71 



brethren. Such, in an after age, was Girolamo dei Libri and Francesco 

 Veronese, who bestowed their labours on Church-Service books of the 

 fifteenth century.* 



Tt is proper now to advert briefly to a few more of the most celebrated 

 manuscripts which are found in our own country. Of splendidly illu- 

 minated Missals and Heures we possess many examples. Fom* such have 

 been for some time located in this immediate neighbourhood, but are 

 recently removed to the British Museum. One of them, long noted 

 under the designation of the Bedford Missal, has been already adverted 

 to. It contains fifty-nine miniature paintings, each of which nearly 

 occupies the whole page, and more than a thousand smaller ones, of 

 about an inch and a half in diameter, displayed in brilliant borders of 

 golden foliage, with variegated flowers, &c. At the bottom of every 

 page are two lines in blue and gold letters, to explain the subject — a 

 circumstance perhaps only to be found in this costly production. 

 Notliing can exceed the expression and higl\ finish of the portraits. 

 Mr. Gough, the antiquary, published, in 1794, a considerable work, 

 descriptive of this Missal. The three other devotional works, though 

 by no means equal to the Bedford Missal in size and splendour, are still 

 quite worthy to occupy the same cabinet. Two of them — the Prayer- 

 Book of Francis I. of France, and the Breviary of Queen Isabella of 

 Spain — have been honoured with elaborate description in the '' pleasaunt'' 

 pages of a well known work — Dibdins Bibliographical Decameron. The 

 third is the Prayer-Book of Mary of Burgundy, executed for that 

 princess, who married Maximilian the First, of Austria, and was killed 

 in 1482 by a fall from her horse. The volume contains fifty-five minia- 

 tures of saints and of scriptural subjects, most exquisitely wrought, and 

 surrounded with borders, in which animals, fruits, flowers, &c., are 

 delineated with the most finished accuracy and symmetry. Of this 

 little volume Waagen observes, — " It is one of the most deUcate and 

 elegant remains of the school of Van Eyck." Its dimensions are only 

 four and a quarter inches by three. Since the termination of the >var, 

 a great number of Missals have been brought into England fi:om the 

 continent, by which the saleable value has been much reduced, excepting 

 of such as can boast of superior skill and delicacy. 



To the Harleian and other sections of the British Museum Library, 

 we turn for the most valuable exemplars of manuscripts in general. 

 Amongst other precious rehcs of antiquity we find a copy of the four 

 Gospels in Latin, (No. 2788), of the eighth century. It is written in 

 capital letters of gold, and in many respects it may vie with any other 

 now in existence. Every page of the sacred text, consisting of two 

 • See Roscoe's Sale Catalogue, A. O. 1816. 



