It took me three days to tame him and to
induce him to show me another of his treasures, recently acquired
in Athens. Ioannes Georgius Godelmann's _Tractate de Lamiis_,
printed by Nicholas Bassaeus of Frankfurt. I read him Keats's
poem about the young lady of Corinth, of which he had never heard.
His mental attitude towards it was the indulgent one of an old
diplomatist towards a child's woolly lamb. For him literature
had never existed and printing ended in the year 1600. But I was
sorry when he left me at Constantinople, where he counted on
striking the track of a Bohemian herbal, printed at Prague, and
never more to be read by any of the sons of man. In the summer
he was going book-hunting in Iceland. By chance I have learned
since that he died there. Peace to his ashes! For aught I could
see he dwelt in a mild stupor of happiness, absorbed in the
intoxication of a tremulous pursuit. I wondered whether his soul
contained that antidote--the _odor di femina_. Perhaps he met it
at Reykjavic and he died of dismay.
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