"'About a score of the more out-of-the-way works in my possession, belonged to some unknown person, who seems carefully to have gleaned the bookstalls a little before and after the year 1790. He marked them with certain ciphers, always at the end of the volume. They are in various languages, and I never found his mark in any book that was not worth buying, or that I should not have bought without that indication to induce me. All were in ragged condition, and having been dispersed on the owner's death, probably as of no value, to the stalls they had returned; and there I found this portion of them, just before my old haunts as a book-hunter in the metropolis were disforested, to make room for improvements between Westminster and Oxford-road. I have endeavored, without success, to discover the name of their former possessor.' * * * *
"'Yonder Chronicle of King D. Manoel, by Damiam de Goes, and yonder General History of Spain, by Esteban de Garibay, are signed by their respective authors. The minds of these laborious and useful scholars are in their works; but you are brought into a more perfect relation with them when you see the page upon which you know that their eyes have rested, and the very characters which their hands have traced. This copy of Casaubon's Epistles was sent to me from Florence by Walter Landor. He had perused it carefully, and to that perusal we are indebted for one of the most pleasing of his Conversations. These letters had carried him in spirit to the age of their writer, and shown James I. to him in the light in which James was regarded by cotemporary scholars; and, under the impression thus produced, Landor has written of him in his happiest mood, calmly, philosophically, feelingly, and with no more favorable leaning than justice will always manifest when justice is in good-humor, and in charity with all men. The book came from the palace library at Milan … how or when abstracted I know not; but this beautiful dialogue would never have been written had it remained there in its place upon the shelf, for the worms to finish the work which they had begun.' * * * *
"'Here is a book with which Lauderdale amused himself, when Cromwell kept him prisoner in Windsor Castle. He has recorded his state of mind during that imprisonment, by inscribing in it, with his name and dates of time, the Latin word Durate, and the Greek Οὶστέον καὶ ἐλπιοτέον. The date is 22d Oct. 1657. The book is the Pia Hilaria Angelini Gazæi…. Here is a memorial of a different kind, inscribed in this "Rule of Penance of St. Francis," as it is ordered for religious women…. "I beseech my dear mother humbly to accept of this exposition of our holy rule, the better to conceive what your poor child ought to be who daly beges your blessing. Constantia Francisco." And here are the Apophthemata, collected by Conrad Lycosthenes, and published, after drastic expurgation by the Jesuits, as a commonplace book,—some Portuguese has entered a hearty vow, that he would never part with the book, nor lend it to any one. Very different was my poor old Lisbon acquaintance, the abbé, who, after the old humorous form, wrote in all his books, and he had a rare collection, Ex libris Francisci Garnier, et amicorum.'
"Sir Thomas More.—'How peaceably they stand together…. Papists and Protestants side by side!'
"Montesinos.—'Their very dust reposes not more quietly in the cemetery. Ancient and modern, Jew and Gentile, Mohammedan and Crusader, French and English, Spaniards and Portuguese, Dutch and Brazilians, fighting their old battles silently now upon the shelf; Fernam Lopez and Pedro de Ayala; John de Laet and Barlæus, with the historians of Joam Ferandes Vieira; Fox's Martyrs, and the Three Conversations of Father Persons; Cranmer and Stephen Gardiner; Dominican and Franciscan; Jesuit and Philosophe, equally misnamed: Churchmen and Sectarians; Roundheads and Cavaliers!
"Here are God's conduits, grave divines; and here
Is nature's secretary, the philosopher;
And wily statesmen, which teach how to tie
The sinews of a city's mystic body;
Here gathering chroniclers; and by them stand