Of the date of 1624 is a book of magnificent penmanship, by the hand of a female, of emblems and inscriptions. It is bound in crimson silk, having in the centre a Prince’s Feather worked in gold-thread, with the feathers bound together with large pearls, and round it a wreath of leaves and flowers. Round the edge there is a broader wreath, with corner sprigs all in gold thread, thickly interspersed with spangles and gold leaves.
All these books, with the exception of the one quoted from Ballard’s Memoirs, were most obligingly sought out and brought to me by the gentlemen at the British Museum. Probably there are more; but as, unfortunately for my purpose, the books there are catalogued according to their authors, their contents, or their intrinsic value, instead of their outward seeming, it is not easy, amidst three or four hundred thousand volumes, to pick out each insignificant book which may happen to be—
“In velvet bound and broider’d o’er.”
FOOTNOTES:
[126] Southey.
[127] We have seen cartouche-boxes embroidered precisely in the same style, and probably therefore of the same period as some of the embroidered books here referred to.
[128] Ballard’s Memoirs.