c. 33, for two years, which was renewed from time to time until the

passing of the Copyright Act of 8 Q. Anne.

A.D. 1663.

The University was visited in September by Charles II and his Queen. And 'on Munday, September 28, about four in the afternoon, the University, being in their Formalities placed from Christ Church east-gate to the south gate of the publique Schooles, the King and Queen, the Duke and Dutches of Yorke, with the nobility and gentry attending, went to the Schooles, where the Chanceller, Vice-Chanceller and Heads of Houses received them, and invited them up to the Library; and Mr. Crew, the Senior Proctor, placed neer the globes, addrest himselfe to their Majesties in an oration upon his knees; which being ended, the King and Queen, with the Royal Family and nobility, were by our Chanceller, Vice-Chanceller, and the Heads of Houses, conducted to Selden's Library, and there entertained with a very sumptuous banquett[126].'

[126] Reg. Convoc. T^a. 27, p. 173.

A.D. 1664.

James Lamb, of St. Mary Hall, D.D. and Canon of Westminster, died in this year. Nine MSS. volumes, written by him, consisting of collections for an Arabic Lexicon and Grammar, together with the book of Daniel, in Syriac, are preserved in the Library, and form a small separate collection under his name.

A.D. 1665.

Thomas Lockey, D.D., resigned the Librarianship, on Nov. 29, 1665, in consequence of his appointment to a canonry of Ch. Ch. In the following year he gave some coins and the sum of £6 16_s._ In his place was elected, on Dec. 2, Thomas Hyde, M.A., of Queen's College, then Under-keeper. Upon Lockey's death, in 1680, books to the value of £16 15_s._ were bought out of his study.

A.D. 1666.

Twenty MSS. were given by Sir Thos. Herbert, Bart. of York.

An East India merchant of London, one John Ken, gave (with other MSS.) the first Gentoo [i.e. Sanscrit.] book which the Library possessed. It is noticeable what a real, although somewhat indiscriminating, interest the London merchants appear to have taken in the Library. Continual mention occurs not merely of books but of curiosities of all kinds, natural and artificial, which persons engaged in commerce, chiefly with the East Indies, sent as for a general repository. Most of these curiosities are now to be found, it is believed, in the Ashmolean Museum.

At some period between 1660 and 1667, _i.e._ during Clarendon's Chancellorship of the University, two volumes of MSS. notes and observations upon Josephus, by Sam. Petit, the Professor of Greek at Nismes (who died in 1643), are said by Moreri to have been purchased by Clarendon, for 150 louis d'or, and given to the University. But in Bernard's Catalogue the volumes are said to have been bought by the University 'ære suo.' Dr. T. Smith remarks, in his life of Bernard, that when the latter was preparing to edit Josephus, he used 'Sam. Petiti largis commentariis, longe antea in bibliothecæ Bodleianæ gazophylacium ex Gallia transvectis,' but found that they were filled only with notes from Rabbinical writers. They are now numbered Auct. F. infra, I. 1, 2. One other MS. was certainly given by Clarendon, during his Chancellorship. It is a Greek _Evangelistarium_ of the fourteenth century, formerly the property of a monastery described as 'της παναγιας της αχειροποιητου,' which was given by Parthenius, Patriarch of Constantinople, to Heneage Finch, Earl of Winchelsea, when in Turkey, in 1661, as Ambassador from England, and subsequently given by Clarendon to the University. On the cover is a silver crucifix, of Byzantine work. It is now numbered Auct. D. infra II. 12.

A.D. 1668.

John Davies, of Camberwell, the storekeeper at Deptford dockyard, caused a chair to be made out of the remains of the ship, 'The Golden Hind,' in which Sir F. Drake accomplished his voyage round the world, which had been kept at Deptford until the timber decayed, and presented it to the Library. It stands now in the Picture Gallery, beside a chair which is said (but on what authority is not known) to have belonged to Henry VIII[127], and bears a plate on which are inscribed some verses, in Latin and English, by Abraham Cowley. A good engraving of it is to be found in Lascelles' and Storer's _Oxford_, published in 1821[128], and in the _Life of Drake_, published in 1828.

[127] The style of moulding on the back seems to point to a somewhat later date.

[128] A description, including a copy of the verses, and illustrated by a woodcut, is also to be found in vol. xxix. (1837) of the _Mirror_, p. 8, copied from the _Nautical Magazine_.

A.D. 1670.

Thirteen Oriental MSS. (chiefly in their possessor's own writing) were bought from the heirs of Samuel Clarke, M.A., of Merton College, printer to the University and Esquire Bedel of Law, who died Dec. 17, 1669. He was greatly distinguished as an Orientalist, and assisted in the production of Walton's Polyglott. A list of his MSS. is given in Bernard's Catalogue, and another, by Prof. Nicoll, _Ath. Oxon._ iii. 885. He himself gave four printed Arabic books in 1663.

A.D. 1671.

Upon the death of Meric Casaubon, on July 14, the Library became possessed, by his bequest, of sixty-one volumes of the _Adversaria_ (chiefly consisting of notes on Greek criticism) of his father, Isaac Casaubon, who died in 1614. From these Jo. Christ. Wolf made some extracts when visiting the Library in 1709, which he published in the following year at Hamburgh, under the title of _Casauboniana_, with a preface giving some account of all previous collections of _Ana_, and with copious notes. The MSS. are catalogued in Mr. Coxe's first volume, cols. 825-850.

A.D. 1673.

Thomas, Lord Fairfax, to whose care the Library had been indebted for preservation in 1646, bequeathed to it on his decease, in November, 1671, twenty-eight very valuable MSS., including several early English books (Chaucer, Gower, Wickliffe's Bible, &c.) and works relating to the history of England, Scotland (Elphinston[129]), and Ireland (Keating). But besides these, he gave that invaluable collection of genealogical MSS. known to all pedigree-hunters by the name of their indefatigable compiler, Roger Dodsworth, to whom he had allowed an annuity of £40 during his life, in order to enable him the better to prosecute his researches. This collection numbers 161 volumes (bound in 86) in folio and quarto[130], and consists of extracts bearing chiefly on the family and ecclesiastical history of Yorkshire and the North of England, with an innumerable mass of pedigrees, from all the authentic records within Dodsworth's reach, including many which were destroyed when the Tower of St. Mary, at York, was blown up during the siege of that city in June, 1644. He appears to have commenced this wonderful series of notes about the year 1618, and not to have ceased before 1652, dying, in the seventieth year of his age, in August, 1654. Besides the very full catalogue of his MSS. which is given by Bernard (pp. 187-233), an extremely useful and original synopsis of their contents, prefaced with an account of Dodsworth's life and labours, and drawn up by Mr. Joseph Hunter, is to be found in the Report of the Record Commission for 1837; which was reprinted by Mr. Hunter, in an octavo volume, in 1838, together with a list of the contents of the Red Book of the Exchequer, and a Catalogue of the MSS. in Lincoln's Inn. After the MSS. were brought to the Library, they became in some way exposed to the damp, 'and were in danger of being spoiled by a wet season.' Fortunately the danger was perceived by Ant. à Wood, who obtained leave of the Vice-Chancellor to dry them, which he accomplished by spreading them out in the sun upon the leads of the Schools' quadrangle. This cost him a month's labour, which, he says, he underwent with pleasure out of respect to the memory of Dodsworth, and care to preserve whatever might advantage the commonwealth of learning. The MSS. to this day give abundant proof, by their stains and tender condition, that, had it not been for Wood's unselfish labour, they would probably soon have perished. Some part of the collection appears to have been sent to the Library as late as 1684, for in the accounts of that year there is an entry of 4_s._ 10_d._ as having been paid for the 'carriage of Dodsworth's MSS.'

An interesting volume, written by the donor of these MSS., Fairfax, and entitled by him 'The Employment of my Solitude,' being metrical versions of the Psalms, with other poems, was bought, in 1858, for £36 10_s._, at the sale of the library of Dr. Bliss, who had purchased it at the Duke of Sussex's sale. It is described in Archdeacon Cotton's List of Bibles.

[129] A transcript of Elphinston's Chronicle is to be found among the Jones MSS.

[130] No. 20 is a volume of Camden's Collections, formerly in the Cotton Library, Julius B. x., from whence Dodsworth must have borrowed it, and whither, with an obliviousness too common in book-borrowers, he must have forgotten to return it. And No. 161 was given to the Library by Mr. Fras. Drake, the historian of York, in 1736.

A.D. 1674.

In this year appeared the third _Catalogus impressorum Librorum Bibliothecæ Bodleianæ_, in one folio volume, divided into two parts of 478 and 272 pages respectively. It is dedicated to Archbishop Sheldon, by Hyde the Librarian, not without reason, as being printed in that Theatre which the Archbishop had so lately built. The Keeper, in this dedication, speaks very feelingly of the daily weariness of mind and body which the compilation of the Catalogue had cost him, and tells how his very hours for refreshment had been spent among books alone, and how (_mirabile dictu!_) he actually had not shrunk even from the inclemency of winter[131]. In his preface he says that, on his entrance into office, he reckoned that the work of a new catalogue would occupy him for two, or at most three, years; six, however, had been spent in compilation and transcription, one in revision and enlargement, and, lastly, two in the actual printing. Yet, says he, he never withdrew his neck from the yoke, and postponed all considerations of bodily health. People little know, he proceeds, what it is to accomplish a work of this kind. What is easier, say they, than to look at the beginning of a book and to copy out its title? They judge only from one or two weeks' work in some little library of their own. But, what with careful examining of volumes of pamphlets (which of itself was labour perfectly exhausting), what with distinguishing synonymous authors and works, and identifying metonymous ones, unravelling anagrammatical names and those derived from places, and the like, the poor man declares he endured the greatest torment of mind ('maximo animi cruciatu') as well as waste of precious time. It is clear, from these pathetic lamentations, that Hyde had no great love for Bibliography for its own sake. But, after all his complaints, it is actually asserted by Hearne that he 'did not do much in the work besides writing the dedication and preface[132]!' Hearne attributes the real compilation of the Catalogue to Emmanuel Prichard, or Pritchard, of Hart Hall, the janitor, who examined every book in the whole library, and wrote out the Catalogue, in two volumes, with his own hand. Hearne repeats this assertion frequently; it is found, _e.g._, in his preface to the _Chronicon Dunstap._ p. xii., and in his _Autobiography_ (1772, p. 11), where he adds that he was well informed of this by Dr. Mill and others. If this be true, the inditing such a preface, while totally suppressing Prichard's name, does little credit to Hyde.

Frequent mention of this Emmanuel Prichard is found between 1686 and 1699 as being employed upon the MSS., and as engaged in taking an account of duplicates and arranging Bishop Barlow's books. In 1687, £20 were paid him for 'writing a Catalogue of MSS.' Probably this was the list upon which Hearne asserts that the index to the Bodleian MSS., in Bernard's Catalogue, was founded[133]. Hearne describes him[134] as being 'a very industrious, usefull man.' Although a member of Hart Hall, he never took any degree; but wore a civilian's gown. He died in the Hall about 1704, aged upwards of 70, and was buried in St. Peter's-in-the-East. He left £200 to the Vice-Principal of Hart Hall, which was partly spent in building a library-room[135].

[131] Of the 'hyemis inclementia' before the present system of warming the Library was introduced, several of the present staff of officers can speak as feelingly as Hyde. The writer remembers, in particular, one winter when, in consequence of the roof being under repair, the thermometer fell some eleven degrees below freezing point!

[132] _MS. Diary_, 1714, vol. ii. p. 193.

[133] _Reliquiæ Hearn._ ii. 591. But see p. 116, _infra_.

[134] _MS. Diary_, li. 193.

[135] Hearne's _MS. Diary_, ciii. 38.

A.D. 1675.

In the Register of Benefactions, on a page faintly headed in pencil with this date, is entered a gift from Christopher, Lord Hatton, 'Homiliarum Saxonicarum 4 volumina antiqua.' The donor was consequently the second baron, and first viscount, Hatton, who succeeded his father Christopher (a firm royalist, and close friend of Clarendon, as well as antiquarian, and friend of Dodsworth) in 1670, and died in 1706. Possibly this gift may have been made through the influence of his uncle, Capt. Charles Hatton, who appears to have been much interested in Anglo-Saxon studies, who himself gave three MSS. to the Library, and several of whose letters to Dr. Charlett in 1694-1707 are preserved in vol. xxxiii. of Ballard's MSS. Strange to say, these volumes of Homilies (written shortly after the Norman Conquest) are now among the Junian MSS., Nos. 22, 23, 24, 99, and their appearance in that collection is accounted for by Wanley (_Cat._ p. 45, where they are fully described) by a story which, he says, was often told him by Hyde, viz. that, immediately upon the arrival of the MSS. at the Library, they were lent to Dr. Marshall, who most probably in turn lent them to Junius; that, Marshall dying soon after, Junius kept them until his own death, when they returned to the Library with his own books, by his bequest. Junius himself frequently refers to them under the description of _Codices Hattoniani_.

The Library also contains a collection of 112 miscellaneous and valuable MSS., 'ex Codicibus Hattonianis,' of the presentation of which no record has been found[136], but which doubtless came about the same time from the same donor. Some precious Anglo-Saxon volumes form the special feature of this collection. Amongst them are, King Alfred's translation of Gregory's _Pastoral Care_, of which the king designed to send a copy to each Cathedral Church in the kingdom, this being the copy sent to Worcester (No. 20); the translation by Werfrith, Bishop of Worcester, of Gregory's _Dialogues_, with King Alfred's preface (No. 76); and a version of the Four Gospels, written about the time of Henry II (No. 65).

Henry Justell, afterwards Librarian at St. James's, sent to the University from France, through Dr. Hickes, three very precious MSS. of the seventh century, written in uncial characters, containing the Acts of the Council of Ephesus, the Canons of Carthage, Nicæa, Chalcedon, &c., which had been used by his father Christopher Justell in his _Bibliotheca Juris Canonici veteris_, 1661. They are now numbered, _e Mus._ 100-102. Several other MSS. given at the same time are preserved in the same series. In return for this valuable gift Justell was created D.C.L. by diploma.

[136] The Register has evidently been kept very irregularly and imperfectly during the time that Barlow and Hyde held the headship.

A.D. 1677.

The wonderful collection of Early English poetry known as 'the Vernon MS.,' was presented 'soon after the Civil Wars' by Col. Edward Vernon, of Trinity College, who had been an officer in the royal army. One who bore the same name, doubtless the same person, of North Aston, Oxon, was created D.C.L. Aug. 6, 1677; it was probably therefore about that time that the MS. was presented. The volume is described in Bernard's Catalogue, 1697, p. 181, as being a 'vast massy manuscript;' and very correctly. Its measurements are these: length of page, 22-1/2 inches; length of written text, 17-1/2 inches; breadth of page, 15 inches; breadth of written text, 12-1/2 inches. It is written in triple columns, on 412 leaves of stout vellum; and having been clad of late years in a proportionate russia binding, is altogether a Goliath among books. In date it is of the early part of the fourteenth century. Its first article bears the titles of 'Salus Animæ' and 'Sowle-Hele,' and its chief contents are Lives of the Saints, Hampole's _Prick of Conscience_, Grosteste's _Castle of Love_, Hampole's _Perfect Living_, the treatise on _Contemplative Life_, the _Mirror of S. Edmund_, the _Abbey of the Holy Ghost_, and _Piers Plowman_; besides a multitude of smaller pieces, several of which have been recently copied with a view to publication by the Early English Text Society[137]. Fifty copies of a brief list of the contents (numbering altogether 161 articles) were printed by J. O. Halliwell, Esq., in 1848. A MS., similar in size and contents, was presented to the British Museum a few years ago by Sir John Simeon; it is, apparently, the work of the same scribe as the Bodleian book.

[137] This Society has also just issued Part 1. of Piers Plowman from this MS., edited by W. W. Skeat, M.A. (Oct. 1867).

A.D. 1678.

Francis Junius, born at Heidelberg in 1589, who had passed a large part of his life in England as librarian to that Howard Earl of Arundel who collected the marbles which go under his name at Oxford, as well as the MSS. similarly entitled, which are preserved in the British Museum and at Heralds' College, bequeathed to the Library, on his decease at Windsor in this year, all his Anglo-Saxon MSS. and his own life-long collections bearing on the philology of the Northern nations. Amongst these are some English relics of the greatest value and importance. The book of metrical Homilies on the Dominical Gospels, compiled by an Augustinian monk named Ormin, who thence called his book _Ormulum_ ([OE: 'þiss boc iss nemmnedd Orrmulum, Forrþi þatt Orrm itt wrohte']) is one of the chief of these. Its date is conjectured to be the 13th century. It is written on parchment, on folio leaves, very long and very narrow (averaging 20 inches by 8) in a very broad and rude hand, with many additions inserted on extra parchment scraps. Twenty-seven leaves appear to be wanting. The whole work was first published in 2 vols., at the University Press in 1852, under the editorship of R. M. White, D.D., formerly Professor of Anglo-Saxon. Cædmon's metrical paraphrase of Genesis and other parts of Holy Scripture, illustrated with numerous curious drawings, is another of the gems of this collection. The MS. is of the end of the tenth century, but the work itself is now generally believed to be, in the main, the production of the earliest English poet, the Cædmon noticed by Bede (iii. 24), who died towards the close of the seventh century, and not, as Hickes conjectured, of some later writer of the same name. The MS. first came to light in the hands of Archbp. Usher, by whom it was given to Junius. The latter published it at Amsterdam in 1655, and it was re-edited by Mr. Benj. Thorpe in 1832; several English and German translations have also appeared. Many of the drawings were engraved and published in 1754, as illustrations of the manners and buildings of the Anglo-Saxons; and the whole of them have been engraved in vol. xxiv. of the _Archæologia_, with some remarks by Sir H. Ellis. MS. 121 is an extremely valuable collection of the Canons of the Anglo-Saxon Church, written in the tenth century, which belonged to Worcester Cathedral; and there are four valuable volumes of Homilies, which appear, however, to have been part of Lord Hatton's gift to the Library. (See under 1675[138].) Besides books, Junius left to the University six founts of Gothic, Saxon, and other types, together with the moulds and matrices.

Fifty-five MSS. and printed books, chiefly Oriental, were purchased in this year from the library of Dr. Thomas Greaves, Deputy-professor of Arabic, who died May 22, 1676. It appears from the list in Bernard's Catalogue that sixty-five volumes were purchased, but that ten of these were never sent. With Greaves' own books were obtained also the MSS. of Richard James, of Corpus Christi College, nephew of Thomas James, the first Librarian, which had come into the possession of his friend Greaves upon his death in Dec. 1638. These amount to forty-three volumes, entirely written by James himself, in a large bold hand; they consist chiefly of _Collectanea_ bearing on the history of England from various MSS. Chronicles, Registers, and early writers, particularly with reference to the corruption of the Church and clergy before the Reformation, and in opposition to Becket. A full list of their contents, drawn up by Tanner, is given at pp. 248-253 of Bernard's Catalogue. The price paid for the books bought out of Greaves' library was £55.

Fifteen shillings were paid, as appears from the accounts for the year, for the carriage of a whale from Lechlade, which, strange to say, had been caught in the Severn, and was presented by William Jordan, an apothecary at Gloucester[139]. Ten shillings were also paid for a 'sea elephant.'

[138] Parts of MSS. 4 and 5, which had been stolen from the Library, were recovered, in 1720, in the manner recorded in the following entry in the Benefaction Book: 'Vir doctissimus Joannes Georgius Eckardus, bibliothecæ Brunsvicensis præfectus, pro singulari sua humanitate, folia quammulta MSS. Dictionarii Fr. Junii, continentia sc. litteras F. et S., a nequissimo quodam Dano jam olim surrepta, propriis sumptibus redemit et Bibl. Bodl. ultro restituit.' Some further portions of Junius' papers (including some which had formerly been in the Library) are recorded to have been given in 1753 by the Provost and Fellows of Queen's College.

[139] In the Benefaction Book this gift is assigned to the year 1672.

A.D. 1680. [See A.D. 1665.]

Sir W. Dugdale gave copies of his own works. Two hundred coins were given by Dr. George Hickes.

A.D. 1681.

In this year John Rushworth, of Lincoln's Inn, the historian of the Long Parliament, was a member of the Parliament held at Oxford. Probably it may have been at this time that he presented to the Library one of its most precious κειμηλια, called, from its donor, 'Codex Rushworthianus.' (Auct. D. 2. 19.) In 1665, Junius mentions it in the Preface to his _Glossarium Gothicum_, as being then still in Rushworth's own hands[140]. It is a MS. of the Latin Gospels, written by an Irish scribe, Mac-Regol, (who records his name on the last leaf, 'Macregol dipincxit hoc evangelium,' &c.,) and glossed with an interlinear Anglo-Saxon version by Owun and by Færmen, a priest at Harewood. The volume is traditionally reported to have been in Bede's possession, but since the Irish annals record the death of Mac Riagoil, a scribe and abbot of Birr in 820, the volume must be about a century too late. It has been published in full, together with the Lindisfarne Gospels, by the Surtees Society in 3 vols., under the editorship of Rev. J. Stevenson and George Waring, Esq., M.A. A description is given in Prof. Westwood's _Palæographia Sacra Pictoria_.

Nine shillings were paid for the carriage of a mummy from London, probably one of those which are now in the Ashmolean Museum. It was given by Aaron Goodyear, a Turkey merchant, who gave also a model of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, and various little images, and in 1684 more than forty coins.

[140] It is strange that no entry of the gift of this priceless volume is found in the Register of Benefactions, any more than of that of the Vernon MS.

A.D. 1682.

Richard Davis, M.A., of Sandford, Oxon, gave the portrait of Margaret, Countess of Richmond, a book of Russian laws, and the Runic Calendar or Clog Almanack, now exhibited in the glass case at the entrance of the Library. The latter is thus described in the Register: 'Calendarium ligneum, tam materia quam usu perpetuum, unius ligni quadrati angulis incisum, more antiquo.'

Dr. John Morris, Regius Professor of Hebrew, who died in 1648, bequeathed five pounds annually to the University, to be paid to some Master of Arts of Ch. Ch., chosen by the Dean, for a speech 'in Schola Linguarum,' in honour of Sir Thomas Bodley, 'and as a panegyric and encouragement of the Hebrew studies,' on Nov. 8, in the presence of the Visitors of the Library after the conclusion of the annual visitation. The bequest was to take effect after the death of his wife, which happened on Nov. 11, 1681; and on Oct. 6, 1682, Convocation fixed 3 p.m. as the hour for delivery of the Speech on the Visitation-day.

The Speeches are continued annually, although, probably for want of public notice, only scantily attended, none but those actually interested in the Visitation of the Library, together with the speaker's friends, being generally aware of it. If provision were made for the deposit of the Speeches in the Library after delivery, they would no doubt form an interesting and accurate record of its growth, and of many passing events which, for want of such a record, are soon forgotten. Only one speech appears to be preserved in the Library: it is that delivered on Nov. 8, 1701, by Edmund Smith, M.A., of Ch. Ch., and is very beautifully written in imitation of typography. But in this case nothing is recorded of the history of the preceding year, the speech being simply a panegyric of the Founder. It has been printed among Smith's _Works_, a pamphlet of 103 pages dignified with that name, of which the third edition appeared at London in 1719[141]. Dr. Rawlinson appears to have endeavoured to compile a list of the Speakers; for Bishop Tanner, in a letter to him dated Oct. 11, 1735, from Ch. Ch., says he will enquire them out, if he can, but that they are not entered upon the Chapter books, since they are not appointed by the Chapter, but privately by the Dean or Hebrew Professor, and paid by the Vice-Chancellor, in whose accounts alone their names are probably entered[142].

The names of the Speakers up to the year 1690 are given in Wood's _Athenæ_ (ii. 127) as follows. They were all M.A., and Students of Ch. Ch.:--

1682 Thomas Sparke 1683 Zach. Isham 1684 Chas. Hickman 1685 Thos. Newey 1686 Thos. Burton 1687 Will. Bedford 1688 Rich. Blakeway 1689 Roger Altham, jun. 1690 Edward Wake * * * * 1701 Edm. Smith

The following list from 1706 to 1734 has been gathered out of Hearne's MS. Diary:--

1706 Rich. Newton 1707 Thos. Terry 1708 Will. Periam 1709 Rich. Sadlington 1710 Richard Frewin 1711 -- Aldred[143] 1712 Gilb. Lake 1713 Hen. Cremer 1714 Chas. Brent 1715 John White 1716 Edw. Ivie 1717 Hen. Gregory 1718 Thos. Fenton 1719 George Wiggan 1720 Thos. Foulkes 1721 Will. Le Hunt 1722 Hen. Shirman 1723 Matthew Lee 1724 Christopher Haslam 1725 Will. Davis 1726 Edw. Blakeway 1727 David Gregory 1728 [Rob.?] Manaton 1729 [Hen.?] Jones 1730 John Fanshaw 1731 Oliver Battely 1732 Dan. Burton 1733 Fifield Allen 1734 Pierce Manaton, M.D.

[141] A long account of Smith is given in Johnson's _Lives of the Poets_.

[142] _Letters of Eminent Persons, &c_, ii. 111.

[143] Doubtless an error for Chas. Aldrich

A.D. 1683.

Three MSS., containing the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Syriac Pentateuch, and the Syriac Old Testament, were purchased at the cost of the University.

A.D. 1684.

Nine Oriental and Russian MSS. were given by Joseph Taylor, LL.D., of St. John's College. And Sir Rob. Viner, Bart., the loyal alderman of London, favoured the Library with a human skeleton, a tanned human skin, and the dried body of a negro boy!

A.D. 1685.

Thomas Marshall, or Mareschall, D.D., Rector of Lincoln College, and Dean of Gloucester, who died April 18, bequeathed his MSS., and all such among his printed books as were not already in the Library. The MSS. amounted to 159, chiefly Oriental, including some valuable Coptic copies of the Gospels, &c., which were procured for him by Huntington, with a few in Dutch, and others miscellaneous in language and subject. They are entered in Bernard's Catalogue, pp. 272-3, and 373-4. The printed books are still kept together under his name.

A.D. 1686.

Fell, Bishop of Oxford, who died July 10, bequeathed a few MSS. They consist of an early and curious collection of _Vitæ Sanctorum_ in four folio volumes, of a transcript (in nine folio volumes) of a _Glossarium Septentrionale_ by Francis Junius, Dionysius Syrus in Latin by Dudley Loftus, and two Greek MSS., Damascius and Euthymius Zigabenus, described at the end (col. 907) of Mr. Coxe's Catalogue of the Greek MSS. One other MS. has somehow been incorporated in this collection (now numbered 21-23) which does not belong to it. It is a _Clavis Linguæ Sanctæ_, or explanation of all the Hebrew, and some Chaldee, roots, found in the Old Testament, by Nicholas Trott, in three folio volumes, written with great care and neatness. This, of which the first part had been printed at Oxford in 1719, was sent to the Library in 1746, as appears from the following letter, preserved (without address) in a parcel of papers relating to the Library, now in the Librarian's study:--

'MY LORD,

'My wife's grandfather Judge Trott, cheif justice of South Carolina, desired on his death bed that his forty years' labour relating to the Hebrew root might be sent as a present to the Publick Library at Oxford. I proposed to have carried it, but my time has allways been taken up at a disagreable series of Court Martials, and now I am again going to the West Indies. That I must beg your Lordship will order or give it a conveyance to the University, and I am, with great respect, my Lord,

'Your Lordship's most humble servant, '_23 Nov., 1746._ 'THOS. FRANKLAND.'

It appears, however, from the accounts, &c., that the MS. was not actually delivered until 1748 or 1749, when it was received through Dr. Hunt.

A few of Bishop Fell's MSS. came subsequently to the Library among those of Rev. Henry Jones[144], who succeeded Fell in his rectory of Sunningwell, Berks, in the church of which parish the Bishop's wife was buried.

At the Visitation on Nov. 8, it was ordered that notice be given that 'Nullus in posterum quemlibet librum aut volumen extra Bibliothecam asportet,' and that monition be sent to every College and Hall for the return of any books taken out within three days. Several books appear to have been reported in previous years as missing; hence, doubtless, the issue of this order.

[144] Hearne's pref. to John Ross, p. 1.

A.D. 1687.

