oceed. I beg pardon for this interruption.

LYSAND. Nay, there is nothing to solicit pardon for! We have each a
right, around this hospitable table, to indulge our book whims: and
mine may be as fantastical as any.

LOREN. Pray proceed, Lysander, in your book-collecting history! unless
you will permit me to make a pause or interruption of two minutes--by
proposing as a sentiment--"SUCCESS TO THE BIBLIOMANIA!"

PHIL. 'Tis well observed: and as every loyal subject at our great
taverns drinks the health of his Sovereign "with three times three
up-standing," even so let us hail this sentiment of Lorenzo!

LIS. Philemon has cheated me of an eloquent speech. But let us receive
the sentiment as he proposes it.

LOREN. Now the uproar of Bacchus has subsided, the instructive
conversation of Minerva may follow. Go on, Lysander.

LYSAND. Having endeavoured to do justice to Girald Barri, I know of no
other particularly distinguished bibliomaniac till we approach the aera
of the incomparable ROGER, or FRIAR, BACON. I say incomparable,
Lorenzo; because he was, in truth, a constellation of the very first
splendour and magnitude in the dark times in which he lived; and
notwithstanding a sagacious writer (if my memory be not treacherous)
of the name of Coxe, chooses to tell us that he was "miserably starved
to death, because he could not introduce a piece of roast beef into
his stomach, on account of having made a league with Satan to eat only
cheese;"[257]--yet I suspect that the end of Bacon was hastened by
other means more disgraceful to the age and equally painful to
himself.

[Footnote 257: "_A short treatise declaringe the detestable
wickednesse of magicall sciences, as necromancie,
coniuration of spirites, curiouse astrologie, and suche
lyke, made by_ FRANCIS COXE." Printed by Allde, 12mo.,
without date (14 leaves). From this curious little volume,
which is superficially noticed by Herbert (vol. ii., p.
889), the reader is presented with the following extract,
appertaining to the above subject: "I myself (says the
author) knew a priest not far from a town called
Bridgewater, which, as it is well known in the country, was
a great magician in all his life time. After he once began
these practices, he would never eat bread, but, instead
thereof, did always eat _cheese_: which thing, as he
confessed divers times, he did because it was so concluded
be