ed.

_Montesinos_.--I confess that I have much of that feeling in which the
superstition concerning relics has originated, and I am sorry when I see
the name of a former owner obliterated in a book, or the plate of his
arms defaced. Poor memorials though they be, yet they are something
saved for a while from oblivion, and I should be almost as unwilling to
destroy them as to efface the _Hic jacet_ of a tombstone. There may be
sometimes a pleasure in recognising them, sometimes a salutary sadness.

Yonder Chronicle of King D. Manoel, by Damiam de Goes, and yonder
"General History of Spain," by Esteban de Garibay, are signed by their
respective authors. The minds of these laborious and useful scholars are
in their works, but you are brought into a more personal relation with
them when you see the page upon which you know that their eyes have
rested, and the very characters which their hands have traced. This copy
of Casaubon's Epistles was sent to me from Florence by Walter Landor. He
had perused it carefully, and to that perusal we are indebted for one of
the most pleasing of his Conversations; these letters had carried him in
spirit to the age of their writer, and shown James I. to him in the light
wherein James was regarded by contemporary scholars, and under the
impression thus produced Landor has written of him in his happiest mood,
calmly, philosophically, feelingly, and with no more of favourable
leaning than justice will always manifest when justice is in good humour
and in charity with all men. The book came from the palace library at
Milan, how or when abstracted I know not, but this beautiful dialogue
would never have been written had it remained there in its place upon the
shelf, for the worms to finish the work which they had begun. Isaac
Casaubon must be in your society, Sir Thomas, for where Erasmus is you
will be, and there also Casaubon will have his place among the wise and
the good. Tell him, I pray you, that due honour has in these days been
rendered to his name by one who as a scholar is qualified to appreciate
his merits, and whose writings will be more durable than monuments of
brass or marble.

_Sir Thomas More_.--Is there no message to him from Walter Landor's
friend?

_Montesinos_.--Say to him, since you encourage me to such boldness, that
his letters could scarcely have been perused with deeper interest by the
persons to whom they were addressed than they have been by one, at the
foo