On the occasion of the visit of King James II to Oxford, chiefly, but unsuccessfully, made for the purpose of overawing the fellows of Magdalen College, who had refused to elect as president his nominee, Anth. Farmer, he was invited by the University to partake of a breakfast or collation in the Library. For this purpose he came hither on the morning of Sept. 5, between nine and ten, where, at the south part of the Selden end, a banquet was prepared which cost the University £160, consisting of 111 dishes of meat, sweetmeats, and fruit. The King sat here for about three quarters of an hour, and held some conversation with Hyde about a Chinese, 'a little blinking fellow,' who had recently visited the place, and about the religion of China; but asked no one to join him at the table. Upon rising to depart, a scene of strange indecorum, as it would now appear, ensued; the 'rabble' (as they are described) of courtiers and academics rushed upon the mass of untouched dainties, and began a disorderly scramble, in which they 'flung the wet sweetmeats on the ladies linnen and petticoats, and stained them.' The King watched the scramble for two or three minutes, and then departed, commending to the Vice-Chancellor and doctors his chaplain, W. Hall, who had preached before him the day previous, and delivering a most fatherly homily on the sin of pride, the virtue of charity, and the duty of doing as they would be done to. Good, gossipping, Ant. à Wood gives in his _Autobiography_ a full account of all that passed, from which are taken the quotations made above[145].

[145] See also Miss Seward's _Anecdotes_, Supplement, 1797, p. 72.

A.D. 1688.

Dr. Hyde went up to London in this year to demand personally of the Company of Stationers the books which were due to the Library by Act of Parliament (1 James II, cap. 17, for seven years, continuing previous acts), but which they had neglected to send. His expenses were £6 5_s._

A.D. 1690.

Thirty pounds were paid in this year to Antony à Wood for twenty-five MSS. out of his library[146]. These are volumes of great value, including Chartularies of the Abbeys of Glastonbury and Malmesbury, and of the Preceptory of Sandford, Oxon, copies of Papal bulls relating to England, a register of lands in Leicestershire _temp._ Hen. VI, &c.

The rest of Wood's MSS., and printed books, came to the Library, together with the other collections preserved in the Ashmolean Museum, in 1860.

It is said that Wood in this year estimated the number of MSS. in the Library at 10,141. This must have been the number of separate books, not volumes, as in 1697 the latter appear from Bernard's Catalogue to have been about 6700.

[146] In Bernard's Catalogue the purchase is said to have been made in 1692, but this is an error, as it is entered in the accounts of 1690.

A.D. 1691.

On Oct. 8, died Dr. Thomas Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln, who, retaining his attachment for the place over which he had presided from 1652 to 1660, bequeathed to it seventy-eight MSS. (now bound in fifty-four volumes), and all the printed books in his collection which the Library did not possess, the remainder going to Queen's College. They appear to have been received in the years 1693-4, as large payments for the carriage are found in the accounts then. His MSS. are described in the old Catalogue of 1697. The printed books, which are particularly rich in tracts of the time of Charles I and the Usurpation, are still kept distinct, being called _Linc._; ending, in the 8^o series, at about the middle of the shelves marked with the letter C in that division. They are placed in the gallery on the left hand of the great central room[147]. His legacy included a copy of the famous _Exposicio Sancti Jeronimi in Simbolo Apostolorum_, which was printed at Oxford in 1468, and completed, as the colophon states, on Dec. 17. This volume was given to Barlow, as he notes at the beginning, by Bishop Juxon, July 31, 1657. It is exhibited in the glass case near the entrance. The Library possesses also seven other productions of the early Oxford press. They are as follow:--

1. _Ægidius Romanus de Peccato Originali_, dated March 14, 1479. This was one of Rob. Burton's books. Qu. unique?

2. _Textus Ethicorum Aristotelis, per Leonardum Arretinum translatus_, 1479. One of Selden's books.

3. _Expositio Alexandri [de Ales] super tertium librum [Arist.] De Anima_. 'Impressum per me Theodericum rood de Colonia in alma universitate Oxon.' Oct. 11, 1481.

4. _Joh. Latteburii Exposicio Trenorum Jheremie_, July 31, 1482. No place, but printed with the same type as the last.

5. _Liber Festivalis_, in English, printed by Rood and Hunt, 1486. Two copies, but both very imperfect. The more imperfect one of the two formerly belonged to Herbert, and was bought for £6 6_s._ in 1832; two additional leaves have been inserted by Mr. Coxe, which were found among Hearne's scraps, having been given to him as fragments of a Caxton by Bagford. The other copy was bought in 1852, at Utterson's sale, for £6 10_s._

6. _Opus Wilhelmi Lyndewoode super Constitutiones Provinciales_. No place or date, but identified by the type.

7. _Vulgaria quedam abs Terentio in Anglicam linguam traducta_. Without place or date, but also identified by the type. The following note, which corroborates the identification, is written in red ink on a fly-leaf in the volume (which includes several other tracts): '1483. Frater Johannes Grene emit hunc librum Oxon. de elemosinis amicorum suorum[148].'

A list of sixty-six books, which Hunt, the Oxford printer and bookseller, had in his hands for sale in 1483, is preserved in his own writing on a fly-leaf in a copy of a French translation of Livy, Paris, 1486, which was bought for the Library from Mr. C. J. Stewart, in Dec. 1860, for £12. The list is headed thus: 'Inventorium librorum quos ego Thomas Hunt, stacionarius universitatis Oxoniensis, recepi de Magistro Petro Actore et Johannis (_sic_) de Aquisgrano ad vendendum, cum precio cujuslibet libri, et promito (_sic_) fideliter restituere libros aut pecunias secundum precium inferius scriptum, prout patebit in sequentibus, Anno Domini M^o. CCCC^o. octuagesimo tercio.'

[147] In most of them is inscribed the motto, αιεν αριστευειν.

[148] This last book is described by Dr. Cotton in the second series of his _Typographical Gazetteer_, published in 1866, from a copy in the University Library at Cambridge. Besides the other Oxford books enumerated by that learned bibliographer, several fragments of another, a _Compendium totius Grammaticæ_ (conjectured to have been written by John Anwykyll, Waynflete's first Grammar Master at Magdalene College) have been discovered. They have been identified by Mr. H. Bradshaw, the Librarian of the University of Cambridge, whose extensive acquaintance with early typography is well known. That gentleman found, at Cambridge, two leaves in the University Library in 1859, two more in Corpus Christi in 1861, and two in St. John's in 1866. Four other leaves were discovered by the present writer in 1867, bound up as fly-leaves in a volume in the library of Viscount Dillon, at Ditchley, Oxfordshire. Mr. Bradshaw supposes the book to have been printed about 1483-6.

A.D. 1692.

Thirty-eight Persian and Arabic MSS., with one printed book, were bought from Hyde, the Librarian. They are entered in Bernard's Catalogue, pp. 286-7. Being bought out of the funds of the University, no mention of the price paid for them is found in the Library accounts.

A.D. 1693.

The Oriental MSS., in number 420, of the famous Edward Pococke, Regius Professor of Hebrew (who had deceased Sept. 10, 1691), were purchased by the University for £600. They are chiefly in Armenian, Hebrew, and Arabic, with three volumes in Æthiopic, a Samaritan Pentateuch, and a Persian Evangeliary. A list is given at pp. 274-278 of Bernard's Catalogue. In 1822 the Library became possessed of a portion of Pococke's Collection of printed miscellaneous books, by the bequest of Rev. C. Francis, M.A., of Brasenose College. They are chiefly small volumes in Latin, on historical subjects; and are, for the most part, placed in the shelves marked 8^o Z. Jur. [Arabic version of Isaiah, see p. 81.]

Another large Oriental collection was added in this year by the purchase, from Dr. Robert Huntington, for the sum of £700, of about 600 MSS. These he had procured while holding the post of chaplain to the English merchants at Aleppo[149]. The collection is one of very great value and rarity. No. 1 is a fine and ponderous Syriac volume, containing the works of Gregory Abulpharage. No. 2 is a very fine folio Arabic MS., written in the year of the Hegira 777 (= A.D. 1375), and dedicated to the Sultan Almalek Alashraf Shalian ben Hosain; in it, as Uri says in his Catalogue, 'variæ Ægypti regiones recensentur, agrorum cujusque regionis mensura definitur, et annui redditus exponuntur.' Dibdin[150] describes it in his own exaggerated style, as follows:--'One of the grandest books-- ... a sort of Domesday compilation--which can possibly be seen.... The scription is in double columns, with the margins emblazoned only in stars. The title, on the reverse of the first leaf, is highly illuminated, in a fine style; not crowded with ornaments, but grand from its simplicity. At the end, we observe that it is (rightly) called _Munus Pretiosum_, and that the author was Sherfiddin Iahia ben Almocar ben Algiaian. The inspection of such a volume, on the coldest possible morning, even when the thermometer stands at _zero_, is sufficient to warm the most torpid system.' No. 80 is a copy of Maimonides' _Yad Hachazaka_, revised by the author, with his autograph signature at the bottom of fol. 165, and a MS. note by him on fol. 1. Of these an engraved facsimile is given in _Treasures of Oxford, containing Poetical Compositions by the ancient Jewish Authors in Spain, and compiled from MSS. in the Bodl. Libr. by H. Edelman and Leop. Dukes; edited and rendered into English by M. H. Bresslau_: part i. 8^o. Lond. 1851. A second part of this work was to have contained prose selections from MSS. in the Huntington, Pococke, Michael, and Oppenheim collections, but no more was published. Among Huntington's books there are also three, of no great antiquity, in the Mendean character, of which Dr. T. Smith narrates in his life of Bernard (1704, p. 21) that two were said to have been given by God to Adam, and the third to the angels, 330,000 years before Adam. And one volume (No. 598) is in the Ouigour language, a Tartar dialect, of which very few specimens are known to exist. A gentleman (M. Vaḿbery M. Vaḿbery), the traveller in Tartary, who is engaged in forming a Chrestomathy of this dialect, came in the last year to England for the purpose of examining this volume, as one of the few on which his work could be based. Three MSS. exist at Paris; but that in the Bodleian is said to be the most beautiful of all as a specimen of writing, as well as the most ancient. It is a version of the _Bakhtiar Nameh_. A description of it, with an engraved facsimile, is given in Davids' _Turkish Grammar_, 4^o. Lond. 1832, pref. p. xxxi.

An exchange of some duplicates was made with the Library of Queen's College, and in 1695 the duplicates of Bishop Barlow's Collection were transferred, in accordance with his will, to the same Library.

[149] He had previously given thirty-five MSS. in the years 1678, 1680, and 1683. He died on Sept. 2, 1701, only twelve days after his consecration as Bishop of Raphoe.

[150] _Bibliogr. Decam._ iii. 472.

A.D. 1694.

A Mr. Clarke was employed in this year in making a catalogue of Pococke's and Huntington's MSS., for which he altogether received between £13 and £14.

A.D. 1695.

Books were bought from Mr. Bobart, and at the auction of the library of Sir Charles Scarborough, M.D.

_Stationers' Company._ See 1610.

_MSS. from Wood._ See 1658.

A.D. 1696.

From this year until 1700, Humphrey Wanley was an assistant in the Library, at an annual salary of £12. He had also £10 at the end of this year 'extraordinary, for his paines already past,' and £15, at the beginning of 1700, 'for his pains about Dr. Bernard's books.' Possibly this grant may have been in consequence of the interposition of Bishop Lloyd of Worcester, who, in a letter to Wanley of Jan. 6, in that year, promises to speak to the Bishop of Oxford to see whether he can get his place in the Library made better for him[151]. Wanley was no favourite with Hearne. The following passage from the _MS. Diary_ of the latter[152] is a specimen of the censure which he on several occasions passes on him: 'Humphrey Wanley appears from several passages to be a very illiterate silly fellow. He committed strange and almost incredible blunders when he was employed by Dr. Charlett and some others in printing the catalogue of the MSS. of England and Ireland, which work was committed first to the care of Dr. Bernard; but he being then very weak and otherwise employed, he could not take so much pains about it as he would, had he not been thus hindered.' The very accurate index, however, to this Catalogue was Bernard's own work, made from the proof-sheets, and written with his own hand, 'uti ab illo accepi,' says Dr. T. Smith in his Life (1704, p. 48). He prepared also another index, which included besides the contents of eight of the great foreign libraries, but not the Royal Library at Paris, the catalogue of which he was unable to obtain.

[151] Walker's _Letters by Eminent Persons_, i. 102. It is pleasant to find that Wanley in more prosperous days evinced his gratitude for the help he had received in the Library, by giving, in the year 1721, £7 7_s._, together with a MS. Latin Bible.

[152] 1714, vol. li. p. 193.

A.D. 1697.

On the death of Edward Bernard, D.D., the Savilian Professor of Astronomy (which occurred on Jan. 12), the University became the purchaser from his widow of the greater part of his library. A selection from his printed books, made on behalf of the Library by H. Wanley, comprising many rare Aldines and specimens of the 15th century, were bought for £140, and his MSS., many of which were valuable copies of classical authors, together with collated printed texts and his own _Adversaria_, for £200. Of 218 of the latter, Bernard has given a very brief list in his own invaluable _Catalogus Manuscriptorum Angliæ_, which appeared posthumously, in the year of his death. (Vol. ii. pp. 226-8.) The bulk of his books are dispersed through various divisions of the Library; but about thirty volumes of his own _Adversaria_ are kept together under his name. A very full account, by H. Wanley, of the purchase of the collection is printed by Dr. Bliss in his notes to the _Ath. Oxon._ (iv. 709), who adds that this addition 'contained many of the most valuable books, both printed and MSS., now in the Library.'

In the discharge of his duty of selection, Wanley came into sharp collision with his chief, Dr. Hyde, as is shown by a curious paper, in Wanley's handwriting, which was transcribed by Dr. Rawlinson from the original in Dr. Charlett's possession[153]. The paper gives a list of books for the not securing which, together with others, out of Dr. Bernard's collection, blame had been thrown upon Wanley, and which Hyde had said must by all means be bought at the auction which was to be held in October, 1697. To the title of each book so specified, Wanley appends some caustic remarks, exposing Dr. Hyde's little acquaintance with the Library or with the books themselves; and sums up thus at the close:--'This is what I have to say to these 13 books, one whereof I look upon as imperfect, two more I was charged not to meddle with, and the other ten are in the Library already. I shall wave all unmannerly reflections, as whether this be not in you _insignis insufficientia_, for which you are liable to be turned out of your place; or [whether,] if you had been employed to bring in a list of Dr. Bernard's books wanting in the Library, and took the same method as now, the University would not have bought a fair parcel of duplicates, and such like; but I pass them by. Tho' it must be owned that the University being willing to lay out but 140 pounds, some different editions of the Bible, Fathers, Classicks, &c., were preferr'd to some books not at all in the Library, but they were at the same time judged to be of less moment, and likely to be given to it by future benefactors.'

The quarrel, however, soon ceased; for, in the following year, Hyde was anxious to see Wanley appointed as his successor. The latter, in a letter to Dr. Charlett, dated Oct. 10, 1698[154], repeats a conversation held with Hyde on the previous evening, in which the Librarian said 'that he is heartily weary of the place of Library-keeper; that he must use more exercise in riding out, &c., if he intends to preserve his health; which will of necessity hinder his attendance there. He had rather I succeeded him than anybody else, which I cannot do untill I am a graduate; that, if I have any friends amongst the heads of houses, they cann't do better for me than in procuring for me the degree of Batchellor of Law, that I may be in a condition to stand for his place with others, which he will resign as soon as I have obtain'd the said degree, and (for my sake) will communicate his intentions to nobody else in the mean time. He presses me to get this degree as soon as possible, urging that he does not care how soon he is rid of his place.' Wanley asks for Charlett's advice; what that was does not appear, but, at any rate, he did not obtain the degree which he desired, and consequently did not become eligible as Hyde's successor.

Sixteen MS. treatises on Mathematics, Astronomy, and Ancient History, by Thomas Lydiat, were given by Will. Coward, M.D. They are placed amongst the Bodl. MSS., chiefly between Nos. 658-671.

[153] Rawlinson's copy is now in MS. Rawl. Misc. 937. For the knowledge of this paper the writer is indebted to Rev. W. H. Bliss.

[154] Ballard MSS. xiii. 45.

A.D. 1700.

Considerable fears were entertained for the safety of the Divinity School and that portion of the Library which is built over it. About thirty-two years before, some failure had been observed in the roof of the former, which was rectified under the superintendence of Sir Christopher Wren. When Bishop Barlow's books were brought to the Library, in 1692 or 1693, the galleries on either side of the middle room were erected; and, as the beams of the roof of the School were then observed to give from the wall, they were anchored on both sides, under the direction of Dr. Aldrich. But the tight bracing had now caused the south wall, that which adjoins Exeter College garden, to bulge outwards, so that the book-stalls were found to have started from the wall by three and a-half inches at the top and two and a-half at the bottom; the wall itself was seven and a-half inches out of the perpendicular, and the four great arches of the vault of the School were all cracked. Hereupon Dr. Gregory, the Savilian Professor, was despatched to London to consult Sir C. Wren again, and, by his advice, additional buttresses of great depth and strength were erected on the south side, the weight of the bookstalls was removed from the roof of the School by their being trussed up to the walls with iron cramps; and the cracks in the vault were filled with lead or oyster-shells, and in some places with the insertion of new stones, and were then 'wedged up with well-seasoned oaken wedges.' This work went on through the summers of 1701 and 1702; and in 1703 some similar repairs were executed in some of the other Schools. The letters and papers of Wren on the subject, with the draughts, and reports of the workmen employed, are preserved in Bodley MS. 907. They are printed in [Walker's] _Oxoniana_, iii. 16-27.

In this year died Henry Jones, M.A., Vicar of Sunningwell, Berks[155]. He bequeathed to the Library sixty volumes in MS., very miscellaneous in character, and chiefly of the 16th and 17th centuries. Some of them had belonged to Bishop Fell. The bequest probably came to Oxford some few years after Mr. Jones' death, as the books are entered (in a full and accurate list) by Hearne, in the Benefaction Book, among the gifts of about the years 1706-12. It was from a modern transcript among these that Hearne edited the _Historia Regum Angliæ_ of John Ross or Rouse; and seventy-one documents from No. 23, which is an Hereford Chartulary, were printed by Rawlinson at the end of his _History of Hereford_, 8^o, Lond. 1717. One volume has for many years been missing from the collection, viz., a funeral oration, by John Sonibanck, on the death of Queen Elizabeth of York, in 1503. A list of the MSS. is printed from the Benefaction Register, in Uffenbach's _Commercium Epistolicum_, pp. 200-208.

Between 1700 and 1738 Sir Hans Sloane is recorded to have given considerably more than 1400 volumes, together with his picture in 1731; but the majority of them do not appear to have been considered of much value, and only 415 are specified by name in the Benefaction Register. Dr. Hyde, in a letter to Hudson, which accompanied a list of the books for which the latter had asked with a view to registration, says he scarce thinks the entry to be 'for the credit of the business, _nos inter nos_[156].' But Hudson appears to have thought that the omission proceeded rather from carelessness, for, in a letter to Wanley, he says that he thinks Hyde assigned '_non causa pro causa_[157].'

[155] Steele's _MSS. Collections for Berks_; Gough MS. 27.

[156] Walker's _Letters by Eminent Persons_, i. 173.

[157] Ellis's _Letters of Eminent Literary Men_, Camd. Soc. pp. 302-3.

A.D. 1701.

The long-entertained idea of resigning the Librarianship was at length carried out by Dr. Thomas Hyde in this year, for the reasons given in the following letter, which was addressed by him to the Pro-Vice-Chancellor, probably Dr. Charlett. It is here printed from a copy sent by Hyde to Wake, then Rector of St. James, Westminster, and preserved amongst the Wake Correspondence in the library of Ch. Ch.:--

'March 10, 1700/01, 'CHRIST CHURCH, OXON.

'SIR,--I being a little indisposed by the gout, acquaint you thus by letter, that what I long agoe designed (as you partly knew) I am now about to put in execution. That is to say, I shall shortly lay down my office of Library-keeper, about a month hence, which resolution I do now declare, and I do hereby give you timely and statuteable notice of the same as Pro-Vice-Chancellor, entreating that, as the Statute requires, you will in two days order Mr. Cowper to draw a Programma to be set up at the Schools to the sence of the enclosed paper, he best knowing forms and lawyers' Latin.

'Among the Bodleian Statutes in the Appendix, in the Statute _de causis amovendi aut libere recedendi_, you will find that upon the Library-keeper's notice thus given, you are in two days' time to fix up the programma preparatory to make it known that about a month hence (which is about the end of this term) that office will be actually resigned and void.

'My reasons for leaving the place are two, viz. one is because (my feet being left weak by the gout) I am weary of the toil and drudgery of daily attendance all times and weathers; and secondly, that I may have my time free to myself to digest and finish my papers and collections upon hard places of Scripture, and to fit them for the press[158]; seing that Lectures (though we must attend upon them) will do but little good, hearers being scarce and practicers more scarce.

'I should have left the Library more compleat and better furnish'd but that the building of the Elaboratory[159] did so exhaust the University mony, that no books were bought in severall years after it. And at other times when books were sometimes bought, it was (as you well know) never left to me to buy them, the Vice-Chancellor not allowing me to lay out any University mony. And therefore some have blamed me without cause for not getting all sorts of books.

'Before the Visitations I did usually spend a month's time in preparing a list of good books to offer to the Curators; but I could seldom get them bought, being commongly (_sic_) answered in short, that they had no mony. Nay, I have been chid and reproved by the Vice-Chancellor for offering to put them to so much charge in buying books. These things at last discouraged me from medling in it. But, however, I leave the Library three times bigger than I found it[160], and furnished with a Catalogue of which I found it destitute. I wish the University a man who may take as much pains and drudgery as I have done whilst I was able to do it.

'I entreat you with all speed to cause the Register to put up the programma signed with your name, that so things may be regularly and statutably dispatched in order, until the time of actuall resignation shall come.

'In the mean time I remain, 'Your humble servant, 'THOMAS HYDE.'

John Hudson, M.A., of Queen's, afterwards D.D. and Princ. of St. Mary Hall, was elected in Hyde's room; he was opposed by J. Wallis, M.A., of Magd., the Laudian Professor of Arabic, but was chosen by 194 votes to 173[161]. A letter to him from Hyde on his election, with advice about the entering of Sir H. Sloane's books in the Register, the augmentation of Mr. Crabbe's salary, the Catalogues and the Statutes, is printed in [Walker's] _Letters by Eminent Persons_, i. 173. He had previously, in 1696-98, given seventy books to the Library, and in 1705-10 he added nearly 600. Hyde did not long survive his resignation, dying before one year had elapsed, on Feb. 18, 1702. He was buried at Handborough, near Oxford.

In this year Thomas Hearne, the famous antiquary, was appointed Janitor, or Assistant, in the Library. He tells us in his _Autobiography_ (p. 10) that, from the time of his taking the degree of B.A. in Act term, 1699, 'he constantly went to the Bodleian Library every day, and studied there as long as the time allowed by the Statutes would admit,' and that the fact of this his 'diligence being taken notice of by all persons that came thither, and his skill in books being likewise well known to those with whom he had at any time conversed,' occasioned Hudson's appointing him to be an Assistant immediately upon his own election as Librarian. It appears, from the Visitors' Book, that a payment of £10 was made to him in this year, and that, in the next year, £30 were voted to him for his assistance in making an Appendix to the Catalogue of printed books[162], and for enlarging and correcting the Catalogues of MSS. and Coins. Extra payments of 50_s._ were also made to him in 1704 and 1706, and of 20_s._ in 1709.

_The Bodley Speech._ See 1682.

[158] These were left in MS. at Hyde's death, and have never been published.

[159] _i.e._ the Ashmolean Museum.

[160] Hyde was greatly mistaken here, as a calculation made by Hearne in 1714 (_q.v._) showed that the Library had then little more than doubled since 1620.

[161] _Reliqq. Hearn._ ii. 616.

[162] For an account of Hearne's Appendix, see 1738.

A.D. 1702.

A considerable number of printed books were given by Steph. Penton, B.D., and a collection of 500 coins was bequeathed about this time by Tim. Nourse, of Univ. Coll.

A.D. 1704.

The name of John Locke appears in the Register, as the donor of his own works (which he gave at Hudson's request), together with some others, including, with an honourable fairness, those of Bishop Stillingfleet written in controversy with himself. As Locke's expulsion from Ch. Ch., in 1684, by royal mandate, for political reasons, is sometimes, with an injustice which he himself would doubtless have warmly repudiated, represented as if it had been the act of Oxford itself, it is worth while to quote the language in which this gift from him, twenty years afterwards, is recorded, and recorded, too, by the pen of the earnest and conscientious Jacobite, Thomas Hearne: 'Joannes Lock, generosus, et hujus Academiæ olim alumnus, præter Opera ab ipso edita, ob ingenii elegantiam, doctrinæ varietatem, et philosophicam subtilitatem, omnibus suspicienda (_here follow the titles of his own works_), insuper ex suo in optimas artes amore, animoque ad supellectilem literariam augendam propenso, Bibliothecæ huic dono dedit libros sequentes;' _scil._ Churchill's _Voyages and Travels_, 4 vols., 1704, Stillingfleet's _Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity_, Stillingfleet's _Answer to Locke_, and Rob. Boyle's _History of the Air_. Locke desired, in a codicil to his will, that in compliance with a second request from Hudson, all his anonymous works should also be sent to the Library[163].

William Ray, formerly consul at Smyrna, presented about 600 coins, chiefly Greek, which E. Lhwyd (who reported their number to be about 2000) said he had been told had been collected at Smyrna by his cook[164]. But the Benefaction Register records that they were obtained by Ray from the widow of one 'domini Dan. Patridge,' who had himself intended to present them to the University. They were put in order, and a Catalogue made of them, some years afterwards, by Hearne, who intended to have given the Catalogue to the Library, 'had not,' he says, 'the ill usage he afterwards met with there obliged him to alter his mind[165].' Ray also gave a Turkish almanac.

[163] Lord King's _Life of Locke_, edit. 1830, vol. ii. p. 51.

[164] Walker's _Letters by Eminent Persons_, i. 137.

[165] _Life_, p. 13, in _Lives of Leland, Hearne, and Wood_, 1772.

A.D. 1706.

The supposed original MS. of _The Causes of the Decay of Christian Piety_, by the author of _The Whole Duty of Man_, was given by Mr. Keble, the London bookseller. It is now numbered Bodl. MS. 21. Dr. Aldrich was of opinion that it is not in the author's own hand, but copied in a disguised hand by Bishop Fell. Hearne thought it to be in a disguised hand of Sancroft's; but the resemblance is very slight indeed[166].

[166] See _Letters by Eminent Persons_, vol. ii. pp. 133-4.

A.D. 1707.

Six volumes of Archbishop Usher's _Collectanea_, with two or three other MSS. which had belonged to him, were given to the Library by James Tyrrell, the historian, who was the archbishop's grandson. He had placed them previously in the hands of Dr. Mill, for use by him in his edition of the Greek Test., and it was about a week before Mill's death, June 21, 1707, that they were transferred, together with a gift from Mill of various printed books, to the Library[167]. They are now placed among the Rawlinson Miscellaneous MSS., 1065-1074, and one volume containing various readings in the Gr. Test., is numbered Auct. T. v. 30. Other volumes of his MSS. Collections in the Library are Barlow, 10 and 13; _e Musæo_, 46 and 47; Rawl. Misc. 225, 280; Rawl. Letters, 89, and Rawlinson C. 849, 850, which last were given to Hearne by Tyrrell. Hearne has printed some extracts at the end of _Gul. Neubrig._ iii. 804. Six Samaritan and other MSS. which belonged to Usher are now in the class called _Bodl. Orient._

By the bequest of Dr. Humphrey Hody the Library acquired some 400 or 500 volumes, being all those in his own collection which were wanting here, together with his MSS. _Collectanea_. These last, amounting to twenty-three volumes, are now numbered Bodl. Addit. 1. D. 1-4, 2. B. 1-16, 2. C. 1-3.

Thomas, Archbishop of Gocthan, in Armenia, visited England on an errand which seems to have justly excited great sympathy and attention. Sensible of the low condition of his fellow-countrymen, through their want of means of instruction, and being earnestly anxious to do something towards their elevation, he had spent some forty years in travels through Europe and Asia for the purpose of procuring books, establishing printing-presses, educating young men, and obtaining help for the furtherance of his Christian and patriotic projects. His first printing establishment, at Marseilles, was ruined by the mismanagement and fraud of those to whom it was entrusted. He then, for ten years, carried on a press at Amsterdam, where he printed, in Armenian, the New Testament, the Prayers and Hymns of the Church, a translation of Thomas à Kempis, and several other theological works, together with some in geography, history, and science. But troubles and trials again overtook him; disputes and law-suits involved him in debt; one hundred books, which he shipped for Armenia in 1698, were taken at sea, and so never reached their destination. And so, poor and sorrowful, in extreme old age, the Archbishop came to England to seek for help, recommended by Dr. John Cockburn, the English Minister at Amsterdam. He was well received by the Archbishops, and Sharp, of York, procured him an interview with the Queen, who gave him some assistance. Then, recommended by Bishop Compton[168], of London, he came to Oxford. What he received in the way of the help which he most of all needed, deponent sayeth not; let us hope it was not small. What he received in the way of honour, and what he did to cause the introduction of his name in these _Annals_, Hearne tells, in his own interesting way, in his _Diary_[169]:--

'May 24. Last night came to Oxon one of the Armenian Patriarchs. He is Patriarch of the Holy Cross in Gogthan (near Mount Ararat) in Greater Armenia. He subscribes himself in his speech to the Queen in the last month, by translation, Thomas. The next day he was attended to the publick Library by Dr. Charlett, Pro-Vice-Chancellor. At the entrance, Dr. Hudson, the Keeper, made him a handsome complement in Latin; but the Patriarch, being about 90 years of age, and understanding no Latin, nor Greek, nor any European language but Italian, took but little notice of any thing. He afterwards was carried to Dr. Charlett's lodgings, where he was treated.

