRAWING ROOM, it was amusing to behold the vivacity of Lisardo; who, leaping about Lysander, and expressing his high gratification at the discourse he had already heard, and his pleasure at what he hoped yet to hear, reminded us of what Boswell has said of Garrick, who used to flutter about Dr. Johnson, and try to soften his severity by a thousand winning gestures.

The doors were opened; and we walked into Lorenzo's Drawing Room. The reader is not to figure to himself a hundred fantastical and fugitive pieces of furniture, purchased at Mr. Oakley's, and set off with curtains, carpet, and looking-glasses--at a price which would have maintained a country town of seven hundred poor with bread and soup during the hardest winter--the reader will not suppose that a man of Lorenzo's taste, who called books his best wealth, would devote two thousand pounds to such idle trappings; which in the course of three years, at farthest, would lose their comfort by losing their fashion.

But he will suppose that elegance and propriety were equally consulted by our host.

Accordingly, a satin-wood book-case of 14 feet in width and 11 in height, ornamented at the top with a few chaste Etruscan vases--a light blue carpet, upon which were depicted bunches of grey roses, shadowed in brown--fawn-coloured curtains, relieved with yellow silk and black velvet borders--alabaster lamps shedding their soft light upon small marble busts--and sofas and chairs corresponding with the curtains--(and upon which a visitor might sit without torturing the nerves of the owner of them) these, along with some genuine pictures of Wouvermans, Berghem, and Rysdael, and a few other (subordinate) ornaments, formed the furniture of Lorenzo's Drawing Room. As it was _en suite_ with the library, which was fitted up in a grave style or character, the contrast was sufficiently pleasing.

Lisardo ran immediately to the book-case. He first eyed, with a greedy velocity, the backs of the folios and quartos; then the octavos; and, mounting an ingeniously-contrived mahogany rostrum, which moved with the utmost facility, he did not fail to pay due attention to the duodecimos; some of which were carefully preserved in Russia or morocco backs, with water-tabby silk linings, and other appropriate embellishments. In the midst of his book-reverie, he heard, on a sudden, the thrilling notes of a harp--which proceeded from the further end of the library!--it being Lorenzo's custom, upon these occasions, to request an old Welch servant to bring his instrument into the library, and renew, if he could, the strains of "other times." Meanwhile the curtains were "let fall;" the sofa wheeled round;

--and the cups That cheer, but not inebriate,

with "the bubbling and loud hissing urn," "welcomed the evening in."

Lorenzo brought from his library a volume of Piranesi, and another of engravings from the heads of Vandyke. Lisardo, in looking at them, beat time with his head and foot; and Philemon and Lysander acknowledged that Dr. Johnson himself could never have so much enjoyed the beverage which was now before them.

If it should here be asked, by the critical reader, why our society is not described as being more congenial, by the presence of those "whom man was born to please," the answer is at once simple and true--Lorenzo was a bachelor; and his sisters, knowing how long and desperate would be our discussion upon the black letter and white letter, had retreated, in the morning, to spend the day with Lisardo's mother--whither ---- ---- had been invited to join them.

The harper had now ceased. The tea-things were moved away; when we narrowed our circle, and, two of us upon the sofa, and three upon chairs, entreated Lysander to resume his narrative; who, after "clearing his pipes (like Sir Roger de Coverley) with a loud hem or two," thus proceeded.

"I think we left off," said Lysander, "with seating HENRY THE EIGHTH upon the throne of England. It will be as well, therefore, to say something of this monarch's pretensions to scholarship and love of books. Although I will not rake together every species of abuse which has been vented against him by one Anthony Gilbie,[291] yet Henry must be severely censured, in the estimation of the most candid inquirer, for that gross indifference which he evinced to the real interests of literature, in calmly suffering the libraries of convents and monasteries to be pillaged by the crafty and rapacious. He was bibliomaniac enough to have a few copies of his own work, in defence of the Roman Catholic exposition of the Sacrament, struck off UPON VELLUM:[292] but when he quarrelled with the Roman pontiff about his divorce from Queen Catharine, in order to marry Anne Boleyn,[293] he sounded the tocsin for the eventful destruction of all monastic libraries: and although he had sent Leland, under an express commission, to make a due examination of them, as well as a statistical survey of the realm, yet, being frustrated in the forementioned darling object, he cared for nothing about books, whether _upon vellum_ or _large paper_. But had we not better speak of the book ravages, during the reformation, in their proper place?"

