A Literary Antiquary

Printed bookes he contemnes, as a novelty of this latter age;
but a manuscript he pores on everlastingly; especially if the
cover be all moth-eaten, and the dust make a parenthesis
between every syllable.

MICO-COSMOGRAPHIE, 1628.

The squire receives great sympathy and support in his antiquated humours
from the parson, of whom I made some mention on my former visit to the
Hall, and who acts as a kind of family chaplain. He has been cherished
by the squire almost constantly since the time that they were
fellow-students at Oxford; for it is one of the peculiar advantages of
these great universities that they often link the poor scholar to the
rich patron, by early and heartfelt ties, that last through life,
without the usual humiliations of dependence and patronage. Under the
fostering protection of the squire, therefore, the little parson has
pursued his studies in peace. Having lived almost entirely among books,
and those, too, old books, he is quite ignorant of the world, and his
mind is as antiquated as the garden at the Hall, where the flowers are
all arranged in formal beds, and the yew-trees clipped into urns and
peacocks.

His taste for literary antiquities was first imbibed in the Bodleian
Library at Oxford; where, when a student, he passed many an hour
foraging among the old manuscripts. He has since, at different times,
visited most of the curious libraries in England, and has ransacked many
of the cathedrals. With all his quaint and curious learning, he has
nothing of arrogance or pedantry; but that unaffected earnestness and
guileless simplicity which seem to belong to the literary antiquary.

He is a dark, mouldy little man, and rather dry in his manner: yet, on
his favourite theme, he kindles up, and at times is even eloquent. No
fox-hunter, recounting his last day's sport, could be more animated than
I have seen the worthy parson, when relating his search after a curious
document, which he had traced from library to library, until he fairly
unearthed it in the dusty chapter-house of a cathedral. When, too, he
describes some venerable manuscript, with its rich illuminations, its
thick creamy vellum, its glossy ink, and the odour of the cloisters that
seemed to exhale from it he rivals the enthusiasm of a Parisian epicure,
expatiating on the merits of a Perigord pie, or a _Pâté de Strasbourg_.

His brain seems absolutely haunted with love-sick dreams about gorgeous
old works in "silk linings, triple gold bands, and tinted leather,
locked up in wire cases, and secured from the vulgar hands of the mere
reader;" and, to continue the happy expression of an ingenious writer,
"dazzling one's eyes, like eastern beauties peering through their