256 
and introducing myself as a stranger of curiosity, 
the professor politely appointed the hour at which 
I should come, and met me at the library. This is 
a very good one, having been founded upwards of 
three hundred years ago; but I slightly regarded 
every thing except what related to my two favourite 
objects. There is a room full of paintings and 
sketches, chiefly by Holbein, who here appears in 
a much higher line as a painter than I had be- 
fore placed him (for I never saw his picture of Sir 
Thomas More’s family). The Passion of our Savi- 
our in eight separate histories appears to have been 
painted for the doors of a small organ, but are 
nevertheless in as fine preservation as if they had 
been painted yesterday. The countenances have 
not that great stiffness observable in most paintings 
of the year 1520, about which time this work was 
executed, and the colouring is fine. But I most 
admire the Last Supper, in which the figures are 
nearly as large as life, the characters well expressed, 
and the colouring inferior only to Raphael’s. 
There is a capital miniature of Erasmus by Hol- 
bein, and another picture of him writing, (a profile,) 
which still seems to think and write: I question 
whether as true representations of nature as these 
two last portraits could be outdone. In another 
room are preserved manuscript letters of Erasmus. 
The Elogium Stultitia, with the drawings made by 
Holbein in the margins. Erasmus’s will in his 
own hand-writing. Manuscripts of the Council of 
Basle for the suspension of the Pope’s authority, &c. 
Can you read of these things and not wish to see 