[Footnote 291: "In the time (saith he) of King HENRIE THE EIGHT, when by Tindall, Frith, Bilney, and other his faithful seruantes, God called England to dresse his vineyarde, many promise ful faire, whome I coulde name, but what fruite followed? Nothing but bitter grapes, yea, bryers and brambles, the wormewood of auarice, the gall of crueltie, the poison of filthie fornication, flowing from head to fote, the contempt of God, and open defence of the cake idole, by open proclamation to be read in the churches in steede of God's Scriptures. Thus was there no reformation, but a deformation, in the time of the tyrant and lecherouse monster. The bore I graunt was busie, wrooting and digging in the earth, and all his pigges that followed him, but they sought onely for the pleasant fruites, that they winded with their long snoutes; and for their own bellies sake, they wrooted up many weeds; but they turned the grounde so, mingling goode and badde togeather, sweet and sower, medecine and poyson, they made, I saye, suche confusion of religion and lawes, that no good thinge could growe, but by great miracle, under suche gardeners.

And no maruaile, if it be rightlye considered. For this bore raged against God, against the Divell, against Christe, and against Antichrist, as the fome that he cast oute against Luther, the racing out of the name of the pope, and yet allowing his lawes, and his murder of many Christian souldiars, and of many Papists, doe declare and evidentlie testifie unto us; especially the burning of Barnes, Jerome, and Garrette, their faithfull preachers of the truthe, and hanging the same daye for the maintenaunce of the pope, Poel, Abel, and Fetherstone, dothe clearlie painte his beastlines, that he cared for no religion. This monsterous bore for all this must needes be called the head of the church in paine of treason, displacing Christ, our onely head, who ought alone to haue this title." _Admonition to England and Scotland, &c._, Geneva, 1558, p. 69. Quoted by Stapleton in his _Counter Blaste to Horne's Vayne Blaste_, Lovan., 1567, 4to., fol. 23. Gilbie was a Protestant; upon which Stapleton who was a rigid Roman Catholic, shrewdly remarks in the margin: "See how religiously the Protestantes speak of their princes!"]

[Footnote 292: Mr. Edwards informs me that he has had a copy of the "_Assertio Septem Sacramentorum aduersus Martin Lutherum_," &c. (printed by Pynson in 4to., both with and without date--1521), UPON VELLUM. The presentation copy to Henry, and perhaps another to Wolsey, might have been of this nature. I should have preferred a similar copy of the small book, printed a few years afterwards, in 12mo., of Henry's Letters in answer to Luther's reply to the foregoing work. This is not the place to talk further of these curious pieces. I have seen some of Pynson's books printed upon vellum; which are not remarkable for their beauty.]

[Footnote 293: Those readers who are not in possession of Hearne's rare edition of _Robert de Avesbury_, 1720, 8vo., and who cannot, in consequence, read the passionate letters of Henry VIII. to his beloved Boleyn, which form a leading feature in the Appendix to the same, will find a few extracts from them in the _British Bibliographer_; vol. ii., p. 78. Some of the monarch's signatures, of which Hearne has given fac-similes, are as follow:

[Illustration]

