There were adventures still in
store for the captives. Through the scattered villages Dr. Sambucus went
up and down, recovering the strayed Corvinian books for the Emperor
Rodolph, a strange Quixotic figure always riding alone, with swinging
saddle-bags, and a great mastiff running on either side. Many a
disappointed wayfarer was turned away from the lonely tower. At last
Busbec the great traveller, because he was an ambassador from the
Emperor, was allowed to enter a kind of charnel-house, and to see what
had been the lovely gaily-painted vellums lying squalidly piled in heaps.
To see them was a high favour; the visitor was not permitted to touch the
remains; and it was not until 1686 that about forty of the maltreated
volumes were rescued by force of arms and set in a a place of safety
among the Emperor's books at Vienna.
It has always been a favourite exercise to track the Corvinian MSS. into
their scattered hiding-places. Some are in the Vatican, others at
Ferrara, and some in their birth-place at Florence. It is said that some
of them have never left their home in Hungary. Venice possesses a
'History of the House of Corvinus,' and Jena has a work by Guarini with
the King's insignia 'most delicately painted on the title.' The portraits
of the King and Queen are on one of the examples secured by Augustus of
Brunswick for his library at Wolfenbuettel. Mary of Austria, the widow of
King Louis, presented two of the Corvinian books to the _Librairie de
Bourgogne_ at Brussels; one was the Missal, full of Attavante's work, on
which the Sovereigns of Brabant were sworn; the other was the 'Golden
Gospels,' long the pride of the Escorial, but now restored to Belgium.
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