“With respect to the qualities of his mind, Sansovino was very prudent; he foresaw readily the coming events, and sagaciously compared the present with the past.  Attentive to his duties, he shunned no labour in the fulfilment of the same, and never neglected his business for his pleasure.  He spoke well and largely on such subjects as he understood, giving appropriate illustrations of his thoughts with infinite grace of manner.  This rendered him acceptable to high and low alike, as well as to his own friends.  In his greatest age his memory continued excellent; he remembered all the events of his childhood, and could minutely refer to the sack of Rome and all the other occurrences, fortunate or otherwise, of his youth and early manhood.  He was very courageous, and delighted from his boyhood in contending with those who were greater than himself, affirming that he who struggles with the great may become greater, but he who disputes with the little must become less.  He esteemed honour above all else in the world, and was so upright a man of his word, that no temptation could induce him to break it, of which he gave frequent proof to his lords, who, for that as well as other qualities, considered him rather as a father or brother than as their agent or steward, honouring in him an excellence that was no pretence, but his true nature.”

Sansovino died in 1570, and he was buried at San Gimignano, in a church that he himself had built.  In 1807, this church being demolished, his remains were transferred to the Seminario della Salute in Venice, where they now are.

Adjoining the Old Library is the Mint, now S. Mark’s Library, which may be both seen and used by strangers.  It is not exactly a British Museum Reading-room, for there are but twelve tables with six seats at each, but judging by its usually empty state, it more than suffices for the scholarly needs of Venice.  Upstairs you are shown various treasures brought together by Cardinal Bessarione:  MSS., autographs, illuminated books, and incunabula.  A fourteenth-century Dante lies open, with coloured pictures:  the poet very short on one page and very tall on the next, and Virgil, at his side, very like Christ.  A Relazione della Morte de Anna Regina de Francia, a fifteenth-century work, has a curious picture of the queen’s burial.  The first book ever printed in Venice is here:  Cicero’s Epistolae, 1469, from the press of Johannes di Spira, which was followed by an edition of Pliny the Younger.  A fine Venetian Hypnerotomachia, 1499, is here, and a very beautiful Herodotus with lovely type from the press of Gregorius of Venice in 1494.  Old bindings may be seen too, among them a lavish Byzantine example with enamels and mosaics.  The exhibited autographs include Titian’s hand large and forcible; Leopardi’s, very neat; Goldoni’s, delicate and self-conscious; Galileo’s, much in earnest; and a poem by Tasso with myriad afterthoughts.