When one thinks of the then imagined happiness of the fair object of these epistles--and reads the splendid account of her coronation dinner, by Stow--contrasting it with the melancholy circumstances which attended her death--one is at loss to think, or to speak, with sufficient force, of the fickleness of all sublunary grandeur! The reader may, perhaps, wish for this, "coronation dinner?" It is, in part, strictly as follows: "While the queen was in her chamber, every lord and other that ought to do service at the coronation, did prepare them, according to their duty: as the Duke of Suffolk, High-Steward of England, which was richly apparelled--his doublet and jacket set with orient pearl, his gown crimson velvet embroidered, his courser trapped with a close trapper, head and all, to the ground, of crimson velvet, set full of letters of gold, of goldsmith's work; having a long white rod in his hand. On his left-hand rode the Lord William, deputy for his brother, as Earl Marshall, with ye marshal's rod, whose gown was crimson velvet, and his horse's trapper purple velvet cut on white satin, embroidered with white lions. The Earl of Oxford was High Chamberlain; the Earl of Essex, carver; the Earl of Sussex, sewer; the Earl of Arundel, chief butler; on whom 12 citizens of London did give their attendance at the cupboard; the Earl of Derby, cup-bearer; the Viscount Lisle, panter; the Lord Burgeiny, chief larder; the Lord Broy, almoner for him and his copartners; and the Mayor of Oxford kept the buttery-bar: and Thomas Wyatt was chosen ewerer for Sir Henry Wyatt, his father." "When all things were ready and ordered, THE QUEEN, under her canopy, came into the hall, and washed; and sat down in the middest of the table, under her cloth of estate. On the right side of her chair stood the Countess of Oxford, widow: and on her left hand stood the Countess of Worcester, all the dinner season; which, divers times in the dinner time, did hold a fine cloth before the Queen's face, when she list to spit, or do otherwise at her pleasure. And at the table's end sate the Archbishop of Canterbury, on the right hand of the Queen; and in the midst, between the Archbishop and the Countess of Oxford, stood the Earl of Oxford, with a white staff, all dinner time; and at the Queen's feet, under the table, sate two gentlewomen all dinner time. When all these things were thus ordered, came in the Duke of Suffolk and the Lord William Howard on horseback, and the Serjeants of arms before them, and after them the sewer; and then the knights of the Bath, bringing in the _first course_, which was eight and twenty dishes, besides subtleties, and ships made of wax, marvellous gorgeous to behold: all which time of service, the trumpets standing in the window, at the nether end of the hall, played," &c. _Chronicles_; p. 566: edit.

1615, fol.]

LORENZ. As you please. Perhaps you will go on with the mention of some distinguished patrons 'till you arrive at that period?

LYSAND. Yes; we may now as well notice the efforts of that extraordinary _bibliomaniacal triumvirate_, Colet, More, and Erasmus.

PHIL. Pray treat copiously of them. They are my great favourites. But can you properly place Erasmus in the list?

LYSAND. You forget that he made a long abode here, and was Greek professor at Cambridge. To begin, then, with the former. COLET, as you well know, was Dean of St. Paul's; and founder of the public school which goes by the latter name. He had an ardent and general love of literature;[294] but his attention to the improvement of youth, in superintending appropriate publications, for their use, was unremitting. Few men did so much and so well, at this period: for while he was framing the statutes by which his little community was to be governed, he did not fail to keep the presses of Wynkyn De Worde and Pynson pretty constantly at work, by publishing the grammatical treatises of Grocyn, Linacre, Stanbridge, Lilye, Holte, Whittington, and others--for the benefit, as well of the public, as of his own particular circle. I take it, his library must have been both choice and copious; for books now began to be multiplied in an immense ratio, and scholars and men of rank thought _a Study_, or _Library_, of some importance to their mansions. What would we not give for an authenticated representation of Dean Colet in his library,[295]

surrounded with books? You, Lisardo, would be in ecstacies with such a thing!

[Footnote 294: How anxiously does COLET seem to have watched the progress, and pushed the sale, of his friend Erasmus's first edition of the Greek Testament! "Quod scribis de Novo Testamento intelligo. Et libri novae editionis tuae _hic avide emuntur et passim leguntur_!" The entire epistle (which may be seen in Dr. Knight's dry Life of Colet, p. 315) is devoted to an account of Erasmus's publications. "I am really astonished, my dear Erasmus (does he exclaim), at the fruitfulness of your talents; that, without any fixed residence, and with a precarious and limited income, you contrive to publish so many and such excellent works."

Adverting to the distracted state of Germany at this period, and to the wish of his friend to live secluded and unmolested, he observes--"As to the tranquil retirement which you sigh for, be assured that you have my sincere wishes for its rendering you as happy and composed as you can wish it. Your age and erudition entitle you to such a retreat. I fondly hope, indeed, that you will choose this country for it, and come and live amongst us, whose disposition you know, and whose friendship you have proved."

