On his
death, in the year 1600, he bequeathed his vast collections to the
Vatican, and the gift can only be compared to such important events as
the arrival of the spoils of Urbino, or the great purchase of MSS. from
the Queen of Sweden.
Orsini has been ridiculed for having more books than he could read, and
for an excessive devotion to the antique. 'Here is a library like an
arsenal,' said the satirist, 'stored with all the requisites for any
campaign. The owner buys all the books that come in his way: it is true
that he will not read them; but he will have them magnificently bound,
and ranged on the shelves with a mighty show, and there he will salute
them several times a day, and will bring his friends and servants to make
their acquaintance.' Orsini is rebuked for his admiration of a dusty
manuscript. 'When one of these old parchments falls into his hands, he
makes you examine the decayed leaves on which the eye can hardly trace
any marks of an ancient pen. 'What is this treasure that we have here?'
he cries, 'and oh! what joy, here we have the delight of mankind, and
the world's desire, and pleasures not to be matched in Paradise!'
'There,' says our satirist, 'you have the very portrait of Fulvio Orsini.
Why, he once took a manuscript _Terence_, full of holes and mistakes, in
writing to Cardinal Toletus, and told him that it was worth all the gold
in the world'; and, to convince his Spanish Eminence, he said that the
book was a thousand years' old.
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