Up: Glassmaking
Reminiscences
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the monster coiled in his glowing bed, and glaring with fiery eyes upon
the intruder, much to his discomfiture, and effectually as to his retreat.
Some gallant knights, armed cap-a-pie, it is said, dared a combat
with the fiery dragon, but always returned defeated; the important fact
being doubtless then unknown or overlooked, that steel armor, being a
rapid conductor of heat, would be likely to tempt a more ready approach
of the fabled monster.
There was another current
notion, that glass was as easily rendered malleable as brittle, but that
the workmen concealed the art, and the life of any one attempting the
discovery was surely forfeited. An ancient writer on glass,
"Isidorus," states that, in the reign of
Tiberius, an artist, banished from Rome on political
considerations, in his retirement discovered the art of rendering
glass malleable; he ventured to return to Rome, in hopes of procuring
a remission of his sentence, and a reward for his invention; the
glass-makers, supposing their interest to be at stake, employed so
powerful an influence with the Emperor (who was made to believe that the
value of gold might be diminished by the discovery), that he caused the
artist to be beheaded, and his secret died with him.
"Blancourt" relates
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