'May 29. This day was a Convocation in the Theatre, when the Archbishop of the Holy Cross in Gocthan was created Doctor of Divinity, and his nephew, Luke Nurigian, and Mr. Cockburn, son of Dr. Cockburn, were created Masters of Arts. The day before, the Archbishop presented to the publick Library several books in Armenian which he has caused to be printed. Mr. Wyatt, the orator, spoke a speech in his commendation, and presented him, the Queen having been pleased to let us be without a Professor. During the Convocation, several papers printed at the Theatre were given to the Doctors, Noblemen, and some others, entitled, _Reverendissimi in Christo Patris Thomæ, Archiepiscopi Sanctæ Crucis in Gocthan Perso-Armeniæ, peregrinationis suæ in Europam, pietatis et literarum promovendarum caussa susceptæ, brevis narratio; una cum dicti Archiepiscopi ad serenissimam Magnæ Britanniæ Reginam oratiuncula ejusque responso. Accedunt de eodem Archiepiscopo testimonia ampla et præclara._ Printed upon two sheets, folio[170].'

In another volume of memoranda[171], Hearne adds the following notice of one of the books given by the Archbishop: 'Amongst other books which he gave to the Bodleian Library is a History, at the beginning of which the Archbishop's nephew put the following memorandums: "_Historia Nationis Armeniæ, a Moise Chorenensi grammatico, doctore Armeno_. Amst. 1695. Maii 28, 1707, Bibliothecæ Bodleianæ dono dedit reverendiss. Thomas Archiep. S. Crucis in Majori Armenia. Per manum ejusd. reverendiss. nepotis, Lucæ Nurigianidis." Underneath which is written, at the motion of Dr. Charlett, and by the direction of the said Archbishop's nephew: "Auctorem istius libri floruisse traditur seculo quarto post Christum."' The book is now numbered, 8^o V. 134 Th.

[167] Hearne's _MS. Diary_, xv. 24.

[168] And by the good Robert Nelson (_Letters by Eminent Persons_, i. 167, 9), who had also obtained ten guineas for him from the Christian Knowledge Society (Secretan's _Life of Nelson_, pp. 113-4).

[169] Vol xiv. pp. 64, 68.

[170] A copy of this tract is in V. 1. 1. Jur.

[171] Rawlinson MS. C. 876. p. 44.

A.D. 1709.

In this year the first Copyright Act was passed, which required the depositing of copies of all works entered at Stationers' Hall at nine libraries in England and Scotland. This number was increased upon the Union with Ireland to eleven, but finally reduced to five (British Museum; Oxford; Cambridge; Advocates' Library, Edinburgh; and Trinity College, Dublin) by 5 & 6 Will. IV. c. 110.

A.D. 1710.

Dr. Richard Middleton Massey, formerly of Brasenose College, gave (with a few other books) a very curious and valuable series of Registers of the Parliamentary Committee for augmentation of poor vicarages, from 1645 to 1652, in eight folio volumes, with one earlier volume containing a list of livings in the diocese of Norwich, with their values and incumbents. To local antiquaries these proceedings are full of interest, while their historical and biographical value is equally great. They are now numbered Bodl. MSS. 322-330. Of the printed books given by Dr. Massey, most of those in octavo were placed at the end of Bishop Barlow's books, in the shelves marked _D. Linc._

Three thousand pounds were offered by the University for the library of Isaac Vossius, but refused. But the books were shortly afterwards sold to the University of Leyden for the same sum[172].

[172] _Reliquiæ Hearn._ i. 205, 6.

A.D. 1711.

A watch which had belonged to Dudley, Earl of Leicester, is said to have been presented by Mr. Ralph Howland, of Maidenhead.

Grabe's _Adversaria_. See 1724.

A.D. 1712.

'July 19, Died Mr. Joseph Crabb, Under-keeper of the Bodleian Library, having kept in ever since this day sennight. He died of a rheumatism, occasion'd by a careless sort of life. He was, however, an honest harmless man. He was buried on Monday night following (between 7 and 8 o'cl.) in Haly-well Churchyard, very privately. Upon his coffin was put, _I. C. ag. 38. 1712_; but I heard him say some time since he was 39 years old[173].' He is described in the following caustic terms by Zach. Conr. Uffenbach, in a letter written in 1713, and printed in his _Commercium Epistolicum_[174]:--

'Alteri [præfecto Bibliothecæ], nomine Crab, caput vacuum cerebro est, lepidum alias, dignusque homo quem ridiculo illo encomio, quo tamen multi serio egregios viros onerarunt, ornetur, vociteturque Helluo, non librorum tamen sed præmiorum, quæ ab exteris Bibliothecam hanc invisentibus avide excipit, statimque cauponibus reddit pro liquore, ad guttur colluendum purgandumque a pulvisculo, qui librorum tractationem velut umbra aut nebula comitari solet. Quamvis non ejus, sed tertii infimique Bibliothecarii, hoc sit muneris, ut libros in loculos reponat, quævis in ordinem redigat atque emundet.'

The date of Crabb's appointment has not been ascertained, but it must have been previous to 1699, as on Nov. 8 of that year an order appears in the Visitors' Book for an extra payment to him of £10[175]; other additional payments of £5 and 50_s._ are made to him annually until 1710. Two vols. of an index to texts of printed sermons, ending about the year 1708, (now Bodl. MSS. 47 and 657,) which were, doubtless, intended to form a continuation of Verneuil's little book, are said in an old entry in the Catalogue to be by 'Mr. Crabb.' The following brief account of him is given in Rawlinson's MSS. collections for a continuation of Wood's _Athenæ_:--

'Joseph Crabb, son of Will. Crabb, clerk, born at Child-Ockford in Dorsetshire on ---- 1674; educated in grammar learning at ----; matriculated as a member of Exeter College, 18 July 1691; took the degree of B.A. 17 Oct. 1695; became Sub-librarian at the public library; removed to Gloucester Hall, where he became M.A., 4 July 1705, and died ----.'

Rawlinson goes on to attribute to him (as his solitary claim to a place in the _Athenæ_) a _Poem on the late Storm_, Lond. 1704, fol., but this was written (as well as a Latin poem _In Georgium reducem_, Lond. 1719, fol.) by John Crabb, Fellow of Exeter College (B.A., Oct. 15, 1685; M.A., June 19, 1688), who was also a Sub-librarian at an earlier period, but the date of whose entrance into office as well as of quittance is not known. The latter became Rector of Breamore, Hants, in 1709, where he died in 1748 at the age of eighty-five. He is remarkable for having married four wives, all of whom lie buried with him in his church. The third of these, Grace Shuckbridge, became his wife when he was aged seventy-six and she was forty-nine; the last (who survived until March 13, 1777) was thirty-six when she took him, at the age of eighty-one, for better or worse. There is a handsome marble tablet to his memory on the north wall of the Chancel of Breamore Church, bearing the following inscription, and surmounted by his arms (_scil._, on a field gules a chevron between two fleur-de-lis above and a crab displayed below or; crest, a demi-lion rampant or) painted in their proper colours:--

'H. S. E. Reverend. Johan. Crabb, A. M. è Coll. Exon quondam Socius Oxon., Bibliothecæ Bodleianæ Sub-Librarius, et a sacris olim Episc. Fowler, hujus Parochiæ Minister residens amplius XXXVIII ann. Vir doctus, pius, generosus, in Ecclesiâ Orthodoxus, in Republicâ fidelis, et omnibus liberalis. Author Georgianæ et aliorum Carminum celebrium latine et anglice, Obiit tandem XIII Id. Martii, Anno ætat. suæ LXXXV., Æræ Christianæ MDCCXLVIII[176].'

On July 22, Thomas Hearne was appointed Second-keeper by Dr. Hudson, in the room of Crabb, while still retaining his post as Janitor, 'with liberty allow'd him of being keeper of the Anatomy schoole, or Bodleian repository, on purpose to advance the perquisites of the place, which are very inconsiderable[177],' but with the proviso that the salary of the janitor's place should go to an assistant officer. By this arrangement Hearne retained the keys, so that he could go in and out when he pleased[178].

'Sept. 16, Dr. Hudson told me to-day that some have complain'd that books in the Publick Library are not so easily come at as usual. I am glad there is such a complaint. I am afraid the complainers are such as us'd to steal books from the Library, and, upon that account, are concern'd that they are more strictly look'd after than formerly[179].'

[173] Hearne's _MS. Diary_, xxxvii. 180.

[174] 1753, p. 182. For the reference to this passage the author is indebted to Dibdin's _Bibliogr. Decam._ iii. 281. The same volume of Uffenbach's contains some criticisms on Bernard's Catalogue of the MSS., chiefly with relation to the Barocci collection, with extracts from the additional entries in the Reg. Benef.

[175] This was granted at Hyde's urgent request, 'in regard of his great pains in entering books in the Catalogue, and of the smallness of his place.' _Letter from Hyde to Hudson_, in Walker's _Letters_, i. 174.

[176] For the above particulars of John Crabb's history subsequent to his leaving Oxford the author is indebted to his friend the Rev. J. H. Blunt, lately the Curate in charge of the parish of Breamore, who mentions, with reference to Crabb's connubial experiences, the parallel case of Bishop John Thomas, Bishop of the adjoining diocese of Salisbury, 1757-61, and afterwards of Winchester. At his fourth wedding that prelate had the good taste and feeling to present his friends with memorial rings inscribed with the couplet:--

'If I survive I'll make them five.'

But the lady did not afford him the wished-for opportunity.

[177] Hearne's _MS. Diary_, xxxvii. 191.

[178] _Life_, 1772, p. 14.

[179] _MS. Diary_, xxxix. 120.

A.D. 1713.

The learned and munificent Narcissus Marsh, Archbishop successively of Cashel, Dublin, and Armagh, on his death, Nov. 2, in this year, bequeathed to the Library a very large and valuable gathering of Oriental MSS., which had been chiefly procured for him in the East by Huntington, and at the sale of Golius' library, at Leyden, in October, 1696, by Bernard. The collection numbers at present 714 volumes, but probably some of these may have been books added for convenience' sake from other sources. Many of them bear the motto of some former owner (_qu._ Golius?), somewhat like in form to Selden's, but better in spirit, 'πανταχη την αληθειαν.' It is strange that no notice of this liberal gift is found in any of the Library Registers, and it is only from a passing mention in Hearne's preface to Camden's _Elizabeth_ (p. lxvi.) that we find it was a death-bed legacy, and consequently learn the date of its acquisition. Hearne there says that the books were placed in the Library 'in tenebris;' and this expression was made one of the subjects of complaint against him when prosecuted in 1718 in the Vice-Chancellor's court on account of that preface. He then replied that the expression was correct, for that they were placed in a dark corner to which access was only had through a trap-door, but that he himself had put them there for want of a better place. He had wished to deposit them in one of the rooms in the Picture Gallery, but Dr. Hudson kept that for his own purposes[180].

At this period every stranger admitted to read in the Library had to pay nine shillings in fees, of which 1_s._ went to the Head Librarian, 3_s._ 6_d._ to the Second Librarian, 1_s._ 6_d._ to the Janitor, 2_s._ to the Registrar (for an order for admission, but in the Long Vacation this fee went to the Second Librarian), and 1_s._ to the Proctor's man[181]. In 1720 the fee to be received from every visitor not qualified to read was fixed at one penny, to be paid to a porter who was then first appointed to the charge of the Picture Gallery. It subsequently rose by a silent custom to the large sum of a shilling; but some few years ago the Curators fixed the charge to visitors at threepence each, unless accompanied, and in consequence _franked_, by some member of the University in his academic dress. Since this moderate sum has been fixed, the number of ordinary sight-seeing visitors has, naturally, much increased[182].

The suppression, by an order of the Heads of Houses, dated March 23, 1712/3, of Hearne's edition of Dodwell's tract _De Parma Equestri Woodwardiana_, was attributed by Hearne himself to (as the remote occasion) an incident connected with his office in the Library, which is related very fully by himself in vol. xliv. of his _MS. Diary_. On Feb. 20, Mr. Keil, the Savilian Professor of Geometry, brought to the Library an Irish gentleman named Mollineux, recommended by Sir Andrew Fountaine, to whom he requested Hearne to show the curiosities of the place. As Keil was 'a very honest gentleman,' Hearne little suspected that his friend was possessed with the 'republican ill principles' and 'malignant temper' of Whiggism, and consequently was not very guarded in his talk. After showing him various MSS. and coins, he took the visitor into the Anatomy School[183], where all kinds of odds and ends were preserved; amongst which was (as Hearne gravely notes in another place) a calf which, being born in the year of the Union, 1707, had (it is to be presumed in consequence thereof) two bodies and one head. What followed during the exhibition of this museum is worth relating in the diarist's own words:--

'I mentioned a picture engraved and hanging there with horns and wings, and underneath, _uxor ejus ad vivum pinxil_. This picture many had said was Benjamin Hoadley, the seditious divine of London; but, for my part, I gave no other description of it than this, that 'twas the picture of one of the greatest Presbyterian, republican, antimonarchical, Whiggish, fanatical preachers living in England. And this description was enough to exasperate him. And yet, for all that, he did not discover any passion, nor give the least hint that he was a Whig himself. Neither did he give any hint of it afterwards till I came to mention a tobacco stopper tipped with silver, and given to me by a reverend divine, who had informed me that it was made out of an oak that lately grew in St. James's Park, but was destroyed by the D. of M. for the great house he was building near St. James's, and that the said oak came from an acorn that was planted there by King Charles II, being one of those acorns that he had gathered in the Royal Oak, where he was forced to shelter himself from the fury of the rebells after the fight at Worcester. Mr. Mollineux was at the other end of the room when this was shew'd, and the said story told; but hearing it he comes immediately to the tables, and expresses himself in words of this kind, viz. _that 'twas a bawble, and that an hundred such things were not worth the seeing_. Mr. Keil however thought otherwise, and said that he thought my collection was better than that in the Laboratory. Some mirth passing after this, I went on with my description, and had not yet formed an opinion that Mr. Mollineux was a Whig; but finding that he was still inquisitive after other curiosities, and that he pretended to much skill in good ingraving and drawing, I produced the picture of a beautifull young man, over the head of which was ΕΙΚΩΝ ΒΑΣΙΛΙΚΗ, and underneath, _Quid quæritis ultra?_ I did not tell them whose picture it was, but said that I shew'd it them as a thing excellently well done, which they all allow'd and view'd it over and over, and seemed to be mightily taken with it, and Mr. Mollineux in particular was pleased to say that 'twas admirably well done, and deserved a place amongst the most exquisite performances of this kind, at the same time asking how long I had had it, and whose picture I took it to be. To the former of which questions I reply'd, about a quarter of a year, to the latter that I did not pretend to tell who it was designed for. Yet Mr. Keil was pleased to laugh, and to tell Mr. Mollineux, _They are all rebells, Mr. Mollineux, they are all rebells in this place_, speaking these words in a merry joking way, and not with any intent to do me an injury. Mr. Mollineux took the words upon the picture down, which I did not deny him, not thinking that 'twas with a design to inform against me, as it afterwards proved. Yet from this time I began a little to suspect his integrity, and that he was not one of those good men I expected from Mr. Keil, whom I had always found to be a man of honesty.'

_Hinc illæ lachrymæ!_ Poor Hearne was reported to Dr. Charlett the same afternoon for showing the Pretender's Picture; a meeting of the Curators of the Library was threatened; but eventually the matter seemed to pass over by his being desired by the Vice-Chancellor to give up the key of the Anatomy School, in order that the determining Bachelors might meet there, by which change Hearne was mulcted of the fees which he obtained for showing the room, and was sometimes detained one hour, or two, later than usual in order to see to the locking up of the staircase on which it is situated. On March 23, however, he was summoned before the Heads of Houses for remarks made in his preface to Dodwell's above-mentioned tract, and, after a sharp discussion, in which reference was made to his exhibition of the portraits, he was ordered to suppress his preface, and re-issue the book without it; to which he consented. He was pressed to make a formal retractation of the passages to which objection was made, but this he stiffly refused to do. He says in a letter to Sir Philip Sydenham that the only form of retractation or expression of sorrow he could have been prevailed on to sign (strongly resembling the famous apology of a middy to an insulted naval surgeon) would have been some such form as this:--'I, Thomas Hearne, A.M., of the University of Oxford, having ever since my matriculation followed my studies with as much application as I have been capable of, and having published several books for the honour and credit of learning, and particularly for the reputation of the foresaid University, am very sorry that by my declining to say anything but what I knew to be true in any of my writings, and especially in the last book I published, intituled, _Henrici Dodwelli de Parma Equestri Woodwardiana Dissertatio, &c_, I should incurr the displeasure of any of the Heads of Houses, and as a token of my sorrow for their being offended at truth, I subscribe my name to this paper, and permitt them to make what use of it they please[184].'

[180] Hearne's _MS. Diary_, vol. lxxi. May 20.

[181] _Ibid._ vol. xlvii. p. 89.

[182] In an account of a visit to Oxford by an American tourist, which appeared very recently in the _New York Times_, and was copied into English journals, written with the warm-hearted tone of one who could rightly appreciate the interest of the place, although (like most Transatlantic visitors) he spent but twenty-four hours in it, the following comment is made upon the smallness of this Bodleian fee:--'The gentleman [_i.e._ the present Janitor, Mr. John Norris] who showed me through this noble collection, and gave me the most interesting explanations, politely informed me that the charge was 3_d._ It went against my conscience to give a gentleman of his civility and erudition the price of a pot of beer, and I added a small testimonial, for which he seemed more than sufficiently grateful.'

[183] This was the room which is now attached to the Library under the name of the _Auctarium_.

[184] Hearne's _MS. Diary_, xlviii. 22. The retractation and apology which Hearne afterwards actually submitted to the Vice-Chancellor in court in 1718, when in trouble again for his preface to Camden's Elizabeth, was very similar in style to this. But he was not allowed to read it. _Ibid._ lxxi. 3 May.

A.D. 1714.

An evidence of the increased intercourse which sprang up between Denmark and England, in consequence of the marriage of Queen Anne, is probably to be found in the number of Danish readers who frequented the Library in the interval between her marriage and her death. Between the years 1683 and 1714, forty-nine Danes are entered in the _Liber Admissorum_, besides many from Sweden, Norway, and the North of Germany. The total number of foreigners admitted within the same period was no less than 244.

'In the year 1714 were in the Bodleian Library:--

30169 pr. vols. 05916 MSS. vols. ----- In all 36085.'

(Hearne's _MS. Diary_, vol. xci. p. 256.)

It is strange that, notwithstanding Selden's and Laud's large additions, the Library had therefore very little more than doubled since 1620.

It is recorded in vol. li. of the same Diary (p. 187) that the old series of portraits which were painted on the wall of the Picture Gallery was renewed in November of this year. These portraits, amounting in number to about 222, ran round the gallery, immediately under the roof; many of them were fancy-heads of ancient philosophers and writers, but besides these there were some real portraits of English writers and divines, up to the time of James I. A list of the whole series, as well as of the oil paintings in the Gallery, was printed by Hearne together with his _Letter containing an Account of some Antiquities between Windsor and Oxford_. Of the renovation of the wall-paintings he thus speaks in his preface to _Rossi Historia Regum Angliæ_ (1716): 'Non possim quin bibliothecæ Bodleianæ Curatores laudem, qui pictori Academico [_i.e._ Wildgoose] in mandatis dederunt, ut veteres effigies renovet nitorique pristino restituat: quippe quas eo pluris æstimendas esse censeo, quod eas in galeria depingendas jusserit ipse Bodleius, Loci Genius.' When the Gallery was re-roofed in 1831, all these paintings were, however, removed [_see_ p. 15].

About the end of this year the Arundel Marbles, which, strange to say, had been exposed to the open air within the quadrangle of the Schools ever since they were given to the University, were removed into one of the rooms on the ground-floor, where they still remain. It was said that they had suffered more 'since they were exposed to our air, than they did in many hundred years before they came into it[185].' But the influence of the air was not all they had to contend against, for Hearne tells us that the defacing of the Marble Chronicle (of which there are portions that were read by Selden, which now can no longer be read at all) and some others, was owing not merely to exposure to the weather, but 'to the abuses of children who are continually playing in the area, and of other ignorant persons[186].'

[185] _Letters by Eminent Persons_, 1813, vol. i. p. 297.

[186] _Letters by Eminent Persons_, 1813, vol. i. p. 204.

A.D. 1715.

We learn from Hearne's MS. Diary [vol. liii.] that differences between him and Dr. Hudson (of which he makes frequent mention) increased during this year. He was reported to the Vice-Chancellor in April for absence from the Library through his duties as Bedel, by reason of which readers had difficulty in obtaining books lodged above stairs. To this complaint his reply was that he was not bound, as Second Librarian, exclusively to do such 'drudgery,' but that Dr. Hudson was himself obliged by statute to deliver out such books as were under lock-and-key, and books in quarto and octavo, either personally or by his own special deputy. At the same time a complaint was made against him by three Bachelors of Arts of Queen's College, for refusing books to them which were out of the faculty of Arts prescribed to them by the statutes of the Library. Hearne's only reply to the Vice-Chancellor in this case was the asking whether they had, also in accordance with the Statutes, come to the Library in their hoods, if under two years' standing; at which 'he smiled.' It appears, therefore, that this requirement had already become obsolete. Dr. Hudson, however, regarded the matter more seriously, and threatened that Hearne should be turned out of both his places.

April 15. (Good Friday!) 'This morning Dr. Hudson went out of town, and that pert jackanapes Bowles (who is Dr. Hudson's servitor) came to tell me that he is gone, and that the sweeper of the Library being dead, I must not admitt any one to sweep the Library as formerly. I returned answer I had nothing to do in that case. In the afternoon I was at study in the Library, and Bowles brings up a woman and girl, and set them to sweeping, and left them there, tho' this should not have been, they being not sworn nor admitted as sweepers. Indeed all things are now done very irregularly in the Library by the permission of Dr. Hudson, and by the impudence of this pert, silly servitour, and I am afraid much mischief is done withall. The whole Library and galleries and studies and the Anatomy School used to be swept this day; they began about eight, and had not done till four or five in the afternoon. But now the Library only below stairs was swept over, and that very slightly, and all things were left in a bad condition, to my very great concern[187].'

At the visitation on Nov. 8, the Curators passed a resolution that the places of Under-librarian and Bedel were inconsistent, and that on S. Thomas' day Hudson should be at liberty to appoint some other person to Hearne's office. Hereupon Hearne immediately, without a moment's delay, resigned both the offices of Architypographus and Superior Bedel of Civil Law, and claimed to remain in the Library; but Hudson had fresh locks put on the doors, of which Bowles kept the keys, so that Hearne was unable to go in and out as before. However, he continued to execute his office whenever the Library was open until Jan. 23, 1716, when the Act which imposed a fine of £500, with other penalties, upon any one who held any public office without having taken the Oaths, came into operation. Then at once, all worldly interests, all affection for the old place of his studies and his care, gave way to the honest and unwavering dictates of his conscience; the Non-juror withdrew, and, with singularly hard measure, in spite of his representations, his place was ordered by the Curators to be filled up at Lady-Day, not on the ground of his own retirement, but on that of _neglect of duty_! His successor was Rev. John Fletcher, M.A., Chaplain, and afterwards Fellow, of Queen's College. Hearne states that his salary was, with great unfairness, withheld from him for the whole half-year preceding Lady-Day, together with some fees which were due[188]. But to the end of his life he maintained that he was still, _de jure_, Sub-librarian, and, with a quaint pertinacity, regularly at the end of each term and half-year, up to March 30, 1735[189], continued to set down, in one of the volumes of his Diary, that no fees had been paid him, and that his half-year's salary was due.

On Hearne's announcing John Ross's _Historia Angliæ_ for publication in this year, W. Whiston forwarded to him a MS. of a Latin historical poem entitled _Britannica_, written in 1606 by an author of the same names as the forth-coming historian, with the following note inserted:--

'This book was written, as I think, by my great uncle, Mr. John Rosse, rector of Norton-juxta-Twycross in Leicestershire, where I was myself born. If it may be of any use to Mr. Hern at Oxford in his intended edition of this or some other work of the same author now advertis'd, or may be thought worthy of a place in the publick library of that University, it is hereby freely given thereto by

'WILLIAM WHISTON. '_London, December 12, 1715._'

Hearne adds that (of course) the author was altogether different from the Ross of his editing, and that the poem had been printed at Frankfort in 1607, as he learned from a MS. Catalogue of Mr. Richard Smith's books lent him by Bp. Fleetwood of Ely[190]. The MS. is now numbered, Bodley 573.

A learned tailor of Norwich was in this year recommended by Dr. Tanner, then Chancellor of Norwich Cathedral, for the Janitor's place in the Library should it be vacant. Although but a journeyman tailor of thirty years of age, who had been taught nothing but English in his childhood, Henry Wild had contrived within seven years to master seven languages, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic and Persian, to which Tanner adds, in another letter to Dr. Rawlinson, Samaritan and Ethiopic. The application appears to have been unsuccessful so far as the holding office in the Library was concerned; but Wild found some employment in the Library for a time in the translating and copying Oriental MSS[191]. He removed to London about 1720, and died in the following year, as we learn from an entry in Hearne's _MS. Diary_, (xcii. 128-9,) under date of Oct. 29, 1721, where we read:--

'About a fortnight since died in London Mr. Henry Wild, commonly called, the _Arabick Taylour_. I have more than once mentioned him formerly. He was by profession a taylour of Norwich, and was a married man. But having a strange inclination to languages, by a prodigious industry he obtain'd a very considerable knowledge in many, without any help or assistance from others. He understood Arabick perfectly well, and transcrib'd, very fairly, much from Bodley, being patroniz'd by that most eminent physician, Dr. Rich. Mead. He died of a feaver, aged about 39. He was about a considerable work, viz. a history of the old Arabian physicians, from an Arabick MS. in Bodley. The MS. was wholly transcrib'd by him a year agoe, but what progress he had made for the press I know not.'

Five MSS., including the Leiger Book of Malmesbury Abbey, together with a large number of printed books, were given on May 7, by William Brewster, M.D. of Hereford, a well-known antiquary[192].

A thick quarto volume (1052 pages) containing a Latin treatise by Adam Zernichaus on the controversy between the Eastern and Western Churches, concerning the Procession of the Holy Ghost, was forwarded to the Library through Sir Robert Sutton, ambassador at Constantinople, by Chrysanthus, Patriarch of Jerusalem, nephew and successor of Dositheus, an autograph Greek epistle from whom, occupying seven pages, is prefixed. At the end is a list of eleven German scribes who were employed upon the transcription of the volume, with the payments they severally received. It appears from the Benefaction Register that the volume was not actually received at the Library until 1722; and in 1731, an entry in the catalogue records that the MS. 'was restored to Sir Robert Sutton, by order of the Vice-Chancellor;' but no reason or explanation is given. For more than a century the Patriarch's gift was consequently lost from the place of its destination; but in Dec. 1864, having turned up for sale among the well-known stores of Mr. C. J. Stewart, it was secured by the Librarian at the cost of £5 15_s._ 6_d._, and is once more to be found in its legitimate quarters, numbered MS. Addit. Bodl. ii. c. 9. Chrysanthus also gave, in 1725, a copy of Dositheus' History of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, which was printed, in Greek, in 1715.

[187] Hearne's _MS. Diary_, liii. 124, 5.

[188] _Life_, 1772, pp. 18-20.

[189] He died on June 10, in that year.

[190] This catalogue was sold at the auction in 1855 of the MSS. of Dr. Routh, who had bought it at Heber's sale.

[191] _Letters by Eminent Persons_, i. 271, 300. [On p. 270 for _Turner_, read _Tanner_.]

[192] Hearne's _MS. Diary_, liii. 148.

A.D. 1716.

On Aug. 23, a legacy of £100 from Dr. South (who died July 8), for the purchase of modern books, was paid to the Vice-Chancellor[193].

_Arms in the window._ See 1610.

[193] Hearne's _Diary_, lix. 141; _Reliqq. Hearn._ i. 366.

A.D. 1718.

