re your
scruples: but be not afraid, it is lawful. Take it, my honoured friend,
and eat it: eat it all, and then we will go into the library." He put
the bowl into one of my hands and the great wooden spoon into the other:
and in desperation I took a gulp, the recollection of which still makes
me tremble. What was to be done? Another mouthful was an impossibility:
not all my ardour in the pursuit of manuscripts could give me the
necessary courage. I was overcome with sorrow and despair. My servant
saved me at last: he said "that English gentlemen never ate such rich
dishes for breakfast, from religious feelings, he believed; but he
requested that it might be put by, and he was sure I should like it very
much later in the day." The agoumenos looked vexed, but he applauded my
principles; and just then the board sounded for church. "I must be off,
excellent and worthy English lord," said he; "I will take you to the
library, and leave you the key. Excuse my attendance on you there, for
my presence is required in the church." So I got off better than I
expected; but the taste of that ladleful stuck to me for days. I
followed the good agoumenos to the library, where he left me to my own
devices.

The library is contained in two small rooms looking into a narrow court,
which is situated to the left of the great court of entrance. One room
leads to the other, and the books are disposed on shelves in tolerable
order, but the dust on their venerable heads had not been disturbed for
many years, and it took me some time to make out what they were, for in
old Greek libraries few volumes have any title written on the back. I
made out that there were in all about five thousand volumes, a very
large collection, of which about four thousand were printed books; these
were mostly divinity, but among them there were several fine Aldine
classics and the editio princeps of the Anthologia in capital letters.

The nine hundred manuscripts consisted of six hundred volumes written
upon paper and three hundred on vellum. With the exception of four
volumes, the former were all divinity, principally liturgies and books
of prayer. Those four volumes were Homer's 'Iliad' and Hesiod, neither
of which were very old, and two curious and rather early manuscripts on
botany, full of rudely drawn figures of herbs. These were probably the
works of Dioscorides; they were not in good condition, having been much
studied by the monks in former days: they were l