Page:Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods.djvu/67

 King Edward the Fourth, and dated 1479. You will observe that the lower part of the. window is fitted with trellises as in the French king's library, not casements. The upper part only is glazed.

Another, and apparently very usual way of bestowing books, especially when they were not numerous, was to place them in a sort of cupboard under the sloping desk on which the owner read or wrote. An excellent specimen of this device—which Richard de Bury specially commends, as being modelled on the Ark, in the side of which the book of the Law was put—is to be found in the Ship of Fools (1498). Another, of a curiously modern type, occurs in an Hours in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, executed about 1445 for Isabel, Duchess of Brittany.

Sometimes this book-cupboard supported a revolving desk, which could be raised or depressed by the help of a central screw—like those I shewed you just now; sometimes