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appears. Péchantré revisits the auberge; the landlord hies to the commissary, and the poor playwright is taken prisoner by a troop of the arches, with the commissary at their head. He produces the paper which he supposed to contain the plot of the conspiracy. "Ah! monsieur,” cries Péchantré, "que je suis charmé de retrouver ce papier que je cherche depuis plusieurs jours! c'est la scène où je dois placer la mort de Néron, dans un tragedie à laquelle je travaille.”—“ Ah, monsieur, I am delighted to recover that paper; I have been hunting for it these some days; it is the scene where I kill Nero in a tragedy which I am composing.”1

True or false, the incident has furnished the subject of a dramatic piece by M. Seivrin, entitled Péchantré, ou une scène de comédie; and I think a play on a similar anecdote has been performed on our English stage.

LXI.

HIGHLAND LEGEND.

"THER was of ancient one Lord in Loquhaber called my Lord Cumming, being a cruell and tyrrant superior to the inhabitants and ancient tennants of that countrie of Loquaber. This lord builded ane iland or ane house on the south-east head of Loghloghlie

1 Biogr. Univ. t. xxxiii. p. 243.

with four big jests that wer below in the water. And he builded ane house therwpone, and ane devyce at the entrance of the said house, that whaire ane did goe into the house ane table did lye be the way, that when anie man did stand wpon the end thairoff goeing ford ward, that end wold doune and the other goe up, and then the man, woman, or dog wold fall below in the water and perish. This house being finished, the Lord Cumming did call the whole tennants and inhabitants of the countrey to come to him to that house, and everie ane that did come into that place did perish and drowne in the water. And it fortuned at the last that a gentleman, one of the tennants, who hade a hound or dog in his companie, did enter the house, and fell below into the water through the house; and the dog did fall after his maister. This dog being white, and coming above the water in another place by the providence of God without the house, the remnant tennants which were as yet on goeing into the house, perceiving this to be rather ffor their destructione and confusione of these which wer absent from them than for their better furtherance, did remove themselves and flitt out of that part wherein they wer for the tyme, to preserve themselves with their lives out of that cruell mans hands. But my lord comeing to be advertised hereof, perceiving the countrie and tennants to be somewhat strong as yet, did goe

away by night and his whole companie out of the countrie, and never since came to Loquhaber. And when summer is, certain yeares or dayes, one of the bigge timber jests, the quantitie of ane ell thereof, will be sein above the water. And sundrie men of the countrie were wont to goe and se that jest of timber which stands there as yett; and they say that a man's finger will cast it too and fro in the water, but fortie men cannot pull it up, because it lyeth in another jest below the water. And this which yew heard is but ane myle from Kilinabug or thereby, and sex mylls betwixt the church and Inverloghie, where my Lord Cumming did dwell."1

LXII.

A DUNCE OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. THE father of our English Bibliomaniacs is perhaps Richard Angarville, more commonly called Richard de Bury from the place of his birth. He held successively the offices of Lord Privy Seal, Lord Chancellor, and Lord Treasurer, and filled the see of Durham from the year 1333 to the year 1345, when he died aged fifty-eight. His Philobiblon, a treatise on

1 Ane Descriptione of Certaine Pairts of the Highlands of Scotland, MS. Advocate's Library. W. 2. 20.

A DUNCE OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 191

the Love of Books, is for its age a pleasing work, and furnishes not a few interesting pictures of the manners of his time. His declaration that the laity should be wholly shut out from communion with books' may excite a smile in these days of cheap literature. This is his account of a dunce of the fourteenth century :

"You shall see a bull-necked youngster drawling through the schools, who, when the biting cold of winter brings the drop to his nose, never seeks to wipe it off until it fall on his book: I wish that in place of a fair parchment he had a cobbler's hide before him! The nails of his fingers are bordered with dirt, and as black as jet, and with them he marks any paragraph which pleases him; he has gathered straws from every floor, and these he sticks between the leaves, as if he would string on a stalk the passages which his memory cannot keep. As the volume was not made to hold them, and as no one takes them out, the straws split the binding, and at length rot the paper. He never scruples to munch his fruit or cheese, or sip his jug over his books, and he leaves the fragments of his repast with them, as he has no almoner at hand. He is ever babbling with his companions, and while he is

1 "Porro laici omnium librorum communione sunt indigni." Cap. xviii. p. 55.

drivelling forth his reasons (in which there is no reason), he holds his book open on his bosom, and so squirts his spittle over it. Finally, he sticks his elbows into it, that he may study the more intently; but soon falling asleep, he wrinkles the pages, gives dogs ears to the corners, and cracks the binding. But behold! winter has fled, spring comes, and the earth is clothed with flowers. Our scholar now neglects his book for the fields,' whence he returns to cram it with violets, primroses, roses, or quatrefoils he turns over its leaves with his clammy and sweaty hands; he stains them with his dusty gloves, hunting whole pages line by line with his filthy finger. The good book is left open for every fly to settle on it; it is scarcely closed once in a month, and at length is so swelled by dust, that

1 The Dunce might have retorted on the Bishop the lines of Chaucer, if Chaucer had then written :

"And as for me, though that I can but lite,
On bookes for to rede I me delite,

And to hem yeve I faith and full credence,
And in mine herte have hem in reverence
So hertely, that there is game none,
That fro my bookes maketh me to gone,
But it be seldome on the holy daie,
Save certainly, whan that the month of Maie
Is comen, and that I hear the foules sing
And that the floures ginnen for to spring,-
Farewell my booke, and my devocion!"

Prologue to the Legende of Good Women.

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