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;
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—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?"
[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!"
[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.