IN REFECTORIO COLL. OMN. ANIM. OXON.
Bale follows closely after Leland. This once celebrated, and yet respectable, writer had probably more zeal than discretion; but his exertions in the cause of our own church can never be mentioned without admiration. I would not, assuredly, quote Bale as a decisive authority in doubtful or difficult cases;[322] but, as he lived in the times of which he in a great measure wrote, and as his society was courted by the wealthy and powerful, I am not sure whether he merits to be treated with the roughness with which some authors mention his labours. He had, certainly, a tolerable degree of strength in his English style; but he painted with a pencil which reminded us more frequently of the horrific pictures of Spagnoletti than of the tender compositions of Albano. That he idolized his master, Leland, so enthusiastically, will always cover, in my estimation, a multitude of his errors: and that he should leave a scholar's inventory (as Fuller saps), "more books than money behind him," will at least cause him to be numbered among the most renowned bibliomaniacs.
[322] Like all men, who desert a religion which they once enthusiastically profess, Bale, after being zealous for the papal superstitions, holding up his hands to rotten posts, and calling them his "fathers in heaven," (according to his own confession) became a zealous Protestant, and abused the church of Rome with a virulence almost unknown in the writings of his predecessors. But in spite of his coarseness, positiveness, and severity, he merits the great praise of having done much in behalf of the cause of literature. His attachment to Leland is, unquestionably, highly to his honour; but his biographies, especially of the Romish prelates, are as monstrously extravagant as his plays are incorrigibly dull. He had a certain rough honesty and prompt benevolence of character, which may be thought to compensate for his grosser failings. His reputation as a bibliomaniac is fully recorded in the anecdote mentioned at [p. 234], ante. His "magnum opus," the Scriptores Britanniæ, has already been noticed with sufficient minuteness; vide [p. 31], ante. It has not escaped severe animadversion. Francis Thynne tells us that Bale has "mistaken infynyte thinges in that booke de Scriptoribus Anglie, being for the most part the collections of Lelande." Illustrations of Gower and Chaucer; p. 23. Picard, in his wretched edition of Gulielmus Neubrigensis (edit. 1610, p. 672), has brought a severe accusation against the author of having "burnt or torn all the copies of the works which he described, after he had taken the titles of them;" but see this charge successfully rebutted in Dr. Pegge's Anonymiana; p. 311. That Bale's library, especially in the department of manuscripts, was both rich and curious, is indisputable, from the following passage in Strype's Life of Archbishop Parker. "The archbishop laid out for Bale's rare collection of MSS. immediately upon his death, fearing that they might be gotten by somebody else. Therefore he took care to bespeak them before others, and was promised to have them for his money, as he told Cecil. And perhaps divers of those books that do now make proud the University Library, and that of Benet and some other colleges, in Cambridge, were Bale's," p. 539. It would seem, from the same authority, that our bibliomaniac "set himself to search the libraries in Oxford, Cambridge, London (wherein there was but one, and that a slender one), Norwich, and several others in Norfolk and Suffolk: whence he had collected enough for another volume De Scriptoribus Britannicis." Ibid. The following very beautiful wood-cut of Bale's portrait is taken from the original, of the same size, in the Acta Romanorum Pontificum; Basil, 1527, 8vo. A similar one, on a larger scale, will be found in the "Scriptores," &c., published at Basil, 1557, or 1559—folio. Mr. Price, the principal librarian of the Bodleian Library, shewed me a rare head of Bale, of a very different cast of features—in a small black-letter book, of which I have forgotten the name.
Before I enter upon the reign of Elizabeth, let me pay a passing, but sincere, tribute of respect to the memory of Cranmer; whose Great Bible[323] is at once a monument of his attachment to the Protestant religion, and to splendid books. His end was sufficiently lamentable; but while the flames were consuming his parched body, and while his right hand, extended in the midst of them, was reproached by him for its former act of wavering and "offence," he had the comfort of soothing his troubled spirit by reflecting upon what his past life had exhibited in the cause of learning, morality, and religion.[324] Let his memory be respected among virtuous bibliomaniacs!
[323] I have perused what Strype (Life of Cranmer, pp. 59, 63, 444), Lewis (History of English Bibles, pp. 122-137), Johnson (Idem opus, pp. 33-42), and Herbert (Typog. Antiquities, vol. i., p. 513,) have written concerning the biblical labours of Archbishop Cranmer; but the accurate conclusion to be drawn about the publication which goes under the name of Cranmer's, or the Great Bible, not quite so clear as bibliographers may imagine. However, this is not the place to canvass so intricate a subject. It is sufficient that a magnificent impression of the Bible in the English language, with a superb frontispiece (which has been most feebly and inadequately copied for Lewis's work), under the archiepiscopal patronage of Cranmer, did make its appearance in 1539: and it has been my good fortune to turn over the leaves of the identical copy of it, printed upon vellum, concerning which Thomas Baker expatiates so eloquently to his bibliomaniacal friend, Hearne. Rob. of Gloucester's Chronicle; vol. i., p. xix. This copy is in the library of St. John's College, Cambridge; and is now placed upon a table, to the right hand, upon entering of the same: although formerly, according to Bagford's account, it was "among some old books in a private place nigh the library." Idem; p. xxii. There is a similar copy in the British Museum.
[324] "And thus"—says Strype—(in a strain of pathos and eloquence not usually to be found in his writings) "we have brought this excellent prelate unto his end, after two years and a half hard imprisonment. His body was not carried to the grave in state, nor buried, as many of his predecessors were, in his own cathedral church, nor inclosed in a monument of marble or touchstone. Nor had he any inscription to set forth his praises to posterity. No shrine to be visited by devout pilgrims, as his predecessors, S. Dunstan and S. Thomas had. Shall we therefore say, as the poet doth:
Marmoreo Licinus tumulo jacet, at Cato parvo,
Pompeius nullo. Quis putet esse Deos?
No; we are better Christians, I trust, than so: who are taught, that the rewards of God's elect are not temporal but eternal. And Cranmer's martyrdom is his monument, and his name will outlast an epitaph or a shrine." Life of Cranmer; p. 391. It would seem, from the same authority, that Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer, were permitted to dine together in prison, some little time before they suffered; although they were "placed in separate lodgings that they might not confer together." Strype saw "a book of their diet, every dinner and supper, and the charge thereof,"—as it was brought in by the bailiffs attending them.
Dinner Expenses of Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer.