form.

I now pass to a variety of the screw-desk, which has a small book-rest
above the table. The whole structure rests upon a prolongation of the
solid platform on which the reader's chair is placed, so that it is really
exactly in front of the reader. My illustration (fig. 143) is from "The
booke of the noble ladyes in frensh," a work by Boccacio; it was written
in France early in the fifteenth century[533].

[Illustration: Fig. 144. Screw-desk.

From a fifteenth century MS. in the Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal, Paris.]

[Illustration: Fig. 145. Hexagonal desk, with central spike, probably for
a candle.

From a French MS. of _Le Miroir Historial_.]

These double desks are exceedingly common, and I might fill a large number
of pages with figures and descriptions of the variety which the ingenuity
of the cabinet-makers of the fifteenth century managed to impart to
combinations of a screw and two or more tables. I will content myself
with one more example (fig. 144) which shews the screw exceedingly well,
and the two tables above it. The uppermost of these serves as a ledge to
rest the books on, as does also the hexagonal block above it which
conceals the top of the screw[534].

We meet occasionally with a solid desk, by which I mean one the level of
which cannot be altered. In the example here given (fig. 145) from a
French MS. of _Le Miroir Historial_, there is a central spike which I
suspect to have been intended to carry a candle[535].

In some examples of these book-desks the pedestal is utilized as a
book-cupboard (fig. 146). The picture which I have selected as shewing a
desk of this peculiarity is singularly beautiful, and finished in the
highest style of art available at the end of the fifteenth century in
France. It forms half of the frontispiece to a fine manuscript of
Boccacio's _Livre des cas des malheureux nobles hommes et femmes_[536].
The central figure is apparently lecturing on that moving theme, for in
front of him, in the other half of the picture, is a crowd of men
exhibiting their interest by the violence of their gestures. On his left
is the desk I mentioned; it stands on an unusually firm base, and one side
of the vertical portion is pierced by an arch, so as to make the central
cavity available for putting books in. From the centre of the table rises
a tall spike, apparently of iron, to which is attached a horizontal arm,
bearing a lighted lantern. On the table, in addition to three books, i