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4
OMNIANA.

ror in a ring,—the Chury, Sir William Jones calls it. We have them in pocket

books; and the ladies at Antwerp had them set in prayer books, for the purpose of what old Latimer calls prinking and pranking at mass. Etiam[1] in libellis, quos ad Ecclesiam deprecaturæ adferunt, specula componant, quibus mundum muliebrem, et phaleras suus, ac capellitium inter fervidas scilicet suas preces adornent.

There was however a degree of modesty in concealing the mirror; a few generations earlier it was the fashion to wear them pendant from the waist[2], a fashion far more probably alluded to by Tasso, than as his biographer supposes introduced by him, in his picture of Rinaldo.

 
Dal fianco de l'amante, estranio arnese,
Un christallo pendea, lucido e netto.

Gier. Lib. Cant. xvi.

  1. ↑ Theatrum humanæ Vitæ, quoted by Vieyra, t. II. p. 299.
  2. ↑ Des Coures. Cur. of Literature; quoted in Black's Life of Tasso. Vol I. p. 382.
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