One Mr. Hutton appears to have been employed in the Library during this year. It seems, from a passage in a letter of C. Wheatly's, printed in _Letters by Eminent Persons_, ii. 116, that the learned commentator Samuel Parker, son of the Bishop of Oxford, was also at some time employed in the Library; for Wheatly expresses a wish that S. Parker's son, then (1739) an apprentice to Mr. Clements the bookseller, might, if the accounts of his extraordinary proficiency be true, be placed 'in his father's seat, the Bodleian Library.' As Parker was a non-juror, his employment must doubtless have been at some earlier period than this, but his name is not met with in any of the old Account-books or Registers. One Thomas Parker occurs in the Library accounts in 1766 and in 1772.

A.D. 1719.

Dr. Hudson died, on Nov. 27, of dropsy. And at one o'clock on the afternoon of the very next day, Joseph Bowles, M.A., of Oriel College, was elected in his room.

The bitter terms in which Hearne frequently, in the course of his _Diary_, condemns Hudson's management, or rather mismanagement, of the Library, may be supposed to be owing in a considerable degree to personal pique and quarrel[194]. But they meet with very singular and abundant confirmation in the letter of Z. C. Uffenbach, quoted above (p. 130), when the writer expresses, in the following strong language, his opinion of Hudson's neglect and incapacity, and of the general condition of the Library under his management:--

'Perpende, quæso, mecum, vir eruditissime, quantus thesaurus ex solius Bodleianæ Bibliothecæ codicibus elici possit, nisi Proto-Bibliothecarii Hudson negligentia ac pertinacia obstaret. Is enim muneri abunde satisfecisse, imo eximie ornasse Spartam videri vult, dum tot annis unico scriptori, Thucydidem ejus puto, omni Bibliothecæ cura plane abjecta, insudavit, cum hoc, quod supra dixi, potius agendum fuisset. Nefandam hujus insignis Bibliothecæ sortem (ignosce justæ indignationi) satis deplorare nequeo. Inculta plane jacet, nemo ferme tanto thesauro uti, frui, gestit. Singulis sane diebus per trium mensium spatium illam frequentavi, sed, ita me dii ament, nunquam tot una vice homines in illa vidi quot numero sunt Musæ, vel saltem artes liberales. De librorum studiosis loquor; nam puerorum, muliercularum, rusticorum, hinc inde cursitantium, voluminumque multitudinem per transennas spectantium mirantiumque, cœtum excipio.... De Proto-bibliothecarii incuria jam dixi, ejusque stupendam in historia literaria librariaque, inprimis extra Insulam ultraque maria, ignorantiam taceo.'

Of Hearne, however, Uffenbach writes in the following different strain:--

'Hîc scholaris, ut hîc loqui amant, esse solet, atque etiamnum est, nomine Hearne, qui, præ reliquis, diligentiam suam non modo scriptis, sed in novo etiam Bibliothecæ catalogo confitiendo, typis proxime exscribendo, probavit; ast, quod dolendum, ad exemplum prioris, qui satis jejunus, inconcinnus, erroribusque innumeris scatens est.'

Hudson's successor, Bowles, had previously been his Assistant for some years, and as, while Hearne was Under-keeper, he had come into sharp collision with that irascible antiquary (see under 1715), his election now was a matter of sore annoyance to the latter. Hearne dwells upon it in his _Diary_ with great bitterness and at great length: 'Competitors were Mr. Hall, of Queen's, and that pert conceited coxcomb Mr. Bowles (who is not yet Regent Master) of Oriel College. Bowles carried it by a great majority, having about 160 votes, and Mr. Hall about 77. I think it the most scandalous election that I have yet heard of in Oxford.' Of his supporters he speaks thus:--'Charlett and such rogues, who contrived to bring in that most compleat coxcomb Bowles to be Head-Librarian, to the immortal scandal of all that were concern'd in it[195].' And even, when ten years later he records Bowles' death, he indulges, in forgetfulness of charity to the departed, in the following strain: 'Of this gentleman (a most vile, wicked wretch) frequent mention hath been made in these Memoirs. He took the degree of M.A. Oct. 12, 1719. 'Tis incredible what damage he did to the Bodl. Library, by putting it into disorder and confusion, which before, by the great pains I had taken in it (&c.), was the best regulated library in the world[196].' Bowles' name never occurs in the _Diary_ without some opprobrious epithet being attached to it, which may be accounted for partly from his having taken the oaths of allegiance after declaring he would never do it (a defection which Hearne never forgave in any one), but chiefly also from his having personally excluded Hearne from the Library, when the latter refused to resign his keys in 1715, by procuring new locks and keys, which he kept in his own custody.

Three or four days after Bowles' election, Mr. Fletcher, the Sub-librarian (disliking, no doubt, the appointment of his junior over his head), resigned his office, to which Bowles appointed the well-known antiquary, Francis Wise. Upon this appointment Hearne comments thus: 'Bowles put in Mr. Wise, A.M., of Trin. Coll. (a pretender to antiquities), tho' he had promised it to one of Oriel Coll., that came in fellow of Oriel when he did, and was very serviceable to him in getting the Head Librarian's place; for which Bowles is strangely scouted and despis'd at Oriel, as a breaker of his word, and a whiffling, silly, unfaithfull, coxcomb.' It must be allowed that the portrait of Bowles in the Library bears out in some degree Hearne's last epithet, by giving him the appearance rather of a fine clerical gentleman than of a student.

Baskett, the printer, presented to the Library a magnificent copy on vellum of the 'Vinegar' Bible, printed by him in 1717. Only three copies were so struck off; the second was placed in the King's Library, and the third was sold to the Duke of Chandos, for five hundred guineas, at whose sale, in 1747, Lord Foley purchased it for £72 9_s._

[194] In one passage, Hearne says that such was Hudson's self-esteem that he reckoned himself equal to Erasmus or Sir Thomas More, while all that was curious in his books was gained from Hearne himself or others. (_MS. Diary_, vol. lviii. p. 158.)

[195] Vol. lxxxiv. pp. 59, 60.

[196] Vol. cxxii. p. 158.

A.D. 1720.

About this time, one John Hawkins, a highwayman (who was executed in May, 1722), is said by an accomplice, Ralph Wilson, who published an account of his robberies, to have defaced some pictures in the Library. The University is said to have offered £100 for discovery, and a poor Whig tailor was taken up on suspicion, and narrowly escaped a whipping. No particulars, however, of Hawkins' act are given in the pamphlet, and no further notice of it has been found elsewhere.

Joseph Swallow, B.A., who died in this year, is found from the Accounts to have been employed, for some short time, in the Library.

In this year the titles of all books which were bought out of the Library funds begin to be recorded, together with their prices; they are entered in a Register marked with the letter C.

_Visitors' Fees._ See 1713.

A.D. 1721.

The inscription on the Schools' Tower, beneath the statue of James I, was renewed in this year[197].

Sir Godfrey Kneller presented his own portrait to the Gallery.

[197] Hearne's _Diary_, xci. 196.

A.D. 1722.

Mrs. Mary Prince is recorded to have presented heads of our Blessed LORD and of King Charles I, painted by herself. They appear to be the two paintings on copper, now hanging in the Sub-librarian's study, called _Mus. Bibl. II._ Beneath that of our LORD is the following inscription: 'This present figure is the symylytude of our Lorde Jesus our Saviour, imprinted in amyrald by the Predecessors of the Great Turke, & sent to Pope Innocent y^e Eight at the cost of the Great Turke for a token, for this caus, to redeme his brother that was taken prisner.' The inscription is, of course, if the painting be Mrs. Prince's work, reproduced _literatim_ from some older copy.

The attachment to the old Stuart family, which was so warmly cherished in Oxford, appears to have lingered in the Bodleian, notwithstanding Hearne's departure, who himself would scarcely have thought that a vestige of it had been left behind. For in the Benefaction Register for this year, the gift of a portrait of Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, from his widow Catherine, a natural daughter of James II, is entered as coming from 'filia Regis Jacobi II, του μακαριτου.'

_Chrysanthus, Patriarch of Jerusalem._ See 1715.

A.D. 1723.

The noble brass statue of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, (who was Chancellor of the University from 1617 to his death in 1630, and was the donor of the Barocci MSS.,) which forms such a conspicuous feature in the Picture Gallery, was presented this year by the earl's great nephew, Thomas, the seventh Earl of Pembroke. It was cast by the famous artist Hubert le Sœur, from a picture by Rubens, and is said to weigh about 1600 lbs. The letter of thanks from the University was read in Convocation on April 19; it is criticized by Hearne in his _Diary_[198] in the following terms: 'I am told that this letter is very silly and poor, and that, among other things, his Lordship is told in it that the statue is placed _in æde immortalitatis_. Now what this _ædes immortalitatis_, church, temple or chappel of immortality is, I cannot conceive, but am sure that the statue is at present fix'd in the Picture Gallery, adjoyning to the Bodl. Library.'

[198] Vol. xcvi. p. 101.

A.D. 1724.

The MSS. _Adversaria_ of Dr. J. E. Grabe came to the Library in this year after the death of Bishop Smalridge (Sept. 27, 1719), in accordance with the will of their writer, who at his death (Nov. 12, 1712) bequeathed them first to Hickes and next to Smalridge, with the final reversion to the Bodleian. They form forty-three volumes. Some account of them is given in Hickes' _Discourse_ prefixed to Grabe's _Defects and Omissions in Whiston's Collection of Testimonies, &c._ (8^o. Lond. 1712), and they are fully catalogued by Mr. Coxe in vol. i. of the general Catalogue of MSS., cols. 851-876. In a written list of them, preserved in the Library, Dr. Bandinel has noted that several volumes of the series were purloined before they came to Oxford, while remaining in the possession of a friend after Grabe's death.

A Zend MS. very well and clearly written (dated in the year 1005 of the era of Yezdegird, _i.e._ A.D. 1635), of the _Leges Sacræ, Ritus, &c. Zoroastris_, was received from G. Bowcher, a merchant in the East Indies. It was given in 1718, but not forwarded until 1723, when it was brought from India by Rev. Rich. Cobbe, M.A. It is now numbered Bodl. Or. 321. And a Coptic Lexicon, compiled and prepared for the press by Rev. Thos. Edward, M.A., a former Chaplain of Ch. Ch., was bought for the sum of ten guineas, which was specially granted from the University Chest. It is now numbered Bodl. Orient. 344. The author was originally of St. John's College, Cambridge, and tells us in his preface that Bishop Fell, who was also Dean of Ch. Ch., meeting him there in the house of Dr. Edmund Castell, with whom he was living, brought him to Oxford by appointing him a Chaplain of the Cathedral, with the view of carrying on the study of the Coptic language, which had fallen to the ground upon the death of Dr. Marshal of Lincoln College. But just when Edward was prepared to begin printing the results of his labours, his patron, the Bishop, died; and, as he found no one else cared for the subject, he took the College living of Badby in Northamptonshire, and quitted Oxford. He finally became Rector of Aldwinkle in the same county, and died there in the year 1721. His book is dated 1711. It is cited by Archdeacon Tattam in his _Lexicon Ægyptiaco-Latinum_. Another MS. Coptic Lexicon, in two volumes, was purchased in 1857.

A.D. 1726.

A large collection (in twenty-five volumes) of the tracts on the Roman Catholic Controversy which appeared between 1680-1690, was given by Will. Smith, M.A., of Univ. Coll., and Rector of Melsonby, Yorkshire.

A.D. 1727.

Thomas Perrott, D.C.L., of St. John's College, gave nine volumes of MSS., the most important of which is a copy-book of the letters written by Sir John Perrott, Lord Deputy of Ireland, in 1584-6. Another is a book of orders from the Privy Council to the officers of the Customs at London, 1604-18: a third, notes of a sermon preached by Usher at the Temple, July 2, 1620. A few political and miscellaneous tracts, _tempp. Eliz.--Jac. I_, and two heraldic MSS., complete the number. The MSS. are noticed in the return printed in the Record Commission Report for 1800, p. 348.

Some Greek MSS. were bought which had been brought from Mount Athos; three of them are now placed amongst the Cromwell MSS., Nos. 15, 16, and 27, and three others are numbered Miscell. Gr. 137-9.

_Sale of Duplicates._ See 1745.

A.D. 1729.

Mr. Bowles, the Librarian, died at Shaftesbury, the place of his birth, and was buried there on Nov. 25. On Dec. 2, Mr. Robert Fysher, B.M., Fellow of Oriel College, was elected his successor by 100 votes to 85 over Francis Wise, the Under-librarian. Mr. John Bilstone, M.A., Chaplain of All Souls' and Janitor of the Library, was also a candidate, but retired before the election, in the hope of securing Wise's return. As Wise held Hearne's old place, and was regarded by him as an usurper, and as Bilstone held in his possession the new keys which Bowles originally procured to render Hearne's old ones useless, the latter consequently regarded them both with great disfavour, and rejoiced greatly at the result of the election. His account of it is printed in the _Reliqq. Hearn._ vol. ii. p. 712.

Forty-two MS. volumes came to the Library by the bequest of the widow of Mr. Francis Cherry, of Shottesbrooke, Berks, the early patron and constant friend of Hearne[199]. Cherry himself died Sept. 23, 1713, and Hearne says that he had intended to give his MSS. to his old _protégée_. They are not, for the most part, of very great value, but among them are various volumes by Dodwell; and a book written and bound by Q. Eliz. is described above, under the year 1628. Hearne was greatly annoyed at a paper of his own, containing reasons for taking the oath of allegiance, which he had written in 1700, coming into the Library amongst these books; he endeavoured in vain (although now in these days his legal right would be at once recognized) to recover it, and it was published, to his still greater annoyance, by the Whigs, under the editorship of Mr. Bilstone, the janitor. An account of Hearne's endeavours to regain it, together with a notice of Mrs. Cherry's bequest and of the MSS., is to be found in Dr. Bliss' Appendix to his _Reliqq. Hearn._ ii. 899-906.

In the Register of Readers admitted by favour occurs, under date of April 19, the name of 'C. Wesley, Ædis Xti alumn.,' written in a neat and clear hand. The name of his great brother is not found in any register extending over the period of his stay in Oxford. At this time the Library appears to have been almost entirely forsaken. Between 1730-1740 it rarely happens that above one or two books are registered to readers in a day, while often for whole days together not a single entry occurs; and since, in the register for this period, the books are noted down by three hands, it can hardly be possible that the blanks are due to the negligence of librarians (as might have been supposed were the same handwriting found throughout) rather than to the lack of students.

[199] In the Benefaction Register they are erroneously entered as coming by the bequest of Mr. Cherry himself.

A.D. 1735.

On the death of Hearne (June 10, 1735) fifteen of the MSS. of Thomas Smith, D.D., of Magdalen College, the well-known and learned non-juror, came to the Library, Smith having bequeathed them to Hearne on this condition. With them came also copies of Camden's _Britannia_ and _Annales Eliz._, with MSS. notes by their author. The rest of Smith's MSS. appear to have come to the Library together with the mass of Hearne's collections, included in Rawlinson's bequest in 1755. They amount altogether to 138 thin volumes, containing notes, extracts and letters on all kinds of subjects. There is a very full _written_ catalogue of their contents, in two volumes. Three Greek MSS. were given by Smith himself on his return from his travels in the East about 1681.

A.D. 1736.

The Library was enriched with the collections of the well-known antiquary, Thomas Tanner, Bishop of St. Asaph, who died on Dec. 14, in the preceding year. By his will, dated Nov. 22, 1733, he bequeathed his MSS. to the Library together with such printed books, not already there, as the Curators and Library-keeper should think fit to accept. But he directed his executor to burn all his sermon-notes, 'and other little pieces and attempts in divinity,' as well as all his own private papers and letters. The largest portion of his MSS. (nearly 300 volumes out of 467) consists of the papers which he himself says he 'bought of Archbishop Sancroft's executors,' but which it is said in the _Gent. Mag._ for 1782 (cited by Gough in his _British Topography_, i. 126) he bought for eighty guineas of the bookseller Bateman, to whom Sancroft's executors had sold them[200]. Together with these, and perhaps not now to be distinguished, are some of the collections of Dr. Nalson between 1640 and 1660. To the latter a claim was made through Archdeacon Knight, in 1737, by Dr. Williams of St. John's College, as grandson of Nalson; but the Bishop's brother replied (as we learn from a copy of his answer and of another letter written by him in 1753) that the Bishop had bought them at Ely, where they had lain neglected for many years, and he thought possibly from some one living in the house which Nalson inhabited when Prebendary of Ely. The matter ended by Dr. Williams waiving any claim which he had, in consideration of the place of deposit being the Bodleian[201]. Sancroft's and Nalson's papers together comprise a large series of letters of the time of the Civil War, of the highest interest and value, from most of the leading personages on both sides, including Charles I, Rupert, the Protector Oliver, and Hampden. There are also collections relating to various dioceses, with very much that illustrates both the ecclesiastical and literary history of the seventeenth century[202]. A selection from the Civil War letters was published, in 2 vols. in 1842, by Rev. Henry Cary, M.A. (a son of the translator of Dante, and at that time an assistant in the Library), under the title of _Memorials of the Civil War_; but the transcripts were very carelessly made, and scarcely a single letter can be trusted as faithfully and _verbatim_ representing the original. Another volume of selections from Sancroft's papers was published, with much better care, by Will. Nelson Clarke, D.C.L., 8^o, Edinb. 1848, entitled, _A Collection of Letters addressed by Prelates and Individuals of high rank in Scotland, and by two Bishops of Sodor and Man, to Archbishop Sancroft, in the reigns of Charles II and James VII_[203]. A catalogue of the MSS., compiled by the Rev. Alfred Hackman, M.A. (now Sub-librarian) was published in 1860, in a thick quarto volume, forming vol. iv. of the general Catalogue of MSS. The several volumes are described in brief in the body of the work; but a very full Index is subjoined, in which the contents of all the letters and papers are entered in detail. The printed books (upwards of 900) contain many, by the Reformers and their opponents, which are of the utmost rarity in early English black-letter divinity. One of these is an unique copy (as it is believed) of an edition, printed without place or date, of the _Pore Helpe_, of which there is also an unique copy of another edition, equally without place or date, among the Douce books. It has not hitherto been remarked that two copies, or two editions, exist of this metrical satire. Another volume, which contains several tracts printed by W. de Worde and Gerard Leeu, has also two by Caxton, hitherto unnoticed as exhibiting his type, and described in the Catalogue simply as being books without place or date. The merit of their discovery as Caxton's is due to the recent research of Mr. Bradshaw, the Librarian of the Cambridge Library. The one is a clean and perfect copy of the _Governayle of Helthe_, with the verses called _Medicina Stomachi_, of which the only copy known to Mr. Blades is in the library of the Earl of Dysart at Ham House; the other a wholly unknown quarto edition, in the same type, of the _Ars Moriendi_.

Unfortunately, when Tanner was removing his books from Norwich to Oxford, in Dec. 1731, by some accident in their transit (which was made by river) they fell into the water, and were submerged for twenty hours[204]. The effects of this soaking are only too evident upon very many of them[205]. The whole of the printed books were uniformly bound in dark green calf, apparently about fifty years ago; the binder's work was well done, but unhappily all the fly-leaves, many of which would doubtless have afforded something of interest, with regard to the books and their former possessors, were removed. Many of Tanner's own letters are to be found amongst the Ballard and Hearne MSS., as well as scattered here and there in other collections; and one volume of them was purchased in 1859. Some coins were given by him in 1733. We learn from the Accounts that Thomas Toynbee, an undergraduate of Balliol College (B.A. 1743, M.A. 1745), received £12 12_s._, in 1741, for making a list of Tanner's MSS., and that E. Rowe Mores, the subsequently well-known antiquary, arranged some of his deeds in 1753-4.

[200] Eighteen other volumes of Sancroft's MSS. are to be found in the Harleian Collection, Brit. Mus., and a few among Wharton's books at Lambeth.

[201] Thirty-one other volumes of Nalson's papers were offered for sale to Dr. Rawlinson in 1751 (Letter to H. Owen, Rawl. MS. C. 989. fol. 121). Four volumes which belonged to Bp. Moore's library were restored to Cambridge out of Tanner's collection in 1741; two of them were registers of the Abbeys of St. Edmund's-bury and Langley.

[202] Some collections for Wiltshire made by Tanner did not come to Oxford with his library, but were forwarded by his son in 1751.

[203] Dr. Clarke appears not to have been aware of the existence of an interesting volume of letters from Scottish Bishops to Bishop Compton of London, among Rawlinson's MSS. (C. 985), which was rescued by Rawlinson, with the rest of Compton's papers, from being destroyed as waste paper. Other letters, including a large number from Archbishop Burnett of Glasgow, addressed to Archbishop Sheldon, are in a volume of the Sheldon papers.

[204] _Gent. Magaz._ 1732, p. 583.

[205] None of them, however, are now in the state described in a note in _Letters by Eminent Persons_, ii. 89, where it is said that many 'have received so much injury as to be altogether useless, crumbling into pieces on the slightest touch.' Perhaps the unique copy of _The Children of the Chapel Stript and Whipt_ which Warton says was amongst Tanner's books, but which has never appeared in any Bodleian Catalogue, may have perished from this cause. For a notice of the disappearance of two of Churchyard's tracts, see under the year 1659, p. 81.

A.D. 1738.

The fourth Catalogue of the printed books appeared this year in two volumes, folio, of 611 and 714 pp. respectively. It is still a Catalogue of great use and value, from its remarkable accuracy, and from the abundance and minuteness of its cross-references. The secret history of this Catalogue, however, as of the preceding one, is related by Hearne. By him, as he himself frequently tells us[206], the greater portion of it was virtually prepared soon after his appointment as Sub-librarian, in 1712 (although no mention of his name is made in Fysher's preface), and to him, therefore, its accuracy is most probably in a great measure due[207]. He compared every book in the Library with Hyde's Catalogue, and corrected many mistakes, adding notes here and there about anonymous and synonymous authors, and, as the Vice-Chancellor (Dr. Maunder, of Balliol) was anxious to have an Appendix issued, he transcribed for this purpose all his corrections and additions into two folio volumes, 'which' (to take up now Hearne's own account in his _Diary_, vol. lxii. p. 58, under date 1717) 'now lye and are to be seen in the Library.... But at last Dr. Hudson thought it more convenient with respect to himself that both Dr. Hyde's Catalogue and my Appendix should come out together as one intire work, so that he might have the honour of all. Upon which he employed one Moses Williams, his servitour[208] (the Dr. being then Fellow of University College), to transcribe it, the said Williams being in the Dr.'s debt. When Williams had done, he demanded the remaining part of his money, which was about ten or twelve pounds, the rest having been stopped by the Dr. for the debt just now mentioned. The whole was fifty lbs. which he bargained for with the Dr. But when Williams desired the said ten or twelve pounds, of which he had immediate occasion to discharge the fees and charges for the degree of Bachelor of Arts, the Dr. was in a very great passion, and refused to pay it. Upon which Williams moved the matter so far that the Catalogue was laid before the Delegates of the Press, and the Dr. was called before them to his very great mortification, and they told him that 'twas highly unreasonable to stop the poor lad's money. Upon which the Dr. in a great rage and fury paid him; otherwise Williams had most certainly put him into the Court. This Catalogue was last summer ordered to be printed, and the Dr. was refunded his money; but 'tis not yet put to the press, the Dr. being unwilling it should be printed till such time as he hath done Josephus.' But Hudson died before his Josephus was finished, and the proposed new Catalogue was consequently begun, and only begun, by his successor, Bowles. The latter printed as far as p. 244 of vol. i. and p. 292 of vol. ii. His successor, Fysher, upon his appointment, engaged the assistance of his friend, Emmanuel Langford, M.A., Vice-Principal of Hart Hall, who completed the second volume, while Fysher himself finished the first. At the end of the second volume appeared an announcement of a supplemental Catalogue, as being ready for the press, containing the books existing in College Libraries but wanting in the Bodleian. This, however, never appeared, and nothing is known of the MS. from which it was to have been printed. Fysher's Catalogue appears, from the University Accounts, to have occupied from 1735 in preparation, for which, and for transcribing it for the press, £194 5_s._ were paid to him.

Alexander Pope gave, together with copies of his _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, a curious volume, containing a series of 178 Portraits of East Indian Rajahs and Great Moguls, down to Aurung-Zebe. It is now numbered Bodl. MS. Sansk. 14.

The names of various persons (all, probably, undergraduates) employed in the Library about this time are learned from the Accounts:--1738, Mr. Hall; 1740-1, Mr. Allen; 1740, Mr. Toynbee (Ball. Coll., B.A., 1743); 1743, Mr. Jessett (All Souls', B.A., 1745); 1747, Mr. Thomas Winbolt (All Souls', B.A. 1748).

[206] Pref. to _Chron. de Dunstaple_, p. xii. _Autobiogr._ p. 11, &c.

[207] It is fair to say that Fysher remarks in his preface that experience proved how entirely vain and foolish were the reports which had been spread abroad of the little or the nothing which, after the labours of their predecessors, would remain for the then editors to do.

[208] Moses Williams took his degree as B.A. in 1708. One John Williams (probably the one of that name who is entered in the Register of Graduates as having taken the degree of B.A. at Oriel in 1704) appears to have been a colleague of Hearne's in employment in the Library, about 1704. For in a letter written to Hearne, March 20, 1705/6, one year and a-half after he had quitted Oxford, in which he mentions his having been appointed to the Head-mastership of Ruthin School in November, 1705, he refers to 'our dear friends that are in irons at the Bodleian Library, there being several, I suppose, that have been manacled in that pleasing prison since my being there.' (_Rawlinson Letters_, vol. xii. f. 1.)

A.D. 1739.

Notification was given to the Vice-Chancellor, on June 9, that thirteen pictures (of no great value) were bequeathed to the Gallery by Dr. King, Master of the Charter House, by his will dated July 28, 1736, together with £200 for the cleansing and repairing the frames of the pictures already in the Gallery. A list of these thirteen is given in Gutch's transl. of _Wood's Annals_, vol. ii. pp. 969, 970. The pictures themselves are now in the Randolph Gallery. Dr. King also left a legacy of £400 to the University to prepare a complete and handsome edition of Zoroaster's Works, in Persian, with a Latin translation and notes; but this portion of his bequest was not accepted.

A.D. 1740.

A copy of the Byzantine historian, Pachymeres, was restored in this year, by order of the Curators, to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, from which it had by some means been removed; but the College paid £4 4_s._ for its restoration.

A.D. 1745.

In this year died Nathaniel Crynes, M.A., Fellow of St. John's College and Superior Bedel of Arts, to which latter office he had been elected Jan. 26, 1715/16[209]. He bequeathed to the Library all such books out of his own valuable collection as it did not already possess, the rest going to his own College. His books in octavo and smaller sizes, with a few quartos, are still kept distinct, under his own name, and number 968 volumes, many of which are of great rarity. Seven MSS. were presented by him in 1736. In 1727 he purchased some duplicates from the Library, for £3 16_s._ 8_d._, and a story, told by Warton in connection with this purchase, of his fortunately rejecting books which bore the name of Milton, will be found under the year 1620. There is a biographical notice of him in J. Haslewood's Introduction to Juliana Barnes' _Boke of St. Alban's_, Lond. 1810, pp. 86-7. In the Accounts for 1746 occur special payments to Fr. Wise, and to one Mr. Gerard Bodley, for cataloguing and arranging Crynes' books.

[209] He left a benefaction to his successor in this office, which now produces £13 6_s._ 8_d._ yearly.

A.D. 1746.

Trott's _Clavis Linguæ Sanctæ_. See 1686.

A.D. 1747.

Dr. Fysher, the Librarian, died on Nov. 4, at Mr. Warneford's, of Sevenhampton, Wilts, and was buried, on Nov. 7, in Adam de Brome's chapel in St. Mary's Church, Oxford. And on Nov. 10, Rev. Humphrey Owen, B.D., Fellow of Jesus College (afterwards D.D., and chosen Principal of his College in 1763), was unanimously elected his successor[210]. Rawlinson mentions, in a letter to Owen of April 15, 1751, that he had heard a complaint that in Fysher's time 'there was a great neglect in the entry of books into the Benefactors' Catalogue, and into the interleaved one of the Library; as to these objections, my answers were as ready as true, at least I hope so, that Dr. Fysher's indisposition disabled him much from the duty of his office, and that I did not think every small benefaction ought to load the velom register[211].'

[210] Memorandum by Owen himself, in reply to a question from Rawlinson, Rawl. MS. C. 989, f. 142. This volume contains a collection of letters to Owen, chiefly from Browne Willis and Rawlinson, between the years 1748-1756. It affords proof that Owen was what his correspondents would call an 'honest' man, _i.e._ a Jacobite. In one letter, Willis sends him a Latin inscription in praise of Flora Macdonald, which he says is 'on a fair lady's picture, in an honest gentl. seat in the province of St. David's;' in another, Rawlinson sends him, as a contribution to the Oxford collection of verses on the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales, this Jacobite epitaph:--

'Here lies Fred., Down among the dead; Had it been his Father, Most had much rather; Had it been his Brother, Better than any other; Had it been a Sister, More would have mist her; Wer't the whole generation, Happy for the nation; But since it is only Fred., There is no more to be said.'

