SAMUEL HARSNETT, ARCHBISHOP OF YORK. 295
we need not speculate how far this tradition has been maintained
but when we contemplate these massive folios we are able to
gain some dim idea of what learning meant in the days of good
Queen Bess, when Christendom had a common literary language
and the inheritance of a common creed only shattered a few years
before. The classics are well represented by Aristotle, Cicero,
Demosthenes, Epictetus, Seneca and Thucydides. Of the Catholic
fathers of the undivided Church Ambrose, Augustine, much quoted
by rival partisans, S. John Chrysostom of the silver tongue, and
Jerome are all present. The mediaeval schoolmen, the intel-
lectual flower of the ages of faith, include Saints Bernard and
Thomas Aquinas, Peter Lombard Duns Scotus, the angelical
doctor, and Richard Rolle of Hampole, our chief English mystic.
One is a little inclined to wonder how far the civic fathers
appreciated the "papistical learning" they so carelessly handled.
So far we have dealt only with the well-used library of a
scholar of deep erudition, who, contrary to modern canons, did
not hesitate to annotate his books ; but there is a large section
devoted to then current religious controversies, rusty weapons
in a conflict now mainly dead and buried.
On the Roman side we have Cardinals Allen, Baronius,
Bellarmine and Fisher, and the Catholic reformer, Erasmus,
Anglicans of such varied hues as Gardiner, Cranmer, Jewel
and Andrewes, but not the "judicious Hooker," while
a volume containing eleven letters of S. Ignatius Loyola
must have been like harbouring a theological bomb.
Lutheranism is represented sparsely by the Augsburg Confession,
Melancthon, and the Wurtemburg theologians ; but the giants of
the Calvinistic party are well to the front in Beza, Bullinger,
Calvin and Zwingle, the protagonists in a conflict that for a time
overthrew the national church in the next century.1
Many and varied associations hang round these heavy tomes :
here we have the signature of the martyred Cranmer, there
the armorials of bluff King Hal and his lion-hearted daughter,
of Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, the Queen's suitor, and Sir
Christopher Hatton, her nimble partner in the dance. Those of
Archbishops Whitgift and Bancroft recall to our minds the
famous library at Lambeth palace whence they came to the
1A privately-printed "Catalogue of the Harsnett Library at Colchester" compiled by
Gordon Goodwin, 1888, has been kindly presented to the Club's Library by Mr. Rickword.—
Ed.