A Christian exhortacion unto customable swearers: by Miles Coverdale (A more or less recent tract whose title tickled him).
Cooper’s Chronicle, of the Kings’ Successions, ‘wyth divers profitable Histories’ (Also recent, as brought up to date to the seventh year of the Queen’s Majesty’s reign).
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, with the Caxton imprint.
Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (done into English by Robynson, with the date 1551, though, if in the original Latin, it had possessed small difficulties for him).
The Bayte and Snare of Fortune: by Roger Bieston (a highly moral discourse, ‘treated in a Dialogue betwene man and money,’ and printed ‘At the signe of the Sunne over against the conduite in Fletestrete’).
The obedyence of a Chrysten Man: by William Tyndale, translator of the Bible—
And some others. There were also a good many books, contentious or expository, on Romish theology, and quite a number of illuminated Vulgates, Psalters, Passionales, Lectionariums, Graduals, Breviaries and Books of Hours, most of which were of extreme value and beauty. All these gave him great satisfaction in prospect, as, with one possible exception, they most certainly would not do to a Brion of to-day; but the small reading of 1574, excluding such levities as the Decamerone and the impossible extravagances of Sir John Mandeville, to be seemly had to be dull. Even the unprecedented Knight of la Mancha had not yet stalked into print; and Gulliver and Robinson Crusoe were decades away.
The boy was browsing one afternoon among these illuminated volumes, enjoying the beauty of their convoluted designs and brilliantly-pictured legends, when he saw something which sent the blood back upon his heart in a curious little shock. He had taken down a Book of Hours, Horae Beatae Virginis Mariae ad Usum Romanum, cum Calendario—a fair little volume in Roman letter with splendid wood-cuts—when, in turning over the leaves he discovered a name upon the title page—Jane Middleton Baggott: her booke: 1554: at Gray’s Inne.
He was squatting on the floor. Gently he put the little volume down in his lap, and turned his head to gaze out of the great west window, which looked into the Court. It was very still; a light brooding mist filled the air; there were swallows skimming and diving under the eaves. But he saw nothing material: only the softness and quietude of things seemed consonant with the wistful abstraction his eyes expressed.
‘One sister; but she died.’ Clerivault’s unwilling words came back to his mind—and again others spoken by his Uncle, when he had taken his face between his hands and read some likeness there. Jane Middleton—had that been her name; and was it the memory of that dead sister which had seemed to move the brother so deeply when gazing into his eyes? Middleton! and he himself was so called—why? A queer unforgotten word once uttered by his lost love recurred to him—not for the first time. Was here the clue to the long riddle? Some shadowy suspicion of the truth had already flitted through his soul—from ages ago—from the day when the pale pretty lady had stopped her horse to speak to him. He felt again her kiss upon his baby lips; he felt——