hat Cecil's "library
was a very choice one:" his care being "in the preservation,
rather than in the private possession of (literary)
antiquities." Among other curiosities in it, there was a
grand, and a sort of presentation, copy of Archbishop
Parker's Latin work of the _Antiquity of the British
Church_; "bound costly, and laid in colours the arms of the
Church of Canterbury, empaled with the Archbishop's own
paternal coat." Read Strype's tempting description; _Life of
Parker_; pp. 415, 537. Well might Grafton thus address Cecil
at the close of his epistolary dedication of his
_Chronicles_: "and now having ended this work, and seeking
to whom I might, for testification of my special good-will,
present it, or for patronage and defence dedicate it, and
principally, for all judgment and correction to submit
it--among many, I have chosen your MASTERSHIP, moved thereto
by experience of your courteous judgment towards those that
travail to any honest purpose, rather helping and comforting
their weakness, than condemning their simple, but yet well
meaning, endeavours. By which, your accustomed good
acceptation of others, I am the rather boldened to beseech
your Mastership to receive this my work and me, in such
manner as you do those in whom (howsoever there be want of
power) there wanteth no point of goodwill and serviceable
affection." Edit. 1809, 4to. If a chronicler could talk
thus, a poet (who, notwithstanding the title of his poem,
does not, I fear, rank among Pope's bards, that "sail aloft
among _the Swans of Thames_,") may be permitted thus to
introduce Cecil's name and mansion:

Now see these Swannes the new and worthie seate
Of famous CICILL, treasorer of the land,
Whose wisedome, counsell skill of Princes state
The world admires, then Swannes may do the same:
The house itselfe doth shewe the owner's wit,
And may for bewtie, state, and every thing,
Compared be with most within the land,

Vallan's _Tale of Two Swannes_, 1590, 4to., reprinted in
_Leland's Itinerary_; vol. v. p. xiii, edit. 1770.]

But the book-loving propensities of Elizabeth's minister were greatly
eclipsed by those of her favourite archbishop, PARKER:

clarum et venerabile nomen
Gentibus, e