Stray Studies from England and ItalyGreene, John Richard
History
Stray Studies from England and Italy
Greene, John Richard
Italy -- Description and travel
The story of the library is a more certain one. From the days of
Bancroft to those of Laud it had remained secure in the rooms over the
great cloister where Parker's collection had probably stood before it
passed to Cambridge. There in Parker's day Foxe had busied himself in
work for the later editions of his 'Acts and Monuments;' even in the
present library one book at least bears his autograph and the marginal
marks of his use. There the great scholars of the seventeenth century,
with Selden among them, had carried on their labours. The time was now
come when Selden was to save the library from destruction. At the sale
of Lambeth the Parliament ordered the books and manuscripts to be sold
with the house. Selden dexterously interposed. The will of its founder,
Bancroft, he pleaded, directed that in case room should not be found for
it at Lambeth his gift should go to Cambridge; and the Parliament,
convinced by its greatest scholar, suffered the books to be sent to the
University.
When the Restoration brought the Stuart home again, it flung Scott into
the Tower and set Juxon in the ruined, desecrated walls. Of the deeper
thoughts that such a scene might have suggested few probably found
their way into the simple, limited mind of the new primate. The whole
pathos of Juxon's position lay in fact in his perfect absorption in the
past. The books were reclaimed from their Cambridge Adullam. The chapel
was rescued from desecration, and the fine woodwork of screen and stalls
replaced as Laud had left them. The demolition of the hall left him a
more serious labour, and the way in which he entered on it brought
strikingly out Juxon's temper. He knew that he had but a few years to
live, and he set himself but one work to do before he died, the
replacing everything in the state in which the storm of the rebellion
had found it. He resolved therefore not only to rebuild the hall but to
rebuild it precisely as it had stood before it was destroyed. It was in
vain that he was besieged by the remonstrances of "classical"
architects, that he was sneered at even by Pepys as "old-fashioned";
times had changed and fashions had changed, but Juxon would recognize no
change at all. He died ere the building was finished, but even in death
his inflexible will provided that his plans should be adhered to. The
result has been a singularly happy one. It was not merely that the
Archbishop has left us one of the noblest examples of that strange yet
successful revival of Gothic feeling of which the staircase of Christ
Church Hall, erected at much about the same time, furnishes so exquisite
a specimen. It is that in his tenacity to the past he has preserved the
historic interest of his hall. Beneath the picturesque woodwork of the
roof, in the quiet light that breaks through the quaint mullions of its
windows, the student may still recall without a jar the figures which
make Lambeth memorable, figures such as those of Warham and Erasmus, of
Grocyn and Colet and More.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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