[211] Rawl. MS. C. 989.

A.D. 1749.

A Runic Primstaff, or Clog Almanack, was given by Mr. Guy Dickens, a gentleman-commoner of Ch. Ch. It is now exhibited, together with another (_see_ p. 105), in the glass case near the entrance of the Library. Pointer, in his _Oxoniensis Academia_ (p. 143), mentions that an explanation of the Primstaff was given by himself; the Accounts show that it was also in this year.

A number of coins were added to the Numismatic Museum, which had been collected by the late Librarian, Fysher.

A.D. 1750.

A copy _on vellum_, with illuminated initials, &c., of vol. i. (reaching to the Psalms) of the Vulgate Bible, printed by Fust and Schoeffer in 1462, was bought for £2 10_s._! The volume was imperfect at the end, ceasing at Job xxxii. 5, and seven leaves followed in contemporary and beautiful MS., which also ended imperfectly at Ps. xxxvi. 9, with one leaf wanting at the end of Job. But when the Canonici Collection of MSS. was received from Venice, in 1818, among some fragments which were found in one of the boxes were fourteen leaves of a MS. Bible, which were at once recognised as being part of those wanted to complete this book, and which left only four still deficient. The volume came to the Library from the collection of Nic. Jos. Foucault, 'Comes Consistorianus,' many other of whose MSS. and printed books came by Rawlinson's bequest; but through how many hands the missing leaves had passed in the seventy subsequent years ere they were thus marvellously restored to their place, it is impossible to tell[212].

[212] The story of this recovery has been already related by Archd. Cotton in his _Typographical Gazetteer_, p. 339, where by mistake he refers the original purchase to the year 1752.

A.D. 1751.

A benefaction from Lord Crewe, Bishop of Durham, of £60 to the Librarian and of £10 for the purchase of books, appears for the first time in the Accounts for this year. These sums (which are still annually paid into the General Fund) proceed from a bequest of £200 _per ann._ from Crewe (who died Sept. 24, 1721) to the University. A proposal to give these same sums to the Library, with other assignments for the remainder, was brought forward in Convocation on June 5, 1723, but the scheme was then rejected[213]. And thus nearly thirty years seem to have elapsed from the time of the bequest before the share for the Library was definitely fixed and paid.

Charles Gray, M.P. for Colchester, presented a MS. Roll, containing a Survey of the estates of the Abbey of Glastonbury at the Dissolution, which is printed by Hearne in his Appendix to Langtoft's _Chronicle_, vol. ii. pp. 343-388, from a copy made from this original; and an inscription, in the Phœnician language, upon a white marble stone, which was brought, with many others, from Citium, in the island of Cyprus, by Dr. Porter, a physician of Thaxted in Essex. The stone measures twelve inches in length, by three in breadth, and three in depth. It has been frequently engraved: first by Pocock (_Travels in the East_, vol. ii. pl. xxxiii. 2); next by Swinton (_Inscriptiones Citieæ_, 1750, and _Philos. Trans._ 1764); afterwards by Chandler, Barthélemy, &c; and, lastly, by Gesenius (for whom former copies were collated with the original, and corrected, by Mr. Reay) in his _Scripturæ Linguæque Phœniciæ Monumenta_, published in 1837, where the inscription is described at pp. 126-133, part i., and engraved at pl. xi. part iii. It appears to be an epitaph by a husband in memory of his wife. The stone is now kept in one of the Sub-librarians' studies.

Thomas Shaw, the well-known Eastern traveller, bequeathed his collection of natural curiosities, which was sent to the Ashmolean Museum, and the MS. of his own travels, with corrections, and other papers. Copies of Caxton's _Game of the Chesse_ and _Recuyell of Troye_ were given by Mr. James Bowen, of Shrewsbury, painter[214].

[213] Hearne's _Diary_, xcvii. 12.

[214] A MS. vol. of collections by him relating to the history of Shropshire, dated 1768, is among Gough's books, Salop MS. 20.

A.D. 1753.

In May of this year died Henry Hyde, Lord Cornbury, son of Henry Hyde, Earl of Rochester, and great-grandson of the great Earl of Clarendon. He had made a will bequeathing all the Chancellor's MSS. to the University of Oxford, to be printed at their press, and the profits to be devoted to a school for riding and other athletic exercises in the University, should such an institution be accepted, or else to other approved uses. Dying before his father, through the effects of an accident, his bequest was void, as he was never actually in possession of the papers to which it referred; but after the death of his father in Dec. following, his sisters, who were the co-heiresses, carried out his will, by sending all the Clarendon MSS. in their possession to the University on the same conditions[215]. From these was published in 1759 (in which year the papers appear to have been deposited in the Library) the _Life_ of the first Earl, reprinted in several editions up to the year 1827. This was followed, in 1767-73, by the publication, under the editorship of Dr. Rich. Scrope, of Magd. Coll., of vols. i., ii. of a selection from the _State Papers_; of which vol. iii. appeared under the editorship of Mr. Thos. Monkhouse, of Queen's Coll., in 1786. During the progress of this publication, however, the original collection of MSS. papers was very largely increased by the acquisition of various portions which had long before been detached. Some were obtained, before the publication of vol. i., from the executors of Rich. Powney, LL.D.; and many were presented to the University, before the publication of vol. ii., by the Radcliffe Trustees, who had bought them for £170 when sold by auction in 1764 by the executors of Joseph Radcliffe, Esq., one of the executors to Edward, third Earl of Clarendon, who died in 1723. Dr. Douglas (afterwards Bishop of Salisbury), who was employed in the latter purchase, himself bought and gave some MSS. which had belonged to Mr. Guthrie, and was instrumental also in procuring some letters from Viscountess Middleton, &c. Again, before the publication of vol. iii. many further papers were purchased by the Radcliffe Trustees from a Mr. Richards, near Salisbury (from whose father Mr. Powney had obtained his portion), and from Mr. W. M. Godschall, of Albury, Surrey. And lastly, about eight or ten years ago, several boxes (including Clarendon's own iron-bound _escritoire_), containing miscellaneous papers, were forwarded by the Clarendon Trustees in final discharge of their trust.

A MS. of the _History of the Rebellion_, in seven volumes, together with one of the _Contemplations_, in three volumes, was forwarded in 1785 or 1786 by the Duke of Queensbury. The former MS. appears to be that from which the first edition was printed by the Earl of Rochester[216].

A complete Calendar of the _Clarendon State Papers_ is now in progress under the care of several editors. As far as it has advanced, it has proved the good judgment and the extreme correctness with which the printed selection was made; but as that selection ended with the Restoration, while the papers themselves reach on to 1667, the year of the Earl's banishment, the later portion may be expected to contain much of fresh interest and value.

It was in this year also that the first portion of the MSS. of Thomas Carte, the 'Englishman' and historian, came to the Library. It has been universally supposed that his voluminous and invaluable collections came _en masse_ subsequently to his death, but the Library Register shows that Oxford was indebted to him for a considerable and important portion during his life. In this year we find that he sent the papers which relate to the life of the great Duke of Ormonde, with a large number of others bearing on the history of Ireland from the time of Queen Elizabeth, comprised in thirty volumes folio and quarto. In the following year, shortly before his death (which occurred on April 2, 1754) he forwarded twenty-six more of his Irish volumes, in folio, marked A, B, C, D, &c. And in 1757 nine more of the same series were forwarded by his widow from Caldecot, near Abingdon, according to an entry in the old Catalogue, which appears to correspond to one in the annual Register to the effect that four more boxes were forwarded by the executors, 'by order of Rev. Mr. Hill.' The remainder of his collections were left in the hands of his widow, who, re-marrying to Mr. Nicholas Jernegan, or Jerningham (of the family seated at Cossey, Norfolk), bequeathed them, upon her death, to him, with the reversion to the University of Oxford. While they were in Mr. Jernegan's possession they were largely used by Macpherson for his publication of _State Papers_, for which use of them £300 were paid; and the agreement entered into by the publisher Cadell, when borrowing some of them for this purpose, is preserved in the MS. Catalogue of the collection. In 1778, however, Mr. Jernegan disposed of his life-interest to the University, for (as Nichols[217] was informed by Price) the sum of £50, and the remainder were consequently at once transferred to the Library. The collection numbers altogether 180 volumes in folio, fifty-four in quarto, and seven in octavo, besides several bundles of Carte's own papers; and is accompanied by a very full list of contents, compiled by Carte himself, in one folio volume. The mass of papers relating to Ireland which these volumes contain is enormous, drawn chiefly from the stores accumulated by Ormonde at Kilkenny Castle; to which are added miscellaneous historical collections derived from Lords Huntingdon, Sandwich, and Wharton. There are, also, several volumes of extracts and papers, collected with immediate reference to Carte's _History of England_. And a third, and especially interesting, portion consists of the papers of Mr. David Nairne, under-secretary to James II during his exile, which reach from 1692 to 1718, and fill two volumes in folio and eight or nine in quarto. It was from these that Macpherson chiefly compiled his _Original Papers_, published in 1775, in 2 vols., 4^o. A Report upon the contents of the collection, with special reference to Ireland (omitting the Nairne papers) was made to the Master of the Rolls by T. Duffus Hardy, Esq., and Rev. J. S. Brewer in 1863, and was printed in the following year, together with an extremely useful summary of the contents of the various volumes, and a reference-table of the letters, &c., printed by Carte in his Ormonde volumes. In consequence of this Report, two Commissioners (the Rev. Dr. Russell, President of Maynooth, and J. P. Prendergast, Esq.) were appointed to examine the whole series, and select for transcription all historical and official papers of interest relating to Ireland, with a view to the preservation of copies in the Record Office at Dublin. Several transcribers are therefore now continuously employed in transcribing for this purpose the papers selected by the Commissioners. Some notice of the MSS. is to be found in the Record Commission Report for 1800, p. 354.

[215] On Feb. 4, 1868, a scheme for the appropriation of the accumulated fund (now amounting to about £12,000), which had been approved by the Clarendon Trustees, was accepted by Convocation. The money is to be applied to the erection of laboratories, &c., at the University Museum, for the Professor of Experimental Philosophy.

[216] In the Benefaction Book this gift is entered under 1793, but it is mentioned in the Preface to vol. iii. of the _State Papers_, dated May 29, 1786, as having been '_lately_' given. Another copy of part of the _History_, partly written by William Edgeman, who was Hyde's secretary at Scilly and during his first exile, came to the Library among Rawlinson's MSS., by whom it was bought at the sale of the Chandos Library in 1747 for £1 10_s._!

[217] _Lit. Anecd._ ii. 514.

A.D. 1754.

In this year the MS. collections of Rev. John Walker, D.D., of Exeter (son of Endymion Walker, of Exeter; born 1674, dec. 1747[218]), from which he compiled his valuable and laborious work, _The Sufferings of the Clergy_, were forwarded to the Library by his son, William Walker, a druggist in Exeter, as appears from a letter from the latter preserved among papers relating to the Library in the Librarian's study. The annual accounts, however, mention the gift under the year 1756. Dr. Walker had expressed in his book (_pref._ p. xliii.) his intention to deposit his papers in some public repository, and his purpose was fortunately thus carried out. The papers have recently been bound, and now form twelve volumes in folio and eleven in quarto, with a few papers still in bundles[219]. A large number of letters from many among the sufferers and their representatives are here preserved; but, unfortunately, Walker's own handwriting is often hard to decipher. Many pamphlets which belonged to him (identified by the peculiar handwriting in MS. notes) are amongst a vast series recently bound and placed in continuation of the Godwyn Tracts; and several volumes of pamphlets written by Dissenters were given by himself in the years 1719-21.

The name of Hogarth occurs in the list of donors, as presenting his two engravings of the _Analysis of Beauty_, which he had published in the preceding year.

[218] His successor in his Exeter prebend was appointed in that year.

[219] The present writer, in answer to an enquiry in _Notes and Queries_ in 1862 (3rd series, i. 218), said that these papers were amongst the _Rawlinson_ MSS. This mistake arose from the fact that the least important portion had recently been found in a mass of papers belonging to that collection, but they did not at any time themselves form part of it.

A.D. 1755.

This year is remarkable for the number and variety of the collections with which, during its course, the Library was enriched, comprehending those of Rawlinson, Furney, St. Amand, and Ballard.

On April 6 died Richard Rawlinson, D.C.L., a Bishop among the Non-jurors, notwithstanding that he passed in the world as a layman. From the time of Bodley, Laud, and Selden, he was the greatest benefactor the Library had known; and his only rivals since his own day have been Gough and Douce. In point of numbers, his donation of MSS. far exceeded all. From the short autobiographical notice of himself, given in his own collections for a continuation of the _Athenæ Oxon._ (where he has inserted a small portrait of himself, engraved, without his name, by Van der Gucht), we learn the following particulars. He was born Jan. 3, 1689/90, in the Old Bailey, his father being Sir Thos. Rawlinson, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1706. On March 9, 1707/8 (having been previously at St. Paul's School and Eton), he was matriculated as a commoner of St. John's College; but in consequence of the death of his father in the same year, he became a gentleman-commoner in 1709; B.A., Oct. 10, 1711[220]; M.A., July 5, 1713; Governor of Bridewell and Bethlehem Hospitals, 1713; F.R.S., 1714; ordained (among the Non-jurors) Deacon, Sept. 21, and Priest, Sept. 23, 1716[221]. He then travelled through the whole of England, except some of the northern parts, and in 1719 went into Normandy, where, while staying at Rouen, he received from Oxford the degree of D.C.L. by diploma of June 30. Thence he went to the Low Countries, where, in Sept., he was admitted into the Universities of both Utrecht and Leyden, and returned into England in Nov. On June 12 in the following year, he started on a longer journey, which he extended through Holland, France, Germany, the whole of Italy, and Sicily, to Malta; and returned on the death of his elder brother Thomas, also a well-known book-collector, in 1726. During his six years' travels, he had seen, he remarks, four Popes[222]. Admitted F.S.A. May 10, 1727. On March 25, 1728, he was consecrated Bishop, by Bishops Gandy, Doughty, and Blackbourne, in Gandy's Chapel[223]. Appointed a Governor of St. Bartholomew's Hospital in March, 1733. He resided at London House, Aldersgate, so called from having been in early days a mansion of the Bishops of London. During his lifetime he was a constant benefactor to the Library; in the years 1733-4-5-7-8-9 and 1750, he is entered in the great Register for special gifts of coins, books, and pictures. Some hundreds of printed books, now in the gallery called '_Jur._,' and elsewhere, were given by him at these times; while many of the Holbeins and other valuable portraits in the Picture Gallery came from him[224]. A few MSS. also came from him during his lifetime which are now placed in the general Bodley collection. But at his death all his collections came _en masse_[225]; collections formed abroad and at home, the choice of book-auctions, the pickings of chandlers' and grocers' waste-paper, everything, especially, in the shape of a MS., from early copies of Classics and Fathers to the well-nigh most recent log-books of sailors' voyages[226]. Not a sale of MSS. occurred, apparently, in London, during his time, at which he was not an omnigenous purchaser; so that students of every subject now bury themselves in his stores with great content and profit. But history in all its branches, heraldry and genealogy, biography and topography, are his specially strong points. The printed books bequeathed by him in selection from his whole library (of which those in quarto and smaller sizes are still called by his name) amounted to between 1800 and 1900[227], but the MSS. to upwards of 4800, besides a large number of old charters and miscellaneous unsorted deeds.

The staff of the Library being very small at the time, as well as ill-paid[228], and such an accession being completely overwhelming, the officers appear to have contented themselves with duly entering the printed books, while leaving the MSS. entirely neglected. About the beginning of the present century some steps were taken towards a Catalogue, and a portion were arranged and numbered; still later, considerably more was done. But it was only on the accession of the present Librarian to the Headship, that the full extent of Rawlinson's collections was ascertained. Every corner of the Library was then thoroughly examined, and cupboard after cupboard was found filled with MSS. and papers huddled together in confusion, while, last not least, a dark hole under a staircase, explored by the present writer on hands and knees, afforded a rich 'take,' including many writings of Rawlinson's Non-juring friends. The whole number of volumes thus brought to light amounted to about 1300.

The classes into which the whole collection of MSS. is now divided are the following:--

1. _Class A_: 500 volumes, chiefly of English history, with a few theological books. Amongst these are the _Thurloe State Papers_, in sixty-seven volumes, of which all of importance were published by Birch, in seven vols. folio, in 1742. These papers were found after the Revolution concealed in the ceiling of garrets in Lincoln's Inn, which belonged to the rooms formerly occupied by Thurloe; and they still bear too evident marks of the damp to which they were there exposed. They passed through Lord Somers' and Sir Jos. Jekyll's hands into those of a bookseller, Fletcher Gyles, from whom Rawlinson obtained them in 1751, and who, as Rawlinson says, asked at first an 'immoderate price' for them. Another series is that of _Miscellaneous Papers of Sam. Pepys_, in twenty-five volumes, containing his correspondence, collections on Admiralty business, &c.[229] These, together with many other volumes which belonged to Pepys (including many curious dockyard account-books of the times of Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth) were 'redeemed from _thus et odores vendentibus_[230].' Of another acquisition Rawlinson writes thus:--

'There was lately an auction here of Mr. Bridgeman's books, curiosities, and MSS., who was formerly clerk of the Council to K. James II, and register to the Ecclesiastical Commission. Here I laid out some pence, and picked up some curiosities; the original minute-book of the High Commission, the proceedings every session with the names of those present, by which it appears that Bp. Sprat was not so innocent as he would persuade us in his letter to the Earl of Dorset to think, and that notwithstanding all his shiftings he sat to the penultim. Session of that Court;' [Letters canvassing the nobility, gentry, justices of the peace, &c., in favour of the repeal of the Test;] '3 letters from the D. of Monmouth, two to the King and one to the Queen, desiring an audience in which he would give them such satisfaction, ... very pathetic, and deserved at least some attention[231]; ... several volumes of treaties, ... instructions to ambassadors. Very remarkable are those to Lord Castlemain on his going to Rome, the King's two letters to the Pope, a third of revocation, all personal and complement, but no embassy of obedience. Copy-books of letters, private and public, wrote by K. Charles and K. James II, from which might be collected such a fund of true tho' secret history, that the prize is not to be valued[232], and will, I hope, be a standing monument of great events, and preserved in Bodley's repository, with the papers of Bp. Turner and other great men at and since the year 1688[233].'

There are also some papers in this class and in Class C which belonged to Archbp. Wake, about which Rawlinson writes, on June 24, 1741[234]:--

'My agent last week met with some papers of Archbp. Wake at a chandler's shop; this is unpardonable in his executors, as all his MSS. were left to Christ Church. But quære whether these did not fall into some servant's hands who was ordered to burn them, and Mr. Martin Folkes ought to have seen that done. They fell into the curate's hands of St. George, Bloomsbury.'

2. _Class B_ numbers 520 volumes nominally, but really, including double numbers, 534. They comprise heraldry and genealogy (including MSS. of Sir Richard and Sir Thos. St. George, W. Wyrley, Guillim, Ryley, Glover, Le Neve, and other heralds) English and Irish history, and topography, including several monastic chartularies. Among the genealogical MSS. is a remarkable collection of pedigrees, in twelve volumes, which the present writer ascertained to have been compiled by Thomas Wilkinson, Vicar of Laurence Waltham, Berks, between about 1647 and 1681. They are arranged alphabetically, as far as the letter P in tolerable order and regularity, but thenceforward only in a rough and incomplete state. Unfortunately the handwriting is far from clear, and the ink has often made it worse. Among the volumes relating to _Essex_, _Norfolk_, _Suffolk_, &c., are twelve or thirteen which belonged to William Holman, a voluminous collector for the first-mentioned county, who incorporated the gatherings of Rev. John Ousley and Thos. Jekyll. Morant, the historian of Essex, obtained the larger portion of Holman's books; some are in the British Museum; and the remainder ('the refuse,' says Morant) were bought by Rawlinson in 1752 for £10[235]. Besides the above-mentioned volumes, there are a large number of Holman's MSS. which are kept distinct, and which have been recently bound in fourteen folio volumes, eleven quarto, and five octavo. Under _London_ are some nineteen or twenty volumes of Diocesan papers which belonged to Bp. John Robinson. They formed (with one volume in Class A and several in Class C) a mass which are described by Rawlinson, as follows[236]:--

'I lately rescued from the grocers, chandlers, &c. a parcel of papers once the property of Compton and Robinson, successively Bps. of London. Amongst those of the first were original subscription and visitation books, letters and conferences during the apprehensions of Popery amongst the clergy of this diocese, remarkable intelligences relating to Burnet and the Orange Court in Holland in those extraordinary times before 1688[237], minutes of the proceedings of the Commissioners for the Propagation of the Gospel, and a great variety of other papers. Amongst those of Bp. Robinson, numbers of originals relating to the transactions at the treaty of Utrecht, copies of his own letters to Lord Bolingbroke, and originals from Lord Bolingbroke, Lord Oxford, Electress and Elector of Hanover, Ormonde, Strafford, Prior, &c.; letters from the Scots deprived Bishops to Compton, and variety of State papers. They belonged to one Mr. [Anth.] Gibbon, lately dead, who was private secretary to both the afore-mentioned prelates.'

Under _Bucks_ are Rawlinson's own collections for a history of Eton College, and under _Middlesex_ and _Oxon._ his parochial collections for those counties. The _Irish_ MSS. include many of great antiquity and value which formerly belonged to Sir James Ware, _e.g._ Tigernach's Annals, Annals of Ulster, Lives of Saints, Dublin Chartularies, Arms of Irish families, Irish poems, &c. Among them is the often noticed Life of St. Columba by Magnus O'Donnell, written in 1532, which was bought by Rawlinson at the Chandos sale for twenty-three shillings.

Of these two classes a Catalogue, in one volume quarto, was printed in 1862, which was compiled by the writer of this volume[238]. A full index to the contents of all the MSS. has been made, which remains at present unprinted, but may possibly at some time appear in conjunction with a volume describing the contents of the succeeding class.

3. _Class C_ comprehends 989 MSS. of very miscellaneous character, but chiefly consisting of law, history and theology, with a few medical works. Among the theological portion are papers of John Dury, the zealous labourer for union amongst Protestants in the time of Charles I, papers of Bedell and Usher, some volumes of John Lewis of Margate[239], and some interesting Service-books of English use, including a Pontifical given to Salisbury Cathedral by Bp. Roger de Martivale between 1315-1329, and an early Oseney book. Several volumes consist of papers of Dr. Chamberlaine (author of _Notitia Angliæ_) and Mr. Henry Newman, secretaries of the Societies for the Propagation of the Gospel, and Promoting Christian Knowledge, which, Rawlinson mentions in a letter, dated April 28, 1744, (Ballard MS. ii.) that he had then recently purchased. Some seventeen or eighteen volumes came from the library of Bp. Turner of Ely (together with others in the classes called _Miscellaneous_ and _Letters_), containing papers of himself and his brother, Dr. Thomas Turner, Dean of Canterbury. These were obtained by Rawlinson in 1742, who in them became master, as he says, of a considerable treasure for ten guineas[240].' Early English poets are represented by Lydgate, Rolle of Hampole, William of Nassyngton, and others[241]; and one volume contains a few Welsh verses. A catalogue exists in MS. The volumes relating to English history in classes A and C are noticed in the return printed in the Record Commission Report for 1800, pp. 348-353.

4. The class entitled _Miscellaneous_ numbers about 1400 volumes, and includes the greater part of those which were discovered in 1861. They are so entirely miscellaneous that it is impossible to give in a few lines a real idea of their nature. History, travels, biography, and religious controversy largely prevail. There are papers of Sir Thos. Browne, Dr. Dee, Maittaire, Peter Le Neve, Ashmole[242], John Dunton, and Bagford, with a very large mass of _Hearniana_. Of the Non-jurors, there are papers of Grascome, Gandy, Spinckes, Hickes, Fitzwilliams, Howell, and Dean Granville. Some nine or ten volumes are occupied with the accounts of the Royal Surveyor of Works from 1532 to 1545. The Church-wardens' accounts of Sutterton, Lincolnshire, from 1493 to 1536, and of St. Peter's, Cornhill, from 1664 to 1689, are also found here[243]. There is a large series of Italian MSS. (amongst other foreign books, chiefly French) which bear on English history, as containing copies of reports made to Rome by Papal agents and to Venice by ambassadors, together with the proceedings at many conclaves. These were bought by Rawlinson at Sir Jos. Jekyll's sale of the Somers' MSS. in 1739, for £3 15_s._[244] There is also a mass of papers of J. J. Zamboni, Venetian Resident in England, and a friend of Maittaire. A considerable number of autograph signatures, barbarously cut out from various books, by Thomas Rawlinson, were found in loose papers; these have now been mounted and bound in two volumes. There are not, however, many of interest among them, except several of Ben Jonson.

5. In _Letters_ there are upwards of 100 volumes, comprising all the multifarious correspondence of Hearne with Anstis, Bagford, Baker, Barnes, Dodwell, Smith, &c., the correspondence of Rawlinson, Dr. Thomas Turner, and Bishop Francis Turner, Philip Lord Wharton, and Sir Edm. Warcupp. One volume contains a few letters by Dryden, Pope, Edw. Young, &c. There is also a series of letters in three vols. relating to Dr. John Polyander, of Kerckhoven, Professor of Divinity at Leyden, and eight or nine volumes of Vossius' correspondence, being the originals from which the folio volume published at London in 1691 was printed.

6. The class of _Poetry_ contains 221 volumes, including Chaucer, Hoccleve, Lydgate, Capgrave (Life of St. Catherine), and Rolle of Hampole, with Piers Plowman and the Romance of Parthenope of Blois (both imperfect). The majority are miscellaneous poems and plays of the seventeenth century. One volume, containing the words of anthems with the composers' names, is supposed to be the Chapel-book used by Charles I.

Of the three last-mentioned classes, a brief MS. list was drawn up with great neatness and accuracy by Dr. Bliss, in 1812 (reaching in the case of the _Miscell._ only as far as No. 407); an index, in continuation, to all the later additions is now in process of formation.

7. Of _Sermons_ there are about 200 volumes; many of which are by Non-jurors, including three by Rawlinson himself. Ten volumes are by Dan. Price, Dean of St. Asaph, 1696-1706; and one volume is said to contain unpublished sermons by Leighton, apparently from notes taken by some auditor at the time of delivery. These have been copied for publication in a proposed new edition (under the care of Rev. W. West, of Nairn, N.B.) of Leighton's whole works.

8. A selection of Biblical and Classical MSS., with a few others, amounting to 199, are placed in the case marked '_Auctarium_,' G. Amongst these are a few Greek volumes, with critical _Adversaria_ of Maittaire, Josh. Lasher, and J. G. Grævius. Early copies of Statius, Ovid, Virgil, &c. form part of the classics; while among the Biblical MSS. is a grand eighth-century copy (written in rounded minuscules, in the same style as the Rushworth book) of the Gospels of St. Luke and St. John, and a beautiful eleventh-century Psalter with the commentary of St. Bruno. One other fine book is a Psalter written for Ch. Ch. Cathedral, Dublin, by the care of Stephen Derby, Prior, about A.D. 1360-80, with remarkable miniatures illustrating Psalms xxxix, liii, lxix, lxxxi, and xcviii.

9. Of _Missals_, _Horæ_, and other Service-books, there are (besides those which are scattered in Classes C and G Auct.) about 130. These (most of which are of French origin, bought out of the library of Nic. Jos. Foucault[245], of Flemish, or of Italian) are now incorporated with a large collection of Liturgical books, which are called _Canon. Liturg._, from their having formed part of the Canonici collection purchased in 1818.

10. A small collection of _Statutes_, comprising sixty-five volumes, is kept distinct. They consist of the Statutes of various Colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, of the Cathedrals of Lichfield, Hereford, Worcester, Chester, Manchester, Canterbury, Exeter, and the Abbey of Westminster; of the Order of the Garter (various copies); of Hospitals at Croydon, Chipping-Barnet, and Chichester; of the Gresham Charities, together with the Charters of London and Bristol; Statutes made by the Chapter of Paris for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre there in 1421, and an eighteenth-century transcript of the Statutes of the College at Bayeux. But the volume of most interest in this class is the rare printed volume of the Statutes of Thame School, issued in 1575. Of this, only five other copies are known, one kept at the School itself, a second in the custody of the Warden of New College (the Visitor of the School), a third in the Royal Library, Brit. Mus., and the fourth and fifth, both on vellum, in the possession of the Earl of Abingdon and in the Grenville Library, Brit. Mus. Rawlinson's copy, which wants the title, has in it the book-plate of John, Duke of Newcastle.

