KENILWORTH - Penn State University

KenilworthCHAPTER IV.with which they had been heretofore filled. They were, inseveral places, dismantled of their shelves, and otherwise brokenand damaged, and were, moreover, mantled with cob-Not serve two masters?—Here’s a youth will try it—Would fain serve God, yet give the devil his due; webs and covered with dust.Says grace before he doth a deed of villainy,“The men who wrote these books,” said Lambourne, lookinground him, “little thought whose keeping they were toAnd returns his thanks devoutly when ’tis acted.fall into.”—Old Play.“Nor what yeoman’s service they were to do me,” quothAnthony Foster; “the cook hath used them for scouring hisTHE ROOM into which the Master of Cumnor Place conducted pewter, and the groom hath had nought else to clean my bootshis worthy visitant was of greater extent than that in which with, this many a month past.”they had at first conversed, and had yet more the appearance “And yet,” said Lambourne, “I have been in cities whereof dilapidation. Large oaken presses, filled with shelves of the such learned commodities would have been deemed too goodsame wood, surrounded the room, and had, at one time, served for such offices.”for the arrangement of a numerous collection of books, many “Pshaw, pshaw,” answered Foster, “‘they are Popish trash,of which yet remained, but torn and defaced, covered with every one of them—private studies of the mumping old Abbotof Abingdon. The nineteenthly of a pure gospel sermondust, deprived of their costly clasps and bindings, and tossedtogether in heaps upon the shelves, as things altogether disregarded,and abandoned to the pleasure of every spoiler. The “Gad-a-mercy, Master Tony Fire-the-Fagot!” saidwere worth a cartload of such rakings of the kennel of Rome.”very presses themselves seemed to have incurred the hostility Lambourne, by way of reply.of those enemies of learning who had destroyed the volumes Foster scowled darkly at him, as he replied, “Hark ye, friend42