ancient Art of Illuminating shed its latest rays, I pray you fail not
carefully to inspect it: for you will find it a copy of that edition
printed at his own palace, by John Day; with many leaves impressed on
vellum, and the whole of the book carefully ruled with red-ink lines,
the initials coloured and gilded, and all the Armorial Ensigns, with
the Frontispiece, excellently well emblazoned. And I pray you also,
forget not well to note the binding; since a richer, or more fancifully
embroidered covering there are few tomes which can exhibit. The ground
of it is green velvet, intended to represent the _vert_ of a park, and
it is surrounded by a broad border of pales with a gate, worked in
brown silk and gold twist; whilst within are trees, flowers, shrubs,
tufts of grass, serpents, hinds, and does, all executed in richly
coloured silks, and gold and silver wire. At the back are the Queen’s
badges of red and white roses; the edges of the leaves are gilt, and
the volume was once secured by ribbons of crimson silk.
“Of this most splendid book I must, indeed, yet add another word,
that it may be estimated as it so well deserves. Dr. Ducarel, in
his account of that astonishing copy of it which is deposited in
the Archiepiscopal Palace at Lambeth, says, ‘It was first printed
at Lambeth by John Daye in 1572; and so small a number were then
published, that, except this complete copy, there is but one extant
in England, known to be so, which is preserved in the Public Library
of Cambridge, as I am informed.’ See his Letter of July the 15th,
1758, addressed to Archbishop Secker, which is inserted in the Rev.
H. J. Todd’s ‘_Catalogue of the Archiepiscopal Manuscripts in Lambeth
Palace_.’ London, 1812, folio, page 242, Art. 959.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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