11. Of the MSS. of Dr. Thomas Smith, the Non-juror, of Magd. Coll., Oxford, there are 139 volumes, which (with the exception of a few bequeathed by Smith himself) came into Rawlinson's hands together with the rest of Hearne's collections. They are noticed above, under the year 1735.

12. Besides the multitude of books, scattered throughout every class of Rawlinson's library, which belonged to Hearne or were written by him, there are about 150 small duodecimo volumes of Hearne's daily diary and note-books, commencing in July, 1705, and ending on June 4, 1735, the last actual entry being on June 1, and his decease occurring on June 10. The character of this diary is well known from the two volumes of Extracts published by Dr. Bliss in 1857, with the title, _Reliquiæ Hearnianæ_. But it must not be supposed that these volumes comprehend all that deserves publication; the diary throughout is full of like curious personal history and anecdote, antiquarian gleanings and amusing gossip, mixed, of course, with a good deal of occasional acrimony against those with whom Hearne came in collision either from differences in academic or literary matters, or from their being friends of the 'Elector of Hanover.' There is scarcely a subject falling within its writer's scope of observation on which this Diary may not be consulted; and as it is written in his usual plain and neat hand, with an index to each volume, it is fortunately easy for reference. Hearne bequeathed all his MSS., and books with MSS. notes, to Mr. William Bedford, son of the well-known bishop among the Non-jurors, Hilkiah Bedford; the legatee died on July 11, 1747, and Rawlinson bought them of his widow for £105. Hence it was that they came finally to the place where Hearne would himself have rejoiced to see them deposited. The autobiographical sketch of Hearne's own life, which Huddesford published in 1772, in conjunction with the lives of Leland and Wood, is preserved among the _Miscellaneous_ MSS. Of this Rawlinson says, in a letter dated June 19, 1740[246]: 'Tom's own life was so low and poor a performance that I recommended it to Bedford to burn.' On account, probably, of the numerous reflections which the Diary contained on living persons, Rawlinson ordered in his bequest that it should not be open to inspection until after the lapse of seven years. He laid also the same restraint upon the use of his own papers noticed in the next paragraph.

13. Large collections were made by Rawlinson for a continuation of Wood's _Athenæ Oxon._ These contain much valuable biographical information, derived in very many cases from the actual information of the persons noticed, letters from many of whom are inserted. There are, in all, twenty-five volumes, folio and quarto; among the folios there are two series of notices arranged alphabetically, and one volume (also alphabetical) of notices of Cambridge men admitted _ad eundem_; the quartos contain 1331 notices, numbered but not arranged in any other order, with one general alphabetical index. These collections, together with Hearne's Diaries, and Rawlinson's Non-jurors' Papers, and notes of his own Travels, were included in a fourth and last codicil, dated Feb. 14, 1755, which directed that all these papers should be kept locked up during a period of seven years. By the same codicil also were conveyed numerous engravings by Vertue, portraits of Englishmen, some paintings, and a collection of Roman, Persian, Italian, and English medals[247]. Some of the Italian medals, particularly a fine set in copper of the members of the House of Medici, are now exhibited in a case in the Picture Gallery[248]. By a codicil of June 17, 1752, Rawlinson had previously bequeathed a series of medals of Popes, of which he remarks, 'as they are, I take them to be one of the most complete collections now in Europe;' together with twenty shillings _per annum_ for enlarging and continuing the set[249].

14. Finally (as regards MSS.), Rawlinson left a mass of ancient charters, five hundred of which were catalogued by Mr. Coxe some years ago, and of vellum deeds and documents of all kinds, chiefly of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He left, also, all the copper-plates containing engravings of some of his ancient documents and other curiosities, as well as a large number of impressions from these plates. Many of these impressions were sold at the sale of Bodleian duplicates in 1862. The copper-plates were added to his bequest by a second codicil, dated July 25, 1754, in which he desired that impressions should be taken from them, to be sold in one volume for the use and benefit of the University. A last item in Rawlinson's miscellaneous gifts (besides various bas-reliefs, figures, a Jewish vessel, Muscovite cup, &c.) was a large collection of matrices of ancient conventual and personal seals, chiefly foreign; together with impressions of seals, ancient and modern, in metal and wax, 'most of which,' it is said in the Will (p. 4), 'were of the collection of Mr. Charles Christian, the celebrated seal engraver.' The wax impressions are now exhibited in the Picture Gallery.

Distinct from Rawlinson's other printed books is a curious series of Almanacs, in 175 volumes, extending from 1607 to 1747, which were sent to the Library in 1752. Some volumes in continuation, from 1747 to 1768, were given by Sir Rob. H. Inglis, Bart., in 1846[250]. Another series, between 1571 and 1663, is in the Ashmole collection.

By his second codicil, of July 25, 1754, Rawlinson bequeathed a fee-farm rent of £4 _per annum_ to the Under-librarian, in consideration of his taking charge of the MSS., but clogged with the strange conditions that he should not be a doctor in any faculty, married, or in Holy Orders[251]. The receipt of this sum is entered in the Accounts for 1756, but in no subsequent year.

The following is an alphabetical list of the principal libraries from which Rawlinson's MSS. were collected, with the dates (so far as ascertained) at which these libraries were dispersed:--

Acton (Oliver), of Bridewell Hosp. Bacon (Thos. Sclater), 1737. Bridgeman (Will. & Rich.), 1742. Chandos (Duke of), 1747. Clarendon (Henry, Earl of). Through _Chandos_. Clavell (Walter), 1742. Compton (Bishop). See p. 175. Foucault (Nic. Jos.), 'Comes Consistorianus[252],' 1721. Gale (Samuel), 1755. Graves (Rich.), of Mickleton. Through _Hearne_. Halifax (Montagu, Earl of), 1715. Hearne (Thomas), 1747. Holman (William). See p. 174. Jekyll (Sir Joseph), 1739. Le Neve (Peter), 1731. Maittaire (Mich.), 1748. Mead (Richard, M.D.), 1754-5. Murray (John), 1749. Oxford (Harley, Earl of), 1743-5. Pepys (Samuel). See p. 172. Pole (Francis), 175-. Powle (Henry), in 1689 Speaker of House of Commons. Rawlinson (Thomas), 1734. Robinson (Bishop). See p. 175. St. George (Sir Thomas). Somers (Lord). Through _Jekyll_. Spelman (Sir Henry). Spinckes (Rev. Nathan), 1727. Turner (Bishop). See p. 176. Usher (Archbishop). Through _Hearne_. Wake (Archbp.). See p. 174. Ware (Sir James). Through _Clarendon_ and _Chandos_. Whiston (William).

On July 15, a bequest of printed books and MSS. was received from Rev. Richard Furney, M.A., Archdeacon of Surrey (who had been schoolmaster at Gloucester, 1719-1724, and who died in 1753,) by the hands of the Rev. John Noel, of Oriel College. The printed books (nineteen in all) consisted almost entirely of early editions of classics. The MSS. (six folio volumes) are thus described in a list made by the Librarian, Humphrey Owen, at the time of their receipt:--

'1, 2, 3 and 4 contain collections relating to the history and antiquities of the city, church and county of Gloucester. 5, 6, a fair copy, seemingly prepared for the press, of the history and antiquities of the said city, church and county, by the Arch-deacon himself, or some friend of his from whom these papers came into his hands.'

The gift comprised also two ancient brass seals, and eighteen original deeds, amongst which is the original confirmation charter granted to Gloucester Abbey, by Burgred King of Mercia, in 862. This remarkable deed (which is not printed in Kemble's _Codex_) is in admirable preservation, is written in seventeen lines, with five lines containing seventeen signatures, and measures sixteen inches in width and ten and one-third in length. There are also original grants to the abbey from Hen. II and Stephen, and a confirmation, 29 Edw. I, of Magna Charta, which has a magnificent impression of the beautiful great seal. The deeds are noticed in the Report on the Public Records for 1800, p. 354.

* * * * *

By the death on Sept. 5, 1754, of James St. Amand, Esq.[253] (formerly of Lincoln College), a bequest of books, MSS., coins, &c. which had been made by a will dated Nov. 9, 1749, accrued to the Library, being received in the year 1755. The books consist chiefly of the then modern editions of the classics, and of the writings of modern Latin scholars; such of them as the Library did not need, were to go to Lincoln College. The MSS., sixty-eight in number, comprise various papers relating to the history chiefly of the Low Countries[254], together with notes and indices by St. Amand himself to Theocritus and other Greek poets, Horace, &c. They are described by Mr. Coxe, in vol. i. of the Catalogue of MSS., cols. 889-908. The main part of the residue of his property was bequeathed to Christ's Hospital, together with a picture of his grandfather James St. Amand, done in miniature and set in gold, with the singular proviso that the picture should be exhibited, and the part of the will relating to these bequests be read, at the first annual court of the Hospital, and also that the picture be shown annually to the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, if required. Should a refusal to show the picture be persistently made, or any of the conditions of the will be avoided, then all the residue was to be given to the University, first to increase the stipend of the chief Librarian to £120 and of the second Librarian to £70, but only so long as both of them were unmarried, and then to be devoted to the purchasing of books and MSS., specially of classic authors.

Many of his books have a book-plate, which the author has ascertained to be that of Dr. Arthur Charlett; being the initials A. C., interlaced with the same repeated in an inverse way, surrounded by piles of books, and with the motto, 'Animus si æquus, quod petis hîc est.'

* * * * *

By the bequest of George Ballard (the author of the _Memoirs of Learned Ladies_), who died on June 24, the Library became enriched with forty-four volumes of Letters, chiefly addressed, by ecclesiastical and literary personages of all ranks, to Dr. Arthur Charlett, Master of University College, between the reigns of James II and George I. For the biographical and bibliographical history of the time these letters possess great interest and value; it was from them that the _Letters by Eminent Persons_, published in 1813, by Rev. John Walker, M.A., Fellow of New College, were chiefly drawn. No printed catalogue of them has yet appeared, but the Library possesses a MS. index to the contents of each volume, and a more complete and minute index has been recently commenced[255]. Besides the Letters, Ballard bequeathed some other MSS., in number twenty-three, among which is a volume of various voyages and expeditions, 1589-1634; Sir Edm. Warcupp's autograph account of the treaty in the Isle of Wight;[256] a dialogue between a tutor and his pupil, by Lord Herbert, of Cherbury; the second book of the _Supplication of Soules_, by Sir Thos. More, a precious little volume of 103 closely-written duodecimo pages, entirely in the handwriting of the great Chancellor; the _Universitie's Musterings_, by Brian Twyne; collections by Ant. à Wood; a small volume of Gloucestershire notes, supposed by Guillim; and several volumes written by Mr. Elstob and his sister. An extract from Ballard's will, with a list of his MSS., is in the Register marked 'C.'

Ballard was originally a stay-maker or mantua-maker at Campden, Gloucestershire; but, following the study of antiquities with great ardour, became well known and highly esteemed amongst all of like pursuits. At the age of forty-four he was appointed one of the eight clerks of Magdalen College, being matriculated Dec. 15, 1750, but never took any degree. He bequeathed to the College Library some of his books which were there wanting. The fullest account of him will be found in vol. ii. of _A Register of St. Mary Magd. College_, by J. R. Bloxam, D.D., pp. 95-102, 1857. Some letters from him are printed in Nichols' _Lit. Hist._ iv. 206-226.

The very valuable MS. of the letters of Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London (which are of great importance for the illustration of the history of Thomas à Becket), now numbered _E. Musæo_ 247, was given by Sir Thomas Cave, Bart. It is described in the Benefaction Book as 'liber rarissimus; per totam Angliam unum hoc tantum modo exstat exemplar.' The letters were first printed by Dr. Giles, together with the Lives of Becket, in his series of _Patres Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ_, in 1845.

[220] This date is from the _Register of Graduates_; Rawlinson says, Mich. Term, 1710.

[221] By Bishop Jeremy Collier, in Mr. Laurence's Chapel on College Hill, London. (See a communication from the present writer in _Notes and Queries_, 3rd series, iii. 244.) He appears to have endeavoured to conceal from the world his clerical character. In a letter to T. Rawlins, of Pophills, Warw. in 1736, he requests him not to address him as _Rev._ (Ballard's MSS. ii. 6.) Some volumes of Sermons in his handwriting are among his MSS. His writing is of a very broad, rude, and clumsy character; and it is singular that his brother Thomas wrote a hand very similar. Richard usually signs only with his initials, separated by a cross, 'R + R.'

[222] The small note-books kept on his journeys, containing epitaphs, inscriptions, accounts of places visited, &c., are preserved (but, unfortunately, in an imperfect series) among his Miscellaneous MSS.

[223] See _Notes and Queries_, 3rd series, i. 225.

[224] Two beautiful miniature portraits of James Edward, son of James II, and his wife Clementina Sobieski, which could not, probably, at the time be safely exhibited, have recently been exhumed by the Librarian from the obscurity to which they had been consigned, and are now hung in the Picture Gallery. In Feb. 1749/50, Rawlinson sent Kelly's 'Holy Table,' a marble slab, covered with astrological figures (engraved in Dr. Dee's _Actions with Spirits_), which, he says, had been subsequently in the possession of Lilly. It is now in the Ashmolean Museum.

[225] By the terms of his will, dated June 2, 1752, and printed in 1755, he bequeathed all his MSS. of every kind (excepting private papers and letters) to the Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the University, to be placed in the Bodleian Library, or in such other place as they should deem most proper, for the use and benefit of the University, and of all other persons, properly and with leave resorting thereto with a view to the public good; and to be kept separate and apart from every other collection. With these he gave also all his books printed on vellum or silk (of which latter kind there are two or three small specimens), all his deeds and charters, and all his printed books containing any MSS. notes, together with various antiquities and miscellaneous curiosities. His MS. and printed music he bequeathed to the Music School. Of the Musical library preserved in this room, a MS. Catalogue was made a few years ago by Rev. Robert Hake, M.A., then Chaplain of New College, now Precentor of Canterbury.

[226] _Apropos_ of log-books, it may be mentioned that whereas it appears from the eighth Report of the Deputy-Keeper of the Records, p. 26, 1847, that the earliest log among the Admiralty Records is of the year 1673, there are several of about the same date and a little earlier to be found in Rawlinson's collection.

[227] Among the printed books are two copies of Archbp. Parker's rare _De Antiq. Eccl. Brit._, 1572. One of these is the identical copy described by Strype in his _Life of Parker_, and which was then in the possession of Bp. Fleetwood of Ely; the other (which was given to the Library by Jos. Sanford, B.D., Balliol Coll., in 1753) was presented to Rich. Cosin by John Parker, the Archbishop's eldest son, Jan. 5, 1593. Owen, the Librarian, notes on the cover that Dr. Rawlinson tells him this copy was bought at the sale of the library of his brother, Thos. Rawlinson, by the Earl of Oxford, for £40. A collection of the original broadsides proclamations issued during the whole of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in beautiful condition, forms a remarkable and splendid volume; the collection is complete, except that a few proclamations, of which printed copies are wanting, are supplied in MS. As far as the year 1577 they are printed by Richard Jugge, sometimes alone and sometimes in conjunction with John Cawood; thenceforward they are printed by the two Barkers, first by Christopher, and afterwards by Robert. They appear to have been collected in the reign of James I. A printed chronological table of contents is prefixed, together with a portrait of the Queen, engraved by Fr. Delaram, with six lines of verse by 'Jo. Davies, Heref.' At the year 1559 a leaf is inserted containing the arms of Q. Mary of Scotland quartering those of England (the assumption of which by Mary gave irreconcileable offence to Q. Eliz.), beautifully painted, with the note, 'Sent out of Fraunce, in July, 1559,' and these lines below:--

'The armes of Marie Queene Dolphines of ffraunce, The nobillest Lady in earth for till aduaunce: Off Scotland queene, and of Ingland also, Off Ireland als, God haith providit so.'

This leaf is one of two copies executed for Cecil and Q. Eliz. Two, probably unique, 'red-letter' books are also among the rarities of Rawlinson's printed collection. The one is a Sermon on Ps. iv. 7, preached before Charles I at Oxford by Josias Howe, B.D., of Trinity College. It is printed entirely in red, and has no title. It was bought, included in a volume of miscellaneous sermons, out of Dr. Charlett's library, by Hearne, who says in a MS. note that only thirty copies were printed. A description of it is given by Dr. Bliss in his _Reliquiæ Hearn._ vol. ii. pp. 960-1, where Hearne's note is printed in full. The other is a volume entitled, _The Bloody Court; or, the Fatal Tribunal_, being an account of the trial and execution of Charles I. The lengthy title is printed by Dr. Bliss, _ubi supra_. Some few of Rawlinson's printed books came to the Library among Gough's, in 1809.

[228] The salaries being miserably insufficient, the recognised duties of the officers appear to have been simply the cataloguing the few books that were received in ordinary course, and attending upon the readers. Consequently for any other work, for arranging or cataloguing any new collections, &c., special payments were always made. A somewhat amusing instance of this occurs under the year 1722, when the Librarian craved payment for making with his own hand certain new hand-lists, &c., but was refused. However, he carried on his claim from year to year until it was admitted to the amount of £5 15_s._ 6_d._ in 1725. And as the funds were insufficient to defray in this way the extra cost of cataloguing such a collection as Rawlinson's, hence, doubtless, came the neglect which it experienced. Such work was so clearly understood to form no part of the Librarians' regular duties, that Rawlinson says, in a letter to Owen, Apr. 15, 1751 (MS. C. 989), 'I think large benefactors should pay the expense of entries into the Bodleian, as their books are useless till so entered.'

[229] It was chiefly from these that the two volumes published in 1841 under the title of _Life, Journals, and Correspondence of S. Pepys_ were compiled. Unfortunately the editor, or his copyist, appears to have been sometimes unable to read the MSS., and at other times very careless; his book therefore abounds with errors. The following is one of the worst, as it libels the memory of a statesman who deserved better treatment: Sir R. Southwell is represented as saying in a letter to Pepys (vol. i. p. 282) that he has lost his health 'by sitting many years at the _sack_-bottle,' whereas the poor man had lost it by sitting many years 'at the _inck_-bottle.' A line or two farther on, Southwell's occupation with 'some care and much sorrow,' is changed into 'love, care and much sorrow.' Certain '_Novelles_,' or newspapers, which Mr. Hill sends to Pepys are explained (vol. ii. p. 135) to have been the _Novellæ_ of Justinian! Throughout the book proper names are frequently made to become anything but proper to their owners.

[230] Letter from Rawlinson to T. Rawlins, Jan. 25, 1749/50; Ballard MS. ii. 115.

[231] The same volume (now A. 139^b) also contains Monmouth's acknowledgment, written and signed by himself on the day of his execution, that Charles II had declared that he was never married to his mother; witnessed by Bishops Turner and Ken, together with Tenison and Hooper. This is now exhibited in the glass case at the entrance to the Library.

[232] In his delight at his new purchase, Rawlinson seems to have exaggerated the interest of these volumes.

[233] Letter to T. Rawlins, Feb. 24, 1742/3; Ballard MS. ii. 78.

[234] To the same; _Ibid._ 59.

[235] Gough, _Brit. Topogr._ i. 370, 345.

[236] Letter, June 24, 1741; Ballard MS. ii. 59.

[237] Including some letters from Ken while Chaplain to Princess Mary. These papers of Compton are in class C.

[238] For the description of the contents of three of the Irish volumes, the author was indebted to an experienced Irish scholar, Standish Hayes O'Grady, Esq.

[239] A volume of collections by him relating to the early versions of the Bible was bought in 1858 for five guineas.

[240] Ballard MS. ii. 87.

[241] One curious volume is described by Sir F. Madden in his preface to _Syr Gawayne_, printed by the Roxburghe Club in 1839.

[242] With relation to these Rawlinson says, in a letter dated Feb. 25, 1736-7, that he had bought, about two years since, some of Ashmole's papers from his heirs, including some of Dugdale's (Ballard MS. ii. 11).

[243] For Parish Registers, see under 1821.

[244] Two MS. volumes of the Relations of Venetian Residents in various countries were given to the Library by Will. Gent, in 1600, and Sir Rich. Spencer, in 1603.

[245] From this library Rawlinson also obtained some French editions of the _Horæ_, printed on vellum.

[246] Ballard MS. ii. 41.

[247] The clock, still in use in the Library, made by Robinson in Gracechurch Street, was one of the items comprised in this codicil, where it is described as a 'table clock,' then in the custody of Mr. John King, a bookseller, in Moorfields.

[248] These were bought, 'very cheap,' at Mrs. Kennon's sale, Feb. 24, 1755, by a dealer named Angel Carmey, who sold them to Rawlinson for £10 10_s._ Carmey's letter conveying his offer of sale is preserved in Rawlinson's copy of the sale catalogue.

[249] It does not appear, however, that this sum was ever paid.

[250] A curious, and probably unique, little 'Almanacke for XII yere, after the latytude of Oxenforde,' printed in 48^o (measuring two and a-half inches by one and three-quarters), by Wynkyn de Worde, 'in the fletestrete,' in 1508, was presented by David Laing, LL.D., the eminent Librarian to the Writers to the Signet, Edinburgh, in 1842. The Library also possesses two copies of a sheet Almanack, by Simon Heuringius, for 1551, printed by John Turck, at London; and other almanacs for 1564, 1567, and 1569. A volume containing five almanacs for the year 1589 was bought in 1857.

[251] With the same perverse eccentricity he ordered that the recipients of his endowments for the Keepership of the Ashmolean Museum and the Professorship of Anglo-Saxon, should be unmarried (in the former case only M.A. or B.C.L.), not a native of Scotland, Ireland, or the Plantations, nor a son of such native, nor, in the case of the Museum, even educated in Scotland, and not a member of either the Royal Society or the Society of Antiquaries.

[252] Autobiographical memoirs by Foucault, extending to 1719, were published under the editorship of F. Baudry, 4^o. Paris, 1862, in the French Government series of _Documents inédits sur l'Histoire de France_. The editor remarks in the preface (p. xli.), 'On ignore en quelles mains la bibliothèque de Foucault passa après sa mort [1721]. Le P. Le Long nous apprend seulement qu'elle fut vendue, et probablement dispersée.'

[253] A record of his birth and baptism is entered in a family register kept by his father on the fly-leaves of a splendid copy of the folio Prayer-Book of 1662. He was the second son; born in Covent Garden, Apr. 7, 1687; bapt. Apr. 21, by Dr. Patrick, the sponsors being Major-Gen. Werden, Sir Peter Apsley and the Countess of Bath. Prince George of Denmark was one of the sponsors to his elder brother, George. He had also a sister, Martha.

[254] Amongst these is a large collection of MS. news-letters written from various places abroad about the years 1637-1642; one of these, containing particulars of movements of the Swedish and Imperialist armies, is printed, as a specimen, in _Letters by Eminent Persons_, 1813, vol. i. pp. 15-17.

[255] References to many particulars relative to Thoresby, Bishop Gibson, White Kennett and Hickes (with a few others) are given in J. Nichols' notes to the _Letters of Archbp. Nicolson_ (2 vols. 1809), an interesting and varied biographical miscellany, but which is guilty of the capital crime of omitting an index.

[256] This ought, apparently, to have reached the Library much sooner, through the hands of Dr. Charlett; since it has the following inscription on the fly-leaf: 'Given by the Hon^ble. S^r. Edmund Warcup (being all writ w^th his own hand at y^e Isle of Wight at y^e Treaty) to the Public Library in Oxford, to be placed there when I thought fitting.

'AR. CHARLETT.

'Univ. Coll. Nov. 25, 97.'

A.D. 1756.

Dr. Samuel Johnson presented the account of Zachariah Williams' attempt to ascertain the longitude at sea, which he had published under Williams' name in the preceding year; and, as Warton noted[257], he entered it with his own hand in the Library Catalogue. The entry is still to be seen, with a memorandum of its being in Johnson's hand, in an interleaved, and now disused, copy of the Catalogue of 1738.

[257] Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, edit. 1835, vol. ii. p. 54.

A.D. 1759.

Above forty Syriac, Greek and Arabic MSS. are recorded in the Registers to have been presented by Henry Dawkins, Esq., of Standlynch, Wilts, who had collected them while travelling in the East with Robert Wood, whose works on Baalbec and Palmyra he presented at the same time. There are now _sixty_ MSS. in Syriac alone which pass under the name of Dawkins, some of which are of great age and value. They are described in Dr. R. Payne Smith's Catalogue of the Syriac MSS. Mr. Dawkins died in London, June 19, 1814, aged eighty-six.

Swedenborg's _Arcana Cœlestia_, published anonymously, in 8 vols. were sent 'by the author, unknown.' The same donor, still unknown, sent in 1766 _Selecti Dionys. Halicarn. tractatus_.

In this year and in 1761 published music began to be received from Stationers' Hall, and to be entered in the Register. It remained piled up in cupboards until about twenty-three years ago, when it was all disinterred and carefully arranged by Rev. H. E. Havergal, M.A., then Chaplain of New Coll. and Ch. Ch., and an assistant in the Library (now Vicar of Cople, Beds.), and bound in some 300 or 400 volumes. Since that time two further series of musical volumes have been arranged and bound.

A meagre list of the pictures, &c., in the Picture Gallery and Library was printed by the Janitor (or Under-janitor), N. Bull, and 'sold by him at the Picture Gallery.' It fills twelve duodecimo pages. A new edition, 'with additions and amendments,' including the pictures in the Ashmolean Museum, was issued by him in 1762, in sixteen octavo pages. This was, as it seems, the first list that had been issued since Hearne printed his original Catalogue in his _Letter containing an Account of some Antiquities between Windsor and Oxford_. A list, equally meagre with Bull's, was published by W. Cowderoy, Janitor, in 1806. He was succeeded in office (before 1825) by ---- Lenthall; on whom followed the present Janitor, J. Norris, appointed in 1835. By him a new Catalogue, enlarged with biographical notices, was issued, filling sixty pages; which was reissued, with a few alterations, in 1847, when such of the pictures as were not portraits had been removed to the new Randolph Gallery. As all the portraits were a few years ago distinctly labelled, but few copies of the Catalogue have, consequently, been since sold, and no new edition has appeared.

A.D. 1760.

The MSS. of the eminent antiquary, Browne Willis, who died on Feb. 5, in this year, came to the Library by his bequest. They were received from his executor, Dr. Eyre, on April 24. There are altogether fifty-nine volumes in folio, forty-eight in quarto, and five in octavo, consisting chiefly of Willis' own collections for his various works, with much correspondence intermingled and a few older historical papers. There is much of value for general ecclesiastical topography and biography, besides his large collections for the county of Bucks, and special volumes relating to the four Welsh Cathedrals. He desired in his will that the books should be placed in the Picture Gallery, 'next to those of my friend Bishop Tanner;' both collections have since been removed to a room on the floor below, but the presses which contain them still adjoin each other. Many of his letters are to be found among Ballard's and Rawlinson's papers, and show throughout both the warm interest which he took in ecclesiastical renovation and religious work generally, but particularly in the state of the Church in Wales, and the continual efforts which he made to rouse slothful and negligent dignitaries to a sense of their duties and responsibilities. The restoration of the ruined and desolate Cathedral at Llandaff was an object especially dear to him. By his will, which was dated Dec. 20, 1741, he bequeathed to the University, besides his MSS., all his numerous silver, brass, copper and pewter coins, and also his gold coins, if purchased at the rate of £4 per oz., as the best return he could make for the many favours he acknowledged to have been conferred on him and on his grandfather, Dr. Thomas Willis, Professor of Natural Philosophy. This latter provision of his will was at once carried into execution; in the following year the University purchased one hundred and sixty-seven gold coins for £150 at £4 4_s._ per oz., and two more in 1743 for £8 5_s._ His other coins were given by him in the years 1739, 1740, 1741, 1747 and 1750; and by a codicil to his will dated Feb. 5, 1742, he desired that the whole collection should be annually visited on the Feast of St. Frideswide (Oct. 19), which day he had himself been wont annually to celebrate in Oxford. His first gift to the Library was in the year 1720, when he gave ten valuable MSS., chiefly historical (now placed among the general _Bodley_ Series), together with his grandfather's portrait.

A bequest of £70, towards the purchase of an orrery, was received from Rev. Jos. Parsons, M.A., of Merton College.

A.D. 1761.

Kennicott's collations of Hebrew Biblical MSS., made during the years 1759-60, were received from him on Dec. 17, in this year, according to an entry in the Register. But all his MSS., collations, correspondence, and miscellaneous books (including one in Zend, upon cloth), were subsequently deposited in the Radcliffe Library, whence they were removed, in 1862, together with the other contents of that collection, to the place of their present deposit, the New Museum.

A.D. 1762.

The west, or Selden, end of the Library was re-floored at a cost of £66. Unchaining of those books which hitherto, on account of their accessibility to all comers, were fastened to their shelves, appears to have been commenced in this year.

