CLOUSTERED TREASURE

Fra Lippo Lippi tossed the sinful chessboard into a dark corner when the abbot called him to illuminate the daily chronicle. The monks had found that he had "joined legs and arms to the long music notes, found nose and eyes and china for A's and B's. He had only scorn for the inky-fingered scribblers who drew the Latin script.

A periodic rediscovery of the Treasure Room at Widener reveals penmanship so regular as to be almost inhuman, on yellowing vellum brightened by red, blue, and gold Gothic capitals. The musty savour of the rush-strewn cubicles still adheres to a leaf from the manuscript of St. Jerome, so old that it is little more than an ash held together by the heavy letters. A textbook by Peter Lombard, the almost illegible sermons of Duns Scotus, and Luther's German Catechism are all there as a symbol of the care with which the learning of ancients was kept alive during the middle ages.

These manuscripts, loaned to the University by George A. Plimpton of New York, are here for only a short time. They are the life-work of some patient penman, the fancies of an artist "all shaven and shorn". "Look two and two go the priests, then monks with cowls and sandals. And the penitents dressed in white shirts, a-holding the yellow candles." They are a curious collection, full of interest for scholar and antiquarian; food for the imagination and the artistic taste of anyone who examines them.