Then, what a spiritual charm it
gives to a book to feel that every letter has been individually wrought,
and the pictures glow for that individual page alone! Certainly the
ancient reader had a luxury which the modern one lacks. I was surprised,
moreover, to see the clearness and accuracy of the chirography. Print
does not surpass it in these respects.
The custode showed us an ancient manuscript of the Decameron; likewise, a
volume containing the portraits of Petrarch and of Laura, each covering
the whole of a vellum page, and very finely done. They are authentic
portraits, no doubt, and Laura is depicted as a fair-haired beauty, with
a very satisfactory amount of loveliness. We saw some choice old
editions of books in a small separate room; but as these were all ranged
in shut bookcases, and as each volume, moreover, was in a separate cover
or modern binding, this exhibition did us very little good. By the by,
there is a conceit struggling blindly in my mind about Petrarch and
Laura, suggested by those two lifelike portraits, which have been
sleeping cheek to cheek through all these centuries.
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