A.D. 1763.

The Janitor, Rev. John Bilstone, M.A., was deprived of his office by Dr. Owen, the Librarian, on account of his neglecting to perform his duties in person. An action for arrears of salary was subsequently brought by Bilstone against Owen[258]. He died Feb. 13, 1767, at which time he held three livings, besides his Chaplaincy of All Souls' College.

[258] 'See papers in _Files_, 1763; Archiv.' (MS. note in Dr. P. Bliss' _Collectanea_.)

A.D. 1764.

The _Editio princeps_ of Homer, Florence, 1488, was bought for £6 6_s._

A.D. 1768.

H. Owen, the Librarian, and Principal of Jesus College, died in March of this year, and was buried in his College Chapel. In his room was elected the Rev. John Price, B.D., of Jesus College, 'after a severe contest with Mr. Cleaver, of Brasenose, afterwards head of that College and Bishop of St. Asaph, who used to say that he was indebted to Mr. Price for his mitre, for had he obtained the Bodleian he should have there continued, instead of becoming tutor in a noble family, and so placed in the road to advancement. In this election the votes were equal, and Mr. Price, being senior, was nominated by the Vice-Chancellor[259].' Price appears to have been employed in the Library as early as the year 1760, when a payment of £8 8_s._ was made to him; in 1766 he signs, together with Owen and Thomas Parker, an account of books received from Stationers' Hall.

[259] Note by Dr. Bliss in the edition of Wood's _Life_ published, in 1848, by the Eccl. Hist. Soc. p. 88.

A.D. 1770.

The Library was largely enriched with books which were then modern, in which it appears to have been very deficient, by the legacy of the library of Rev. Charles Godwyn, M.A., Fellow of Balliol College. The collection, which is still in the main kept undivided (although a few folio and quarto volumes are placed in the general class marked _Art._), consists chiefly of works in English and general history, civil and ecclesiastical, published in the eighteenth century, and includes besides the later Benedictine editions of the Fathers. There is also a series of theological and literary pamphlets; to which have been added of late years upwards of 2400 volumes, of all dates and on all subjects, which are now all alike numbered, for convenience sake, in connection with Godwyn's own. The residue of his property, after payment of all claims and bequests, formed a further portion of his legacy; and the interest upon £1050 which accrued from this source, still forms part of the annual income of the Library.

A.D. 1771.

A payment of £2 12_s._ 6_d._ was made in this year (or rather, at the close of 1770) to a glass-painter, named Brooks, for one of the coats of arms in the great east window.

A.D. 1775.

Twenty-four Oriental MSS. and bundles of papers which had been found in the study of Rev. Dr. Thos. Hunt, Reg. Prof. of Hebrew, who died in the preceding year, were given by various persons.

A.D. 1776.

Lord North, the Chancellor of the University, presented to the Library the observations made by Dr. James Bradley, while Astronomer Royal, at Greenwich, 1750-62. These had been given to him by Mr. John Peach, son-in-law to Dr. Bradley, while a suit was pending between the Board of Longitude on behalf of the Crown and Mr. Peach respecting his right to their possession. The claim of the Crown had been first made in 1765, on the ground that they were the papers drawn up by Bradley in discharge of his public and official duties, but the executor, Mr. Sam. Peach, refused to resign them except for some valuable consideration. But after his death, his son, Mr. John Peach, who married Dr. Bradley's daughter, presented them to Lord North, with the understanding that the latter should give them to the University, on condition that they should be forthwith printed. They were, consequently, immediately put into the hands of Dr. Hornsby, the Savilian Professor of Astronomy, for publication; but the work progressed very slowly, in consequence of his ill-health, and a remonstrant correspondence ensued between the Board of Longitude, the Royal Society, and the University, which was printed by the Board, together with a statement of the whole case and of the steps taken by them for the recovery of the papers, in 1795. Several letters from Sir Joseph Banks, as President of the Royal Society, to Price the Librarian, in 1785, on the slow progress of the work, are preserved in a volume of MS. Letters to Librarians, recently bound up by Mr. Coxe. The first volume at length appeared in 1798, in folio, and the second, edited by Prof. A. Robertson, in 1805, with an appendix of observations made by Bradley's successor, Rev. Nath. Bliss, and his assistant, Mr. Charles Green, to March, 1765, which had been purchased by the Board of Longitude, and were presented by them to the University, in March, 1804. Some further remains of Dr. Bradley were, after Dr. Hornsby's death, found among the papers of the latter, and these (having been restored to the University by his family, on application, about 1829) were published in 1831, under the editorship of Prof. S. P. Rigaud, in one vol. quarto, entitled _Miscellaneous Works and Correspondence of Rev. J. Bradley_. In 1861, a fresh application for the return of the Observations was made to the University, by Mr. Airy, the Astronomer Royal, on the ground that they were the only volumes wanting in the series preserved at Greenwich, and that they were frequently needed there for reference. By a vote of Convocation, on May 2, this application was acceded to, and thirteen volumes of Observations were returned to what was certainly their legitimate place of deposit. Some miscellaneous papers, making about thirty parcels, still remain in the Library.

A.D. 1778.

_Carte's MSS._ See 1753.

A.D. 1780.

On Jan. 22, a Statute was passed which imposed an annual fee of four shillings[260] on all persons entitled to read in the Library and all who had exceeded four years from matriculation, as well as assigned to the Library a share of the matriculation fees. The preamble of the Statute alleges that the funds of the Library were so insufficient for their purpose that of works of importance daily published throughout the world 'vix unus et alter publicis sumptibus adscribi possit.' The Statute also provided for the holding of regular meetings by the Curators, and the issuing of an annual Catalogue of the books purchased during the year, with their prices, together with a statement of accounts. The commencement of the annual printed purchase-catalogues dates in consequence from this year.

In a letter from Thos. Burgess, afterwards the Bishop of St. David's and Salisbury, to Mr. Tyrwhitt, the editor of Chaucer, dated Corp. Chr. Coll., Nov. 16, 1779, the plan for increasing the funds of the Library, established by this Statute, is mentioned as a scheme 'much talked of,' the defects of the Library being such as 'we are now astonished should have been of so long continuance[261].' A paper in behalf of the proposal was circulated among Members of Convocation, upon a copy of which, preserved by Dr. Bliss with his set of the annual Catalogues, the latter has noted that it was written by Sir William Scott, afterwards Lord Stowell.

The exquisite portrait of Sir Kenelm Digby, supposed to be by Vandyke, was given by Edw. Stanley, Esq. It is now in the Picture Gallery; and, having recently been cleaned and covered with plate-glass, appears once more in all the freshness of its original perfection[262].

The Sub-librarian at this time was John Walters, an undergraduate Scholar of Jesus College. He published in this year a small volume of _Poems_ ('written before the age of nineteen'), the chief portion of which consists of a description of the Library, written with a warm admiration of his subject, and by no means destitute of poetic feeling. It numbers 1188 lines, and is illustrated with some well-selected notes. In 1782, when B.A. and still Scholar of his College, he published _Specimens of Welsh Poetry in English verse, with some Original Pieces and Notes_. He took the degree of M.A. in 1784, and died in 1791[263]. We learn from a MS. note in a copy of his _Poems_, presented to the Library by the present Principal of Jesus College, that he was the son of John Walters, Rector of Llandough (author of a Welsh Dictionary, 1794), by Hannah his wife, and that he was baptized there, July 9, 1760.

[260] By the Statute passed in 1813, and by that on Fees passed in 1855, an annual payment of _eight_ shillings was ordered to be made to the Library out of the total sum (now £1 6_s._) paid by each graduate whose name is on the University Books. But these individual fees, varying with the numbers on the Books, were consolidated, in 1861 in one fixed annual sum, from the University Chest, of £2800.

[261] Note by Dr. Bliss, in his MS. _Collectanea_, bequeathed by him to Rev. H. O. Coxe.

[262] Another portrait of Sir Kenelm, which hangs in the Library, was given, in 1692, by Mr. William Pate, a woollen-draper of London. To this Mr. Pate, Thos. Brown dedicated, in 1710, as 'his honest friend,' his translation from the French of _Memoirs of the Present State of the Court and Councils of Spain_.

[263] Nichols' _Lit. Anecd._ viii. 122.

A.D. 1785.

George III and Queen Charlotte visited the Library, from Nuneham, on Oct. 13. Price, the Librarian, was in attendance, and kissed hands.

Several Assistants, whose names are not perpetuated in the Library records, are found perpetuated by the inscriptions written by successive generations on the old oak staircases which run from their studies to the galleries above. In June of this year, Thomas Whiting, of Jesus College (B.A. also in this year), does in this way transmit the memory of his service to posterity. E. Thomas (_qu._ Evan Thomas, of All Souls' College, B.A., 1793?) does the same in 1790.

A.D. 1787.

On May 31, the Reader in Chemistry, Thomas Beddoes, M.D., of Pembroke College, issued a printed Memorial to the Curators 'concerning the state of the Bodleian Library, and the conduct of the Principal Librarian.' The utmost laxity appears from this statement to have prevailed with regard to attendance, and to the hours of opening the Library; the Librarian was always absent on Saturdays and Mondays, as on those days he was occupied in journeys to and from a curacy eleven miles distant, which he held together with a living more remote; and the Library which should then in summer have been opened at eight was found unopened between nine and ten, and unopened also after University sermons. The Librarian is charged besides with having discouraged readers by neglect and incivility, with being very careless in regard to the value and condition of books purchased by the Library[264], and with having but little knowledge of foreign publications. An anecdote is related (amongst others) of his lending _Cook's Voyages_, which had been presented by King Geo. III, to the Rector of Lincoln College, and telling him that the longer he kept it the better, 'for if it was known to be in the Library, he (Mr. Price) should be perpetually plagued with enquiries after it[265].' In consequence of these complaints, the Curators, in 1788, prepared on their part a new form of Statute, while the Heads of Houses prepared another. This separate action led to a paper war between the two bodies, in which the Regius Professors of Divinity, Law, Medicine, Hebrew and Greek, (Randolph, Vansittart, Vivian, Blayney and Jackson) appeared on the Curators' side of the question, and, as the Hebdomadal Board persisted in pressing their own scheme, they at length (with the exception of Blayney) adopted the strong step, on the day when the rival plan was proposed in Convocation (June 23, 1788), of formally protesting before a notary public against this violation of their privileges. The consequence was that the Statute was withdrawn, and the proposal for a new code abandoned by both parties. The chief points of difference were, that the Curators objected to the proposal being put forward as 'cum consensu Curatorum' instead of 'ex relatione Curatorum,' to the increase of the Librarian's stipend to £150, to the appointment of two Sub-librarians instead of one, and to the leaving the appointment of these in the hands of the Librarian (in accordance with Bodley's own Statute) instead of assigning it to the Curators.

Eleven Arabic and Persian MSS. were given by Turner Camac, Esq., co. Down.

A first part of a Catalogue of the Oriental MSS., comprehending those in Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Æthiopic, Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Coptic, was issued in this year, in folio. It was compiled by John Uri, a Hungarian, who had studied Oriental literature under Schultens, at Leyden, and who was recommended for this purpose to Archbp. Secker, by Sir Joseph Yorke, then Ambassador in the Netherlands. Many years were occupied in the preparation of this volume, as Uri appears to have commenced his work in 1766, his signature occurring in the 'Registrum admissorum' under Feb. 17, in that year[266]. Sixty closely-printed folio pages of corrections and additions are, however, supplied by Dr. Pusey, in the second part of the Catalogue, which he completed after Dr. Nicoll's death and published in 1835. In his preface to this part, Dr. Pusey remarks that Uri frequently copied with carelessness; and that the whole series of Arabic MSS. was found to need re-examination from the discovery that all kinds of cheats and impositions had been played upon all the purchasers of Eastern MSS., Pococke alone excepted, by the cunning sellers with whom they dealt, particularly in the passing off of supposititious works for genuine[267]. And upon carrying out this re-examination, the following was found to be the result:--

'Varias errorum formas deprehendi, titulis nunc charta coopertis, nunc atramento oblitis, nunc cultro pæne abrasis; auctorum porro nominibus paullulum immutatis quo notiora quædam referrent; numeris etiam, quibus singula volumina signata sunt, permutatis, quo quis opus imperfectum pro integro habeat, paginis denique pauculis operi alieno a fronte assutis.'

[264] Among other instances the purchase (in 1784) of Sir John Hill's _Vegetable System_, at the cost of £140, is mentioned.

[265] It appears incidentally, from this pamphlet, that three o'clock was the dinner-hour at almost every College at that time.

[266] He died suddenly at his lodgings in Oxford, Oct. 18, 1796, aged upwards of seventy (_Gent. Magaz._, vol. lxvi. p. 884.)

[267] The late Dr. Simonides was evidently by no means the first in his art, although probably _facile princeps_.

A.D. 1789.

The Anatomy School, on the Library staircase, was fitted up in this year as a room for receiving the Greek and Biblical MSS., and fifteenth-century editions of classics. In 1794 it was ordered that it should be distinguished by the name of the _Auctarium_, a name which it still retains. Mr. John Thomas, of Wadham College, (B.A. 1790, M.A. 1793) was employed in 1790 in arranging the room and making a list of its contents.

Many early editions of the classics were purchased at the sale of the library of Mapheo Pinelli, at Venice. To enable these purchases to be made, the Curators made a public application for loans, to which a liberal response was returned, as noted under the following year.

The increased attention which began to be paid to the Library about this time is thus mentioned in a letter from Mr. Dan. Prince, the Oxford bookseller:--

'Our Bodleian Library is putting into good order. It has been already one year in hand. Some one, two or three of the Curators work at it daily, and several assistants. The revenue from the tax on the Members of the University is about £460 per annum, which has existed 12 years. This has increased the Library so much that it must be attended to, and a new Catalogue put in hand. They have lately bought all the expensive foreign publications. A young man of this place is about making a Catalogue of all the singular books in this place, in the College libraries as well as the Bodleian.... We have a young man in this place, his name is Curtis, who was an apprentice to me, who has hitherto only dealt in books of curiosities, in which he is greatly skilled, superior in many respects to De Bure, Ames, or his continuator. He has been employed five or six years in the Bodleian Library, and since at Wadham, Queen's and Balliol. He purposes to publish a Catalogue of little or not known books in Oxford, particularly in Merton, Balliol and Oriel[268].'

[268] Nichols, _Lit. Anecd._ iii. 699, 701.

A.D. 1790.

A very large number of _Editiones principes_ and other early-printed books were purchased at the sale at Amsterdam of the library of P. A. Crevenna. The first entire Hebrew Bible, printed at Soncino in 1488, was purchased for £43 15_s._; and Fust and Schoeffer's first _dated_ Latin Bible (Mentz, 1462) for £127 15_s._ To enable the Library to make the purchases of this and the preceding year, benefactions were received to the amount of nearly £200, and upwards of £1550 were lent by various bodies and individuals. The repayment of the loans was completed in 1795.

£120 were received for duplicates sold to Messrs. Chapman and King. Other small receipts from similar sales are found under the years 1793, 1794 and 1804.

A.D. 1791.

From this year onwards until 1803, inclusive, the name of Mr. Edward Lewton, of Wadham College (B.A. 1792, M.A. 1794), is found as that of an Assistant employed upon the Catalogues. Further benefactions to the amount of £232, for the purpose of aiding the purchase of early-printed books, were received in this year. The list of all the donors is printed in Gutch's edition of Wood's _History and Antiquities_, vol. ii. part ii. p. 949.

A.D. 1792.

The collections of notes and various readings made by Joseph Torelli, of Verona, in preparation for his edition of Archimedes, were deposited in the Library, (F. _infra_, 2. _Auct._). They were given to the University after his death (in 1781) by his executor, Albert Albertini, partly through the instrumentality of Mr. John Strange, envoy to Venice, upon condition that the University undertook the publication. The work was consequently printed at the University Press, and issued in a handsome folio volume in this year.

A.D. 1793.

A magnificent copy of Gutenberg's Bible, not dated, but supposed to have been printed about 1455, fresh and clean as if it had just come from the hands of the men of the New Craft, carefully set at their work, was bought for the very small sum of £100. It is exhibited in the first glass case in the Library. This is the edition often called the _Mazarine Bible_, from the circumstance that the first copy which obtained notice was found in the Mazarine Library at Paris.

A.D. 1794.

The _Editio princeps_ of the Bible in German, printed by Eggesteyn about 1466, was bought for £50.

A chronological Catalogue, in two folio volumes, of a very large and valuable collection of pamphlets (which had hitherto been kept in the Radcliffe Library), extending from 1603 to 1740, was made in 1793-4, by Mr. Abel Lendon, of Ch. Ch. (B.A. 1795, M.A. 1798.)

Mr. Rich. S. Skillerne, of All Souls' (B.A. 1796, M.A. 1800), was employed in the Library.

With a view to the formation of a new Catalogue, the Curators at the end of the annual list made a first application for returns of such books existing in the several College libraries as were not in the Bodleian, in order thereby to accomplish what would be a most useful work, and is still a great _desideratum_, a General Catalogue of all the books in Oxford.

A.D. 1795.

A brief list (filling sixty small octavo pages) was printed at the Clarendon Press, of the _Editiones principes_, the fifteenth-century books, and the Aldines, then in the Library. The name of the compiler does not appear. It is entitled, 'Notitia editionum quoad libros Hebr., Gr. et Lat. quæ vel primariæ, vel sæc. xv. impressæ, vel Aldinæ, in Bibliotheca Bodleiana adservantur.'

Four cabinets of English coins were presented by Thomas Knight, Esq., of Godmersham, Kent. Among them was an ornament (now exhibited in the glass case near the Library door) said to have been worn by John Hampden when he fell at Chalgrove Field[269]. It consists of a plain cornelian set in silver, with the following couplet engraved on the rim:--

'Against my King I do not fight, But for my King and kingdom's right.'

The Curators renewed a request, made ineffectually some time before, that the several Colleges would make out returns for the Library of all such books in their own collections as did not appear in the Bodl. Catalogue. In the year 1801 they acknowledged the receipt of such lists from Magdalen[270], Balliol, Exeter, and Jesus; Oriel sent a list subsequently (in 1808?); but these were all that were ever forwarded.

[269] Lord Nugent, in his _Memorials of Hampden_, erroneously mentions this as being preserved in the Ashmolean Museum. He also repeats two mistaken readings first given in Miss Seward's _Anecdotes_, iv. 358 (a volume dedicated to Price, the Librarian), where a small woodcut of the ornament is given.

[270] A complete Catalogue of the Library of this College, compiled by Rev. E. M. Macfarlane, M.A., of Linc. Coll., was issued by the College, in three handsomely-printed quarto volumes, in 1860-62. The books of all writers belonging to the College, are entered separately in an Appendix in vol. iii.

A.D. 1796.

A few _incunabula_ and Aldines were purchased at Göttingen.

The annual list of donations was, for the first time, printed in this year. It does not include, however, a large gift which was partly received now, the presentation having been made in the year preceding. It was the gift by Rev. Dr. Nath. Bridges of the MSS. collections made by Mr. John Bridges for his _History of Northamptonshire_. They number thirty-seven volumes in folio, eight in quarto, and one in octavo; and consist chiefly of extracts from Public Records and from the Episcopal Registers of Lincoln, the volumes in quarto containing Church notes for the several parishes. Some account of them is given in Mr. Whalley's preface to vol. i. of Bridges' _History_, published in 1791.

A.D. 1798.

The distinguished historical antiquary, Sir Henry Ellis, D.C.L., was appointed in this year, by his friend the Librarian, to be one of the Assistant-librarians; commencing thus, while still an undergraduate Fellow of St. John's (which College he had entered in 1796) the studies and pursuits which eventually led to the post, so long and honourably held by him, of Principal Librarian and Head of the British Museum. In a letter with which the author of this volume was recently favoured by him ('_jam senior, sed mente virens_,') Sir Henry mentions that the Rev. Henry Hervey Baber, of All Souls' College (B.A. 1799, M.A. 1805), who was afterwards one of his colleagues in the Museum, and who now (_ætat._ 92) is Vicar of Stretham, in the Isle of Ely, was his senior in the Bodleian, as Coadjutor-under-librarian, by a year or two. In consequence of the insufficiency of the statutable staff, the place of the one Under-librarian was at this time, and subsequently, shared by two occupants. In 1800 Sir H. Ellis signed, in conjunction with Mr. Price, the return printed in the first Record Commission Report relative to the Historical MSS. possessed by the Library.

A.D. 1799.

Some MSS. papers of the eminent French divine, Pet. Franc. le Courayer, were bequeathed by Rev. Bertrand Russel. Courayer's portrait, representing him in his alb, was given by Courayer himself in 1769.

A.D. 1800.

The chief purchases in this year were of English and foreign maps, purchases which were continued in 1802 and 1804. For Maraldi's and Cassini's _Atlas of France_, in 2 vols., no less than £104 was paid! The interest now taken in French politics was also shown by the purchase of a set of the _Moniteur_ from 1789, which was bought for £66.

A.D. 1801.

A large and valuable collection of MS. and printed music was received, at the beginning of this year or the close of the preceding, by the bequest of Rev. Osborne Wight, M.A., formerly a Fellow of New College, who died Feb. 6, 1800[271]. The MSS. number about 190 volumes. They contain anthems, &c., by Arnold, Bishop, Blow, Boyce, Croft, Greene, Purcell, &c; a large number of the works of Drs. Philip and William Hayes; with very many madrigals and motetts by early Italian and English composers, and some of Handel's compositions. The printed volumes consist chiefly of the original folio editions of Handel, Arnold's and Boyce's collections, and the works of Playford, Purcell, Croft, Greene, and other English composers. A MS. Catalogue of the whole was made by Rev. H. E. Havergal, M.A., about 1846, when the collection was put in order. The Library also possesses full band and voice parts of several of the odes and other compositions by both Philip and William Hayes. Besides his books Mr. Wight also bequeathed £100 in the 3 per cents. 'to defray expenses.' Few additions have been made in the class of old music since his gift. Some rare sets of madrigals have been purchased, specially, in 1856, those of Morley, Watson, Weelkes, Wilbye, and Yonge, for £24 14_s._ 6_d._; Mr. Vincent Novello gave, in 1849, MSS. of Handel's _Te Deum in D_, and Greene's anthem, 'Ponder my words,' and in the following year a MS. of part of the ancient Gregorian Mass, 'De Angelis,' harmonized by Sam. Wesley, in 1812; the Professor of Music, Sir F. Ouseley, Bart., gave some French _Cantates_ in 1856; and two or three volumes have been added by the present writer.

[271] A short memoir of this gentleman is given in _Gent. Magaz._ for 1800, p. 1212, where it is said that 'he was eminently skilled in the practice and composition of music, and was probably excelled by no one, whether _dilettante_ or professor, as a sightsman in vocal execution.'

A.D. 1803.

An Arabic MS., in seven volumes, written in 1764-5, and containing what is rarely met with, a complete collection of the Thousand and One Tales of the _Arabian Nights' Entertainments_, was bought from Capt. Jonathan Scott for £50. Mr. Scott published, in 1811, an edition of the Tales, in six volumes, in which this MS. is described. He obtained it from Dr. White, the Professor of Hebrew and Arabic at Oxford, who had bought it at the sale of the library of Edward Wortley Montague, by whom it had been brought from the East. It is noticed in Ouseley's _Oriental Collections_, vol. ii. p. 25.

A.D. 1805.

In this year the last volume (numbered 142) of Dr. Holmes' Collations of MSS. of the Septuagint-Version, was deposited in the Library. This great and important work had been commenced in the year 1789; it was intended to embrace collations of all the known MSS. of the Greek text, as well as of Oriental versions; and for seventeen years, by the help of liberal subscriptions, in spite of the difficulties interposed by the continental wars, the collection of the various readings from MSS. in libraries throughout Europe was carried on. And each year's work was, on its completion, deposited in the Bodleian. During this period, annual accounts were published of the progress of the work, which possess both critical and bibliographical interest; and the results of the whole are seen in the fine edition printed at the Clarendon Press, in five vols., folio, 1808-1827.

The MSS. of the distinguished classical scholar, James Philip D'Orville, who died at Amsterdam, Sept. 14, 1751, were bought for £1025. After the purchase was completed, a question arose whether the University of Leyden were not, by the terms of his will, entitled to them after the death of his son, but it was ascertained that this provision was only made in case his son did not reach manhood. The collection numbers about 570 volumes, containing many valuable Greek and Latin Classics, together with numerous collations of texts, and annotated printed copies. Thirty-four volumes contain correspondence (autograph and in copy) of Is. Vossius, Heinsius, Cuper, Paolo Sarpi, Beverland, and the letters addressed to D'Orville by all the great scholars of his time. And thirty-eight volumes, in folio and quarto, contain _Adversaria_ of Scipio and Alberic Gentilis. There are also six Turkish and Arabic MSS. The gem of the collection is a quarto MS. of _Euclid_, containing 387 leaves, which was written, 'χειρι Στεφανου κληρικου,' A.M. 6397 = A.D. 889. It contains a memorandum by one Arethas of Patras, that he bought the book for four (or, most probably, fourteen,) _nummi_. A Catalogue of the MSS., compiled anonymously by Dr. (then Mr.) Gaisford, was printed in quarto, in 1806. D'Orville's signature occurs in the Admission-book as having been admitted to read on Aug. 18, 1718.

A form of new Statute was put out on March 28, to be proposed to Convocation in May; but it appears to have been withdrawn, as no fresh Statutes were actually enacted until 1813. The staff was proposed to be increased to the number which was adopted in the latter year, but with smaller salaries; and the Library was to be open from nine to three, throughout the year.

A.D. 1806.

Fifty pounds were paid for some 'Tibetan MSS.' of Capt. Samuel Turner, E.I.C.S., who had been sent by Warren Hastings, on a mission to the Grand Llama, in 1785. Of this mission he published an account, in a quarto volume, in 1800. His MSS. consist chiefly of nine bundles of papers and letters in the Persian and Tartar languages, written in the last century, together with a few Chinese printed books. Capt. Turner died Jan. 2, 1802; but as one of his sisters was married to Prof. White, it was probably through him that the papers were now purchased.

A beautiful copy of the _Koran_ which had been in the library of Tippoo Sahib (now exhibited in the glass case near the door) was presented, together with another MS. from the same collection, by the East India Company. Dibdin speaks of it as a work 'upon which caligraphy seems to have exhausted all its powers of intricacy and splendour,' and adds the following description:--

'The preservation of it is perfect, and the beauty of the binding, especially of the interior ornaments, is quite surprising. The first few leaves of the text are highly ornamented, without figures, chiefly in red and blue. The latter leaves are more ornamental; they are even gorgeous, curious and minute. The generality of the leaves have two star-like ornaments in the margin, out of the border. Upon the whole this is an exquisite treasure, in its way[272].'

The _Catholicon_ of J. de Janua, printed at Mentz, in 1460, was bought for £63.

The following singular memorandum, relating to this year, is preserved on a small paper:--

'Oxford, Aug. 29, 1806. Borrowed this day, of the Rev. the Bodleian Librarian, the picture given to the Library by Mr. Peters, which I promise to return upon demand.

'JOSEPH WHITE.

'_Mem._ Not returned, June 24, 1807. 'Nor as yet, Oct., 1808. J. P. (_i.e._ J. Price). 'And never to be ret^d.' (added at some later period.)

This picture must have been the portrait of Professor White himself, which was painted and presented by Rev. Will. Peters, R.A., in 1785[273]. It has never been restored.

On the morning of Saturday, April 19, probably but little after nine o'clock, the statutable time for the opening of the Library, some zealous student stood at the door, but could get no further. No one appeared to give him entrance; the Librarian himself never came on a Saturday, and probably his Assistants were not scrupulous in punctuality; at any rate, the expectant student stood and expected in vain. But ere he departed, he denounced a 'Woe' which perpetuates to this day the memory of his vain expectancy; he affixed to the door the following text, which doubtless seemed to him naturally suggested: 'Ουαι ὑμιν, ὁτι ηρατε την κλειδα της γνωσεως; αυτοι ουκ εισηλθετε, και τους εισερχομενους εκωλυσατε.' The paper is now preserved over the door of one of the Sub-librarians' studies, with this note added: 'Affixed to the outer door of the Library by some _scavant inconnu_, April 19, 1806.'

[272] _Bibliogr. Decam._ iii. 472.

[273] Gutch's _Wood_, II. ii. 979.

A.D. 1807.

A list of the books printed during the year at the University Press is added to the annual account. This was not repeated.

A copy of the _Speculum Christiani_, printed by Will. de Machlinia, was given by Rev. A. H. Matthews, of Jesus College.

