He ushered us through two or three large rooms, dark, dusty, hung with
antique-looking pictures, and lined with bookcases containing, I doubt
not, a very curious library. Indeed, he directed my attention to one
case, and said that he had collected those works, in former days, merely
for the sake of laughing at them. They were books of magic and occult
sciences. What he seemed really to value, however, were some manuscript
copies of Dante, of which he showed us two: one, a folio on parchment,
beautifully written in German text, the letters as clear and accurately
cut as printed type; the other a small volume, fit, as Mr. Kirkup said,
to be carried in a capacious mediaeval sleeve. This also was on vellum,
and as elegantly executed as the larger one; but the larger had beautiful
illuminations, the vermilion and gold of which looked as brilliant now as
they did five centuries ago. Both of these books were written early in
the fourteenth century. Mr. Kirkup has also a plaster cast of Dante's
face, which he believes to be the original one taken from his face after
death; and he has likewise his own accurate tracing from Giotto's fresco
of Dante in the chapel of the Bargello.
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