There is hardly a more curious picture of the custom of the times relating to the education of boys, than the Dean's own Statutes for the regulation of St. Paul's School, which he had founded. These shew, too, the _popular books_ then read by the learned. "The children shall come unto the school in the morning at seven of the clock, both winter and summer, and tarry there until eleven; and return again at one of the clock, and depart at five, &c. In the school, no time in the year, they shall use tallow candle, in no wise, but _only wax candle_, at the costs of their friends. Also I will they bring no meat nor drink, nor bottle, nor use in the school no breakfasts, nor drinkings, in the time of learning, in no wise, &c. I will they use no cockfighting, nor riding about of victory, nor disputing at Saint Bartholomew, which is but foolish babbling and loss of time." The master is then restricted, under the penalty of 40 shillings, from granting the boys a holiday, or "remedy" (play-day), as it is here called, "except the king, an archbishop, or a bishop, present in his own person in the school, desire it." The studies for the lads were "Erasmus's _Copia_ et _Institutum Christiani Hominii_ (composed at the Dean's request), _Lactantius_, _Prudentius_, _Juvencus_, _Proba_ and _Sedulius_, and _Baptista Mantuanus_, and such other as shall be thought convenient and most to purpose unto the true Latin speech; all barbary, all corruption, all Latin adulterate, which ignorant blind fools brought into this world, and with the same hath distained and poisoned the old Latin speech, and the _veray_ Roman tongue, which in the time of Tully, and Sallust, and Virgil, and Terence, was used--I say, that filthiness, and all such abusion, which the later blind world brought in, which more rather may be called BLOTERATURE than LITERATURE, I utterly banish and exclude out of THIS SCHOOL." Knight's _Life of Colet_, 362, 4. The sagacious reader will naturally enough conclude that boys, thus educated, would, afterwards, of necessity, fall victims to the ravages of the BIBLIOMANIA!]

[Footnote 295: I wish it were in my power to come forward with any stronger degree of probability than the exhibition of the subjoined cut, of what might have been the interior of _Dean Colet's Study_. This print is taken from an old work, printed in the early part of the sixteenth century, and republished in a book of Alciatus's emblems, translated from the Latin into Italian, A.D. 1549, 8vo. There is an air of truth about it; but the frame work is entirely modern, and perhaps not in the purest taste. It may turn out that this interior view of a private library is somewhat too perfect and finished for the times of Colet, in this country; especially if we may judge from the rules to be observed in completing a public one, just about the period of Colet's death: "Md. couenawntyd and agreid wyth Comell Clerke, for the making off the dextis in the library, (of Christ Church College, Oxford) to the summe off xvi, after the maner and forme as they be in Magdalyn college, except the popie heedes off the seites, this to be workmanly wrought and clenly, and he to have all manner off stooff foond hym, and to have for the makyng off one dexte xs.

the sum off the hole viii. li. Item: borowd att Magdaleyn college one c. off v. d nayle, a c. off vi. d nayle, dim. c.

x. d. nayle."--_Antiquities of Glastonbury_; edit. Hearne, p. 307.

[Illustration]]

LIS. Pray don't make such tantalizing appeals to me! Proceed, proceed.

LYSAND. Of this amiable and illustrious character I will only further observe that he possessed solid, good sense--unaffected and unshaken piety--a love towards the whole human race--and that he dignified his attachment to learning by the conscientious discharge of his duty towards God and man. He sleeps in peace beneath a monument, which has been consecrated by the tears of all who were related to him, and by the prayers of those who have been benefitted by his philanthropy.

