LOREN. Of what do you suppose he would have informed us, had he indulged this bibliographical gossipping? LIS. Of many a grand and many a curious volume. LYSAND. Not exactly so, Lisardo. The art of book-illumination in this country was then sufficiently barbarous, if at all known. LIS. And yet I'll lay a vellum Aldus that Henry the second presented his fair Rosamond with some choice _Heures de Notre Dame_! But proceed. I beg pardon for this interruption. LYSAND. Nay, there is nothing to solicit pardon for! We have each a right, around this hospitable table, to indulge our book whims: and mine may be as fantastical as any. LOREN. Pray proceed, Lysander, in your book-collecting history! unless you will permit me to make a pause or interruption of two minutes--by proposing as a sentiment--"SUCCESS TO THE BIBLIOMANIA!" PHIL. 'Tis well observed: and as every loyal subject at our great taverns drinks the health of his Sovereign "with three times three up-standing," even so let us hail this sentiment of Lorenzo! LIS. Philemon has cheated me of an eloquent speech. But let us receive the sentiment as he proposes it. LOREN. Now the uproar of Bacchus has subsided, the instructive conversation of Minerva may follow. Go on, Lysander. LYSAND. Having endeavoured to do justice to Girald Barri, I know of no other particularly distinguished bibliomaniac till we approach the aera of the incomparable ROGER, or FRIAR, BACON. I say incomparable, Lorenzo; because he was, in truth, a constellation of the very first splendour and magnitude in the dark times in which he lived; and notwithstanding a sagacious writer (if my memory be not treacherous) of the name of Coxe, chooses to tell us that he was "miserably starved to death, because he could not introduce a piece of roast beef into his stomach, on account of having made a league with Satan to eat only cheese;"[257]--yet I suspect that the end of Bacon was hastened by other means more disgraceful to the age and equally painful to himself.