Kings & rulers > Kenilworth > Volume 1

KENILWORTH.
45
CHAPTER IV.
Not serve two masters ?—Here’s a youth will try it—
Would fain serve God, yet give the devil his due ;
Says grace before he doth a deed of villainy.
And returns thanks devoutly when ’tis acted.
Old Play.
The room into which the Master of Cumnor-
Place conducted his worthy visitant, was of great¬
er extent than that in which they had at first con¬
versed, and had yet more the appearance of dila¬
pidation. Large oaken presses, filled with shelves
of the same wood, surrounded the room, and
had, at one time, served for the arrangement of
a numerous collection of books, many of which
yet remained, but torn and defaced, covered with
dust, deprived of their costly clasps and bindings,
and tossed together in heaps upon the shelves,
as things altogether disregarded, and abandoned
to the pleasure of every spoiler. The very presses
themselves seemed to have incurred the displea¬
sure of those enemies of learning, who had de¬
stroyed the volumes with which they had been
heretofore filled. They were, in several places,
dismantled of their shelves, and otherwise broken
and damaged, and were, moreover, mantled with
cobwebs, and covered with dust.
“ The men who wrote these books,” said Lam-
bourne, looking round him, “ little thought whose
keeping they were to fall into.”
“ Nor what yeoman’s service they were to do
me,” quoth Anthony Foster—■“ the cook hath
\ised them for scouring his pewter, and the groom