Of SIR THOMAS MORE,[296] where is the schoolboy that is ignorant? He was unquestionably, next to Erasmus, the most brilliant scholar of his age: while the precious biographical memoirs of him, which have luckily descended to us, place his character, in a domestic point of view, beyond that of all his contemporaries. Dr. Wordsworth[297] has well spoken of "the heavenly mindedness" of More: but how are bibliomaniacs justly to appreciate the classical lore, and incessantly-active book-pursuits,[298] of this scholar and martyr! How he soared "above his compeers!" How richly, singularly, and curiously, was his mind furnished! Wit, playfulness, elevation, and force--all these are distinguishable in his writings, if we except his polemical compositions; which latter, to speak in the gentlest terms, are wholly unworthy of his name. When More's head was severed from his body, virtue and piety exclaimed, in the language of Erasmus,--"He is dead: More, whose breast was purer than snow, whose genius was excellent above all his nation."[299]

[Illustration: Behold him going to execution--his beloved daughter (Mrs. Roper) rushing through the guards, to take her last embrace.]

[Footnote 296: In the first volume of my edition of SIR THOMAS MORE'S _Utopia_, the reader will find an elaborate and faithful account of the biographical publications relating to this distinguished character, together with a copious _Catalogue Raisonne_ of the engraved portraits of him, and an analysis of his English works. It would be tedious to both the reader and author, here to repeat what has been before written of Sir Thomas More--whose memory lives in every cultivated bosom. Of this edition of the Utopia there appeared a flimsy and tart censure in the _Edinburgh Review_, by a critic, who, it was manifest, had never examined the volumes, and who, when he observes upon the fidelity of Bishop Burnet's translation of the original Latin of More, was resolved, from pure love of Whiggism, to defend an author at the expense of truth.]

[Footnote 297: I have read this newly published biographical memoir of Sir Thomas More: which contains nothing very new, or deserving of particular notice in this place.]

[Footnote 298: A bibliomanical anecdote here deserves to be recorded; as it shews how More's love of books had infected even those who came to seize upon him to carry him to the Tower, and to endeavour to inveigle him into treasonable expressions:--"While Sir Richard Southwell and Mr. Palmer were bussie in _trussinge upp his bookes_, Mr. Riche, pretending," &c.--"Whereupon Mr. Palmer, on his desposition, said, that he was soe bussie about the _trussinge upp Sir Tho. Moore's bookes_ in a sacke, that he tooke no heed to there talke. Sir Richard Southwell likewise upon his disposition said, that because he was appoynted only to looke to the conveyance _of his bookes_, he gave noe ear unto them."--_Gulielmi Roperi Vita D.T. Mori_; edit Herne, p. 47, 51.]

[Footnote 299: Epistle Dedicatory to Ecclesiastes: quoted in that elegant and interesting quarto volume of the "_Lives of British Statesmen_," by the late Mr. Macdiarmid; p. 117.]

How can I speak, with adequate justice, of the author of these words!--Yes, ERASMUS!--in spite of thy timidity, and sometimes, almost servile compliances with the capricious whims of the great; in spite of thy delicate foibles, thou shalt always live in my memory; and dear to me shall be the possession of thy intellectual labours! No pen has yet done justice to thy life.[300] How I love to trace thee, in all thy bookish pursuits, from correcting the press of thy beloved Froben, to thy social meetings with Colet and More! You remember well, Lisardo,--we saw, in yonder room, a _large paper_ copy of the fine Leyden edition of this great man's works! You opened it; and were struck with the variety--the solidity, as well as gaiety, of his productions.

[Footnote 300: It were much to be wished that Mr. Roscoe, who has so successfully turned his attention to the history of _Italian Literature_, of the period of Erasmus, would devote himself to the investigation of the philological history of the German schools, and more especially to the literary life of the great man of whom Lysander is above speaking. The biographical memoirs of Erasmus by Le Clerc, anglicised and enlarged by the learned Jortin, and Dr.

Knight's life of the same, can never become popular. They want method, style and interest. Le Clerc, however, has made ample amends for the defectiveness of his biographical composition, by the noble edition of Erasmus's works which he put forth at Leyden, in the year 1703-6, in eleven volumes folio: of which volumes the reader will find an excellent analysis or review in the _Act. Erudit._, A.D.

