INTERIOR OF THE LIBRARY OF MERTON COLLEGE
The newel posts, balusters, and hand-rails of the staircase leading to the ground-floor show in the centre of the picture, to the right and left of which are bookcases and the quaint “Jacobean” screens peculiar to this Library.
The ribbed barrel roof is covered with timber, the dormer windows which light the Library appearing on the left, over the staircase.
An old oak coffer, bound with iron, is placed to the left of the staircase.
much learning in the ore, unwrought and untried, which time and experience fashions and refines. He is good metal in the inside, though rough and unsecured without, and therefore hated of the courtier that is quite contrary. The time has got the vein of making him ridiculous, and men laugh at him by tradition, and no unlucky absurdity but is put upon his profession, and done like a scholar. But his fault is only this, that his mind is somewhat much taken up with his mind, and his thoughts not laden with any carriage besides. He has not put on the quaint garb of the age, which is now become a man’s total. He has not humbled his meditations to the industry of compliment, nor afflicted his brain in an elaborate leg. His body is not set upon nice pins, to be turning and flexible for every motion, but his scrape is homely, and his nod worse. He cannot kiss his hand and cry Madam, nor talk idly enough to bear her company. His smacking of a gentlewoman is somewhat too savoury, and he mistakes her nose for her lip. A very woodcock would puzzle him in carving, and he wants the logic of a capon. He has not the glib faculty of gliding over a tale, but his words come squeamishly out of his mouth, and the laughter commonly before the jest. He names this word College too often, and his discourse beats too much on the University. The perplexity of mannerliness will not let him feed, and he is sharp set at an argument when he should cut his meat. He is discarded for a gamester at all games but ‘one and thirty,’ and at tables he reaches not beyond doublets. His[Pg 252] fingers are not long and drawn out to handle a fiddle, but his fist is clenched with the habit of disputing. He ascends a horse somewhat sinisterly, though not on the left side, and they both go jogging in grief together. He is exceedingly censured by the Inns of Court men for that heinous vice being out of fashion. He cannot speak to a dog in his own dialect, and understands Greek better than the language of a falconer. He has been used to a dark room, and dark clothes, and his eyes dazzle at a satin doublet. The hermitage of his study makes him somewhat uncouth in the world, and men make him worse by staring on him. Thus he is silly and ridiculous, and it continues with him for some quarter of a year, out of the University. But practise him a little in men, and brush him over with good company, and he shall outbalance those glisterers as much as a solid substance does a feather, or gold gold lace.” One story is told of him. He was sharp-tempered and much beloved; his servitor was endeared to his faults, and inquired respectfully one day why his master had not boxed his ears. To which he replied “that he thought he had done so; but indeed he had forgot many things that day”; it being the day of Charles I.’s execution. Whereat the servitor wept, and received the admonition unexpectedly for his pains.[Pg 253]