bearer; the Viscount Lisle,
panter; the Lord Burgeiny, chief larder; the Lord Broy,
almoner for him and his copartners; and the Mayor of Oxford
kept the buttery-bar: and Thomas Wyatt was chosen ewerer for
Sir Henry Wyatt, his father." "When all things were ready
and ordered, THE QUEEN, under her canopy, came into the
hall, and washed; and sat down in the middest of the table,
under her cloth of estate. On the right side of her chair
stood the Countess of Oxford, widow: and on her left hand
stood the Countess of Worcester, all the dinner season;
which, divers times in the dinner time, did hold a fine
cloth before the Queen's face, when she list to spit, or do
otherwise at her pleasure. And at the table's end sate the
Archbishop of Canterbury, on the right hand of the Queen;
and in the midst, between the Archbishop and the Countess of
Oxford, stood the Earl of Oxford, with a white staff, all
dinner time; and at the Queen's feet, under the table, sate
two gentlewomen all dinner time. When all these things were
thus ordered, came in the Duke of Suffolk and the Lord
William Howard on horseback, and the Serjeants of arms
before them, and after them the sewer; and then the knights
of the Bath, bringing in the _first course_, which was eight
and twenty dishes, besides subtleties, and ships made of
wax, marvellous gorgeous to behold: all which time of
service, the trumpets standing in the window, at the nether
end of the hall, played," &c. _Chronicles_; p. 566: edit.
1615, fol.]

LORENZ. As you please. Perhaps you will go on with the mention of some
distinguished patrons 'till you arrive at that period?

LYSAND. Yes; we may now as well notice the efforts of that
extraordinary _bibliomaniacal triumvirate_, Colet, More, and Erasmus.

PHIL. Pray treat copiously of them. They are my great favourites. But
can you properly place Erasmus in the list?

LYSAND. You forget that he made a long abode here, and was Greek
professor at Cambridge. To begin, then, with the former. COLET, as you
well know, was Dean of St. Paul's; and founder of the public school
which goes by the latter name. He had an ardent and general love of
literature;[294] but his attention to the improvement of youth, in
superintending appropriate publications, for their use, was
unremitting. Few men did so much and so well, at this period