Amongst the names of Assistants, written by them, _more Anglico_, on the wood-work of their studies, occurs the name of 'Rob. Fr. Walker, New Coll., Dec. 1807.' Mr. Walker (B.A. 1811, M.A. 1813) was subsequently Curate of Purleigh, Essex, where he died in 1854. He was known as the translator of a _Life of Bengel_, and other works, from the German. A memoir of him was published by Rev. T. Pyne, from which the account given by Dr. Bloxam in his _Register of Magd. Coll._ ii. 115-117, was taken. In 1810, John Woodcock (B.A. 1817, M.A. 1818, Chaplain of New College) appears, from the same evidence as Mr. Walker, to have been an Assistant, one Will. John Lennox in 1808, and John Jones, (Ch. Ch.? B.A. 1808, M.A. 1815), in 1809.

A.D. 1808.

The Latin Bible printed by Ulric Zell, at Cologne, in two volumes, about 1470, was bought for £47 5_s._ The Bible printed at Rome, by Sweynheym and Pannartz, in 1471, had been bought, in 1804, for £35; and in 1826 a Strasburgh edition, printed with Mentelin's types, without date, was obtained for £94 10_s._

A set of the Oxford Almanacks, from the commencement in 1674 to this year, was given by a frequent donor, Alderman Fletcher[274].

[274] A limited number of copies of the engravings of these Almanacks, from the original plates which remain in the University Press, were re-issued in 1867, under the superintendence of Rev. John Griffiths, M.A.

A.D. 1809.

The death of the eminent topographer and antiquary, Richard Gough, on Feb. 20, 1809[275], brought into operation the bequest made to the Library in his will, dated ten years previously. This consisted of all his topographical collections, together with all his books relating to Saxon and Northern literature, 'for the use of the Saxon Professor,' his maps and engravings, and all the copper-plates used in the illustration of the various works published by himself. The transmission of this vast collection was accomplished by Mr. J. Nichols, the executor, in the course of the year; and some of his correspondence on the subject is printed in his _Illustrations of Literary History_, vol. v. pp. 556-561. The collection (which numbers upwards of 3700 volumes) was placed in the room formerly the Civil Law School, that room having been assigned to the Library a few years previously, and fitted up (at a cost of about £675) for the reception of various historical collections. In the same room are now the Carte, Dodsworth, Tanner, Willis, Junius, and portion of the Rawlinson, manuscripts, with other smaller collections; the name proposed to be given to it, and by which it was designated in Gough's will, was 'The Antiquaries' Closet.' Gough's library consists, firstly, of a large series of maps[276] and topographical prints and drawings, in elephant-folio volumes; of this a very brief outline-list is given in the printed catalogue, but a full list in detail exists in MS[277]. Secondly, of printed books and MSS., arranged under the heads of General Topography, Ecclesiastical Topography[278], Natural History, the several Counties (with London, Westminster, and Southwark) in order[279], Wales, Islands, Scotland, and Ireland. Thirdly, of 227 works connected with Anglo-Saxon literature and that of the Scandinavian races generally. Fourthly, of an extremely large and valuable series of printed Service-books of the English Church before the Reformation, together with a few MSS., chiefly _Horæ_. The value of this series may be gathered from the following statement of the Missals, Breviaries, Manuals, Processionals, and Hours, which it comprises, besides which there are Graduals, Psalters, Hymns, Primers, &c.

_Missals_, Salisbury use, 30 " York " 4 " Rouen " 1 " Roman " 3 " 'pro sacerdotibus in Anglia, &c. itinerantibus.' 1 _Breviaries_ and _Portiforia_, Salisbury use, 18 " " York " 2 " " Hereford " 1[280] _Manuals_, Salisbury use, 10 " York (MS.) " 1 _Processionals_, Salisbury use, 10 " York " 1 _Hours_, Salisbury use, 24 " Roman " (besides several MSS.) 1

Of several of these books there are more than single copies.

A fifth division of Gough's library consists of sixteen large folio volumes of coloured drawings of monuments in churches of France, chiefly at Paris, in Normandy, Valois, Champagne, Burgundy and Brie, and at Beauvais, Chartres, Vendosme and Noyon. They form part of a large collection extending through the whole of France, which was made by M. Gagnières, tutor to the sons of the Grand Dauphin, and given by him to Louis XIV in 1711. Of this collection, now preserved in the Imperial Library, twenty-five volumes were lost amid the troubles of the French Revolution, between 1785 and 1801; but in what way, out of the twenty-five, these sixteen came into Gough's hands, has not been clearly ascertained. The collection is of great value, as most of the monuments were defaced or destroyed by the revolutionary mobs. Gough's volumes contain about 2000 drawings, of the whole of which facsimiles were made in 1860 by M. Jules Frappaz, by direction of the French Minister of Public Instruction, (who made application for the purpose, through Mr. J. H. Parker, in 1859) for the purpose of so far supplying the deficiency in the series at Paris[281].

The copy of the _British Topography_, which Gough had prepared for a third edition (of which a considerable part of vol. i. had been printed, but was burned in the disastrous fire at Mr. Nichols' printing-office in Feb., 1808,) was bought by the Curators of Mr. Nichols in 1812 for £150[282]. It has been recently bound in four very thick volumes. A fifth volume contains the proof-sheets of that portion of vol. i. which had been printed, extending to _Cheshire_, p. 446. The collections for the first edition make three volumes.

By Gough's bequest the Library became also possessed (as mentioned above) of the very valuable copper-plates which illustrated his _Sepulchral Monuments_, and other works. In 1811, one hundred guineas were paid to Basire, the engraver, for cleaning and arranging 380 of these plates. Amongst these was the actual brass effigy of one of the Wingfield family in the fifteenth century, from Letheringham Church, Suffolk, of which an engraving is found in the _Monuments_. The brass is now exhibited in the glass case of miscellaneous objects of curiosity in the Picture Gallery.

The Catalogue of the collection was issued from the University Press, in a quarto volume, in 1814. It was chiefly compiled by Dr. Bandinel, to whom fifty guineas were paid for it, in 1813; but Dr. Bliss has noted[283] that the first 136 pages were prepared by himself. In the _Bibliographical Decameron_ (vol. i. p. xcv.) Dibdin has made honourable mention of the 'perseverance, energy, and exactness' with which he found Dr. Bandinel working on a very hot day in the year 1812, in the arrangement of the collection, 'in an oaken-floored room, light, spacious, and dry.'

Some account and survey-books, belonging to University and Magdalen Colleges, which came to the Library among Gough's MSS., were restored by vote of Convocation on March 9, 1814.

* * * * *

The MSS. which the well-known traveller, Rev. Edw. Dan. Clarke, LL.D., had collected during his journeys through a large part of Europe and Asia, were purchased from him in this year for £1000. A first portion of a Catalogue, comprising descriptions of fifty volumes, of which fifteen are in Latin, two in French (Alain Chartier, one being the printed edit. of 1526), and the rest in Greek, was published in 1812, in quarto, by Dr. Gaisford, who printed in full some inedited Scholia on Plato and on the Poems of Gregory Nazianzen. A second part of the Catalogue, containing a description of forty-five volumes in Arabic, Persian, and Æthiopic, was issued by Dr. Nicoll, in 1814. The special feature in the collection is a MS. of Plato's Dialogues, from which the Scholia are printed in the Catalogue, written (on 418 vellum quarto leaves) by a scribe named John (who styles himself _Calligraphus_) in the year 896, for Arethas, a deacon of Patras, for the sum of thirteen Byzantine _nummi_. The D'Orville MS. of Euclid was also written for this Arethas (see p. 208).

[275] A very full memoir of him is to be found in the _Lit. Anecd._ vol. vi. pp. 262-343, and 613-626. His miscellaneous library was sold by auction in 1810. Two drawings in sepia, by F. Lewis, of his house at Enfield, were bought in 1861.

[276] One of these is a very curious manuscript map of England and Scotland, executed in the fourteenth century, which now hangs, framed and glazed, in the eastern wing of the Library. It was bought by Gough at the sale of the MSS. of Mr. Thomas Martin, of Palgrave, Suffolk, in 1774. A facsimile (engraved by Basire) and a description are given in the _British Topography_, 1780, vol. i. pp. 76-85. Another object of interest among the maps is a piece of tapestry, in three fragments, containing portions of the counties of Hereford, Salop, Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Gloucestershire, Middlesex, &c. They are said by Gough, in a MS. note in his collections for a third edition of his _Topography_, to be parts of the three great maps of the Midland Counties, formerly at Mr. Sheldon's house at Weston, Long Compton, Warwickshire, which are the earliest specimens of tapestry weaving in England, the art having been introduced by William Sheldon, who died in 1570. They are described in vol. ii. of the _Topography_, pp. 309-310. They were bought by Lord Orford at a sale at Weston for £30, and presented by him to Earl Harcourt, whose successor, Archbishop Harcourt, gave them to the Museum at York (where they now are) in 1827. In Murray's _Handbook for Yorkshire_, they are said to have been made in 1579. One guinea was given by Gough for his fragments.

[277] This list was drawn up about 1844-6 by Mr. Fred. Oct. Garlick, then an assistant in the Library (afterwards of Ch. Ch., B.A., deceased 1851).

[278] Mr. A. Chalmers gave, in 1813, the second volume of a copy of Wharton's _Anglia Sacra_, with MSS. notes by White Kennett, of which the first volume was in this division of Gough's library. But both volumes had been bought by Gough for £1 1_s._ at the sale of J. West's library in 1773, at which sale he procured, besides, several other books with Kennett's notes. There are also volumes with MSS. notes by Baker (the 'socius ejectus') Cole, Rowe Mores, and other well-known antiquaries.

[279] The County Histories are in many instances enriched with various notes and papers in print and MS. The Berkshire MSS. have been increased in the present year (1868) by the addition of the collections of the late Will. Nelson Clarke, D.C.L., of Ch. Ch., author of the _History of the Hundred of Wanting_ (4^o. 1824), which have been presented to the Library by Mr. Coxe, to whom they were given by his cousin, the collector, when the latter relinquished the idea of writing a history of Berks. They consist of a Parochial History of the county, transcripts of Heralds' Visitations and of early records, and miscellaneous note-books and papers.

[280] The splendid and, as it is believed, unique vellum copy of the _Hereford Missal_ ('ad usum eccl. Helfordensis,' fol. Rouen, 1502) which the Library possesses, came to it from Rawlinson among the books of T. Hearne, to whom it had been given by Charles Eyston, Esq., of East Hendred, Berks. (Hearne's pref. to Camden's _Annales Eliz._ 1. xxvii.) This Hereford volume is described, together with many of Gough's books, in a book by Ed. Frère, entitled _Des Livres de Liturgie des Eglises d'Angleterre imprimés à Rouen dans les_ xv. _et_ xvi. _Siècles_, 8^o Rouen, 1867.

[281] See _Gent. Magaz._ for 1860, p. 406.

[282] So in the Library Register of accounts. Nichols (_Lit. Hist._ vol. v. p. 559) says £100.

[283] In his MS. _Collectanea_, in the possession of Rev. H. O. Coxe.

A.D. 1810.

In March, the Prince Regent forwarded to the University four rolls of papyrus, brought from Herculaneum, burned to a state resembling charcoal, together with engravings of rolls hitherto deciphered, and many facsimile copies, in pencil, of inedited rolls. A committee was appointed from the Curators of the Library and the Delegates of the Press, at the beginning of the year 1811, to have the charge of this gift, and £500 were granted towards publication. Two volumes of lithographed facsimiles were in consequence published at the Clarendon Press, in 1824-5. Some further selections from these papers have recently been published by a German scholar, Dr. Th. Gompertz.

On Nov. 15, it was resolved in Convocation to restore to the Chancery at Durham, on the application of the Bishop of Durham, the MS. Register of Richard Kellow, Bishop of Durham, 1310-16, containing also a portion of the Register of Rich. Bury, 1338-42, which had come to the Library among Rawlinson's collections, and was the only volume wanting at Durham in an unbroken series of Episcopal Registers, of which this was the first. It was borrowed in 1639/40, as it appeared, by an agent of the Marquis of Newcastle, for the purpose of production in some law-suit affecting his property; remained through the Civil War in his hands; fell subsequently into those of the Earl of Oxford, and was bought by Rawlinson from Osborne the bookseller, in whose sale-catalogue of the Harleian Library in 1743 it was numbered 20734.

In this year Dr. Philip Bliss, the editor of Wood's _Athenæ_, appears to have entered the Library as an assistant, the entries in the register of books received from Stationers' Hall being partly made by him, in his very clear and neat hand. In 1812 he drew up short catalogues of the St. Amand MSS. and of a portion of the Rawlinson collection (the _Poetry_, the _Letters_, and the commencement of the _Miscell._) for which a payment was made to him of £21. He afterwards quitted the Library for the British Museum, but returned in 1822, as Sub-librarian, for a short time.

His life-long friend, Dr. Bandinel, entered the Library also in this year. To him, for a list of a further portion of the Rawlinson MSS., £26 5_s._ were paid in 1812.

A.D. 1811.

Only eighteen books were purchased in this year! The list, scantly filling one page, is consequently the _minimum_ in the series of annual catalogues.

A.D. 1813.

The Rev. John Price, B.D., the Librarian, died on Aug. 11, aged seventy-nine, after forty-five years of office. A short biographical notice is given in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for Oct., 1813, p. 400, and a fuller account, together with many letters, and an engraved portrait, with facsimile signature, (from a sketch taken in 1798, by Rev. H. H. Baber), in vols. v. and vi. of Nichols' _Illustrations of the Lit. Hist. of the 18th Century_. The following character of him with regard to his discharge of his official duties is there given (vi. 471), which in some respects forms a strong contrast to the representation of Prof. Beddoes in the year 1787 (_see_ p. 197). 'In the faithful discharge of his public duties in the University, he acquitted himself with the highest credit, and deservedly conciliated the esteem of others by his readiness to communicate information from the rich literary stores over which he presided, and of which he was a most jealous and watchful guardian. He was, from long habit, so completely attached to the Library, that he considered every acquisition made to its contents as a personal favour conferred upon himself.' It was chiefly owing to his assiduous attention to Mr. Gough and his frequent correspondence with him, that the Library was enriched with the bequest of the latter's splendid topographical collections. But there is not much existing to tell of personal work in the Library during his long tenure of office, and the fact that nothing was done till near the close of that period towards arranging and cataloguing the Rawlinson MSS., seems to prove that there was no great activity in the Library under his management. This is corroborated also by the wonderful difference which is immediately seen in the annual catalogue of purchases; the Catalogue for 1813 grows at once from the two folio pages of the preceding year to seventeen, while the sum expended becomes £725 in the place of £261[284]. And the list of books forwarded from Stationers' Hall, and hitherto received only twice yearly, at Lady-day and Michaelmas, becomes in 1815 largely increased, while in the year 1822 the number of yearly parcels is increased to eight. At the present time, as for a long time past, books are received monthly.

The Rev. Bulkeley Bandinel, M.A. (D.D. in 1823), of New College, was elected Librarian by Convocation on Aug. 25. He had been appointed Sub-librarian in 1810, by Mr. Price, who was his godfather; and for a short time previously had been a Chaplain in the Royal Navy, having served with Adm. Sir James Saumarez on board the 'Victory,' in the Baltic, in 1808.

The appointment of a new Librarian was followed by the enacting of a new Statute, passed by Convocation on Dec. 2, which provided for the increase of the Librarian's stipend to £400, exclusive of his share of fees from degrees; for the appointment of two Sub-librarians, instead of one, and these not under the degree of M.A., with salaries of £150; of two assistants, Bachelors of Arts or undergraduates, with salaries of £50; and of the Janitor, with a salary of £20. An additional annual grant, calculated at £680, equal to that which resulted from the provision made by the Statute of 1780, and to be paid, like that, out of the yearly fees of graduates whose names are on the books, was sanctioned, with the triple object of providing for this enlarged staff, for the commencement of a new Catalogue, and for repairs hitherto defrayed out of the general University funds. The state of the roof and ceiling were said to be such as to justify an apprehension that they must at no distant period be entirely constructed anew; happily this reconstruction was only carried out with respect to the Picture Gallery, and the roof of the Library remains as a precious relic still.

The hours at which the Library should be open, were fixed to be from 9 to 4 in the summer half-year, and 10 to 3 in the winter; the only change since made has been the enacting, in 1867, that nine o'clock shall be the invariable hour of opening on all ordinary days[285].

The junior assistants in the Library in this year were Mr. Francis Thurland, of New College (B.A. 1812, M.A. 1814), and Mr. Sam. Slack, of Ch. Ch. (B.A. 1813, M.A. 1816).

[284] Among the purchases is a set of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ to the year 1810 for £52 10_s._

[285] This alteration of hours had been previously proposed in a Statute which was to have been submitted to Convocation on Dec. 11, 1812, but which appears to have been withdrawn ere the day came, probably because this larger measure of revision of the old Statutes was already in contemplation. A blank is left in the Convocation Book under that date, by the then Registrar, Mr. Gutch; and his successor, Dr. Bliss, has added a pencil-note to the effect that he supposes from the blank not being filled up, that the proposal was previously abandoned. The Statute of 1769 had required that the Library should be open in summer from 8 to 2 and from 3 to 5, but it was stated in some remarks which accompanied the proposed enactment that these injunctions had 'long been disregarded in practice,' and that the Library had been open throughout the year from nine to three o'clock. But it was added that 'experience' had 'shewn that there is no occasion for requiring the attendance of the Librarians before ten in the winter season.'

A.D. 1814.

The nomination of the Rev. Henry Cotton, M.A., then Student of Ch. Ch., now the venerable Archdeacon of Cashel, as Sub-librarian, was approved in Convocation on March 9. Of the interest which he took in his work, of his qualifications for it, and of the advantages which the bibliographical world has derived from it, his _Typographical Gazetteer_ and _List of Editions of the English Bible_, afford abundant testimony[286]. He remained in the Library eight years, quitting it when his friend Dr. Laurence, on his appointment to the Archbishopric of Cashel, carried him with himself to Ireland.

During his continuance in the Library, a descriptive Catalogue of the _Editiones principes_ and _Incunabula_ was projected by him and Dr. Bandinel; but only one specimen page in octavo was printed, of which a copy has been preserved by Dr. Bliss, with his set of the annual catalogues.

Alex. Nicoll, M.A., of Balliol College (a native of Aberdeen), was appointed Sub-librarian at the early age of twenty-one; the nomination was approved in Convocation on April 27. He at once devoted himself to the study of Oriental languages, and became a proficient in Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Syriac, Æthiopic, and Sanscrit. His facility in acquiring languages must have been truly marvellous, for, in addition to these Eastern tongues, and although his death occurred at the early age of thirty-six, it is said that 'he spoke and wrote with ease and accuracy, French, Italian, German, Danish, Swedish, and Romaic.' In 1822 he was, much to his own surprise, appointed, at the age of twenty-nine, to the Regius Professorship of Hebrew, by Lord Liverpool, on the recommendation of Dr. Laurence, who vacated that post in consequence of his appointment to the see of Cashel. Nicoll held the Professorship for only seven years, dying on Sept. 24, 1828. The records of his labours in the Bodleian are found in the Catalogue of Clarke's Oriental MSS. noticed under the year 1809, and in his second part of the General Catalogue of Oriental MSS., published in 1821, _q. v._

The total receipts and expenditure of the Library were for the first time fully stated in the annual accounts. Hitherto the practice had been to omit the Bodley endowment and the Crewe benefaction, &c., which were devoted to salaries, repairs and other ordinary expenses (including also the occasional purchase of MSS.), and only to report the amount received from University fees and expended on printed books and incidental charges.

[286] In a clever and amusing little squib of four pages, which he printed anonymously in 1819, and which is preserved in the Library-collection of University papers, professing to be a 'Syllabus' of treatises on academic matters, to be printed at the University Press in not more than thirty vols., elephant quarto, Mr. Cotton satirized himself and his colleagues, doubtless with the more readiness because with no reason. '21. De Bibliothecario et ejus adjutoribus. _Captain._ What are you about, Dick? _Dick._ Nothing, sir. _Captain._ Tom, what are you doing? _Tom._ Helping Dick, sir.' Treatise 24 has for its title the few but emphatic words, '_De Dodd_.' Lest some future delver in Oxford antiquities should be lost in a maze of conjectures as to the personality and history of this worthy, so evidently then well known, let it here be told that Dodd was the _Clerk of the Schools_.

A.D. 1815.

_Cedunt arma togæ!_ The effect which the cessation of the war produced, in diverting to quiet academic channels the stream of youth which hitherto had flowed in the turbid currents of continental strife, is shown by the large increase of the Library receipts derived from matriculation fees. These, which previously fell below (and often far below) £250, rose in 1814, on the first sign of peace, to £424, and in this year, on its final establishment, to £633.

In January, Mr. John Calcott, of Lincoln College (B.A. 1814, M.A. 1816, B.D. 1825; Fellow of Linc.; deceased 1864) was appointed _Minister_ in the room of Mr. Francis Thurland, of New College, resigned. Mr. Calcott, however, only held the office for one year, being succeeded, in Feb. 1816, by Mr. Sam. Fenton, of Jesus College (B.A. 1818, M.A., Ch. Ch. 1821).

A.D. 1816.

A very important MS., with relation to Scottish history, was placed in the Library on Dec. 5, in this year. It is a transcript (from the originals,) by Col. J. Hooke, agent in Scotland for James II[287], of all his political correspondence between the beginning of the year 1704 and the end of 1707. It forms two folio volumes, but is unfinished, as the second volume ends with the commencement of a letter from James Ogilvie, of Boyn, to M. de Torcy, Dec. 26, 1707. A brief narrative of Hooke's negotiations, which contains copies of a few of the letters here given, was published in France, in the French language, and a translation was printed in a small volume at Dublin in 1760; but the great mass of the correspondence is as yet inedited. The volumes came to the Library in pursuance of a bequest from the Rev. J. Tickell, Rector of Gawsworth, Cheshire and East Mersea, Essex, who died at Wargrave, Berks, July 3, 1802. The bequest was to take effect upon the death of his wife, which occurred towards the close of 1816[288].

The Curators reported, at the end of the annual list, that considerable progress had been made towards the formation of a new general Catalogue. Further progress was reported in the following year; in which year also Dibdin[289] announced that the Catalogue would be finished, in four folio volumes, by Messrs. Bandinel and Cotton under the superintendence of Professor Gaisford[290]. He adds, 'The Prince Regent hath munificently given a considerable sum towards the completion of these glorious labours.' There is no record in the annual accounts of any such donation; but in 1823 and 1824 payments amounting to £420 were made to the Librarian, Sub-librarians, and Assistant, for their work on the new Catalogue[291], out of 'the Prince Regent's benefaction.' On the proposition of the Chancellor, Lord Grenville, in 1814, Mr. Vansittart, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had expressed his willingness to apply to Parliament for a grant of £5000 for the purpose; probably this idea was abandoned for the more easily practicable one of a grant from the Privy Purse.

Four Greek MSS. were presented in this year by Rev. ---- Hall, Chaplain at Leghorn[292]; a copy of Lucan's _Pharsalia_, with MSS. collations by Joseph Addison, by the Warden of Merton College; and a large collection of books in Oriental literature, printed in Bengal, by the East India Company.

[287] Hooke in 1685 was one of the Chaplains attending Monmouth in his rebellion! _Lockhart Papers_, 1817, vol. i. p. 148.

[288] _Gent. Magaz._ vol. lxxv. ii. 569.

[289] _Bibliogr. Decam._ iii. 429.

[290] Portions of the Letters A F and P which had been thus prepared were subsequently printed, but the whole work was then for some years suspended, and afterwards commenced _de novo_. And nearly thirty years elapsed before it was finally completed.

[291] Previous grants amounting to £260, had been made in 1820.

[292] Three of these are described in Mr. Coxe's Catalogue, cols. 812-14.

A.D. 1817.

The large Canonici collection of MSS. was obtained from Venice in this year, for the sum of £5444, a purchase unprecedented in greatness in the history of the Library[293]. The collection was formed by Matheo Luigi Canonici, a Venetian Jesuit, who was born in 1727 and died in Sept. 1805 or 1806. Indefatigable in his passion for antiquities, he first formed a Museum of statues and of medals at Parma, but, in consequence of the Jesuits being expelled from the State, this was sold to the government. He then at Bologna set himself to collect religious objects of interest, and had succeeded to some extent, when the rector of his society observed to him that such a collection was little suitable to a poor monk, and he consequently disposed of it to a Roman prince. Finally, at Venice, he commenced the gathering of a library, in which it is said, as one evidence of its extent, there were more than four thousand Bibles written in fifty-two languages[294].

The MSS. purchased by the Bodleian amount in number to about 2045. Dibdin, almost immediately upon the acquisition, noticed it thus[295]:--

'They have recently acquired a very curious and valuable collection of MSS., which formerly belonged to an ex-Jesuit Abbé, who intended (had he lived to have seen the restoration of the order of the Jesuits) to have presented them to the Jesuits' College at Venice. Neither pains nor expense were spared among his brethren, in all parts of the world, to make the collection, on that account, as perfect as possible.'

In Greek there are 128 volumes, chiefly of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with a few of earlier date, including two _Evangelistaria_ assigned by Montfaucon to the ninth century. Of Latin classical authors and Mediæval poets there are 311 volumes; some of those of the former class are of great age and value, notably a Virgil of the tenth century (No. 50). Ninety-three MSS. form the class of Latin Bibles; the finest of these are, one written in 1178 for the church of SS. Mary and Pancras in Ranshoven, and another, in five very large folio volumes, written and illuminated in France, in the years 1507-1511. Of Latin ecclesiastical writers and Fathers there are 232 volumes; and of Latin miscellanies (chiefly in medicine, philosophy and science, theology, and _belles lettres_, with scarcely anything of an historical character), 576 volumes. Of all these classes a catalogue was published by Mr. Coxe in 1854, forming part iii. of the new general Catalogue of MSS.

Another division consists of Liturgical books. In this class there are now 400 volumes, but about 130 of these were added from the Rawlinson collection. They consist chiefly of _Horæ_, Breviaries, Missals, and Psalters, with a few other service-books; most of those which belonged to Canonici being 'secundum usum Romanum.' No catalogue of this series has, as yet, been made.

A sixth division comprehends 300 Italian MSS. (including five in Spanish) of which a very elaborate catalogue was compiled, as a labour of love, by the Count Alessandro Mortara, during the years of his stay in Oxford[296]. His MS. was bought after his death from his executor the Abate Giuseppe Manuzzi, of Florence, for £201, in the year 1858; it was afterwards put to press under the care of the accomplished Italian scholar, and intimate friend of Count Mortara, Dr. H. Wellesley, the late Principal of New Inn Hall, and appeared, with an Italian preface by him giving some account of the whole collection, in one volume quarto (158 pages,) in 1864.

The last portion of the collection consists of 135 Oriental MSS., chiefly valuable Hebrew books on vellum. One of these (No. 78) is a copy of Maimonides' Commentary on the Law, in fourteen books, which is dated 1366. Seven of the Biblical volumes are noticed in De Rossi's _Variæ Lectiones Veteris Testamenti_. The few Arabic MSS. are described in Dr. Pusey's Continuation of Nicol's Catalogue.

A curious story of the recovery, amidst these books, of some leaves belonging to a printed vellum Bible already in the Library, will be found related under the year 1750. A few other MSS. from Canonici's library were sold by auction, with some from Saibante's, in London, in 1821. And many relating to Italian and Venetian history, which were at first retained by one of the heirs, passed afterwards into the hands of the Rev. Walter Sneyd, of Baginton, Warwickshire, their present possessor. A MS. volume of notices of the Canonici library, drawn up by Signor Lorenzi, of Venice, was bought by the Bodleian, in 1859, for ten guineas[297].

A MS. of Suidas, of the fifteenth century, was purchased for £220 10_s._ Another acquisition was a French translation, made in 1417, by Laurens de Preme, of the _Ethics_, _Politics,_ &c., of Aristotle[298]. Some specimens of the Javanese language were given by Capt. L. H. Davy.

Among printed books, the most noticeable purchase (besides the _Edd. Pr._ of Livy, 1469, Lactantius, 1465, &c.) was that of a vellum copy of the first edition of the Hebrew Pentateuch, printed at Bologna in 1482, for £17 10_s._ Some sets of controversial and political tracts, with other books, which had belonged to Thomas Brande Hollis and Dr. John Disney, were bought at the sale of the library of the latter.

[293] The money was raised by loans of £2000 from the Radcliffe Trustees and £3644 from the University Bankers. They were both repaid by the year 1820.

[294] De Backer's _Bibliothèque des écrivains de la comp. de Jésus_; quatr. série, p. 93. 8vo. Liège, 1858.

[295] _Bibliogr. Decam._ iii. 429.

[296] See under the year 1852.

[297] The first MSS. of Dante which the Library possessed, came in the Canonici collection; they are in number fifteen. This fact is worth mentioning, on account of an extraordinary story told by Girolamo Gigli, in his _Vