The Earliest I Can Call To Mind In England At This Moment
(Of Course, Excepting The Names Written In The Beauchamp Tower) Is
On The Church Porch At Harlington, Where There Is A Name Cut And
Dated In One Of The Early Years Of The Seventeenth Century.
I
never even in Italy saw a name scratched on a wall with an earlier
date than 1480.
Why is it, I wonder, that these little bits of soul-fossil as it
were, touch us so much when we come across them? A fossil does not
touch us - while a fly in amber does. Why should a fly in amber
interest us and give us a slightly solemn feeling for a moment,
when the fossil of a megatherium bores us? I give it up; but few
of us can see the lightest trifle scratched off casually and idly
long ago, without liking it better than almost any great thing of
the same, or ever so much earlier date, done with purpose and
intention that it should remain. So when we left S. Cristoforo it
was not the old church, nor the frescoes, but the name of the idle
fellow who had scratched his name "Battista . . . 1485," that we
carried away with us. A little bit of old world life and entire
want of earnestness, preserved as though it were a smile in amber.
In the Val Sesia, several years ago, I bought some tobacco that was
wrapped up for me in a yellow old MS.
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