1704, &c. Le Clerc, _Bibl. Choisie_, vol. i., 380; Du Pin's _Bibl. Eccles._, vol. xiv., and _Biblioth. Fabric_, pt. i., 359; from which latter we learn that, in the public library, at Deventer, there is a copy of Erasmus's works, in which those passages, where the author speaks freely of the laxity of the monkish character, have been defaced, "charta fenestrata." A somewhat more compressed analysis of the contents of these volumes appeared in the _Sylloge Opusculorum Hist.-Crit., Literariorum, J.A. Fabricii, Hamb._ 1738, 4to., p. 363, 378--preceded, however, by a pleasing, yet brief account of the leading features of Erasmus's literary life. Tn one of his letters to Colet, Erasmus describes himself as "a very poor fellow in point of fortune, and wholly exempt from ambition." A little before his death he sold his library to one John a Lasco, a Polonese, for only 200 florins. (Of this amiable foreigner, see Stypye's [Transcriber's Note: Strype's] _Life of Crammer_ [Transcriber's Note: Cranmer]; b. ii., ch. xxii.) Nor did he--notwithstanding his services to booksellers--and although every press was teeming with his lucubrations--and especially that of Colinaeeus--(which alone put forth 24,000 copies of his _Colloquies_) ever become much the wealthier for his talents as an author. His bibliomaniacal spirit was such, that he paid most liberally those who collated or described works of which he was in want. In another of his letters, he declares that "he shall not recieve [Transcriber's Note: receive] an _obolus_ that year; as he had spent more than what he had gained in rewarding those who had made book-researches for him;" and he complains, after being five months at Cambridge, that he had, fruitlessly, spent upwards of fifty crowns. "Noblemen," says he, "love and praise literature, and my lucubrations; but they praise and do not reward." To his friend Eobanus Hessus (vol. vi., 25), he makes a bitter complaint "de Comite quodam." For the particulars, see the last mentioned authority, p. 363, 4. In the year 1519, Godenus, to whom Erasmus had bequeathed a silver bowl, put forth a facetious catalogue of his works, in hexameter and pentameter verses; which was printed at Louvain by Martin, without date, in 4to.; and was soon succeeded by two more ample and methodical ones by the same person in 1537, 4to.; printed by Froben and Episcopius. See Marchand's _Dict. Bibliogr. et Histor._, vol. i., p. 98, 99. The bibliomaniac may not object to be informed that Froben, shortly after the death of his revered Erasmus, put forth this first edition of the entire works of the latter, in nine folio volumes; and that accurate and magnificent as is Le Clerc's edition of the same (may I venture to hint at the rarity of LARGE PAPER copies of it?), "it takes no notice of the _Index Expurgatorius_ of the early edition of Froben, which has shown a noble art of curtailing this, as well as other authors." See _Knight's Life of Erasmus_, p. 353. The mention of Froben and Erasmus, thus going down to immortality together, induces me to inform the curious reader that my friend Mr. Edwards is possessed of a chaste and elegant painting, by Fuseli, of this distinguished author and printer--the portraits being executed after the most authentic representations. Erasmus is in the act of calmly correcting the press, while Froben is urging with vehemence some emendations which he conceives to be of consequence, but to which his master seems to pay no attention! And now having presented the reader (p. 221, ante) with the _supposed_ study of Colet, nothing remains but to urge him to enter in imagination, with myself, into the _real_ study of Erasmus; of which we are presented with the exterior in the following view--taken from Dr. Knight's _Life of Erasmus_; p. 124.

[Illustration]

I shall conclude this ERASMIANA (if the reader will premit [Transcriber's Note: permit] me so to entitle it) with a wood-cut exhibition of a different kind: it being perhaps the earliest portrait of Erasmus published in this country.

It is taken from a work entitled, "_The Maner and Forme of Confesion_," printed by Byddell [Transcriber's Note: Byddel], in 8vo., without date; and is placed immediately under an address from Erasmus, to Moline, Bishop of Condome; dated 1524; in which the former complains bitterly of "the pain and grief of the reins of his back." The print is taken from a tracing of the original, made by me, from a neat copy of Byddel's edition, in the collection of Roger Wilbraham, Esq. I am free to confess that it falls a hundred degrees short of Albert Durer's fine print of him, executed A.D.

1526.

[Illustration: 1524]]

LIS. Let me go and bring it here! While you talk thus, I long to feast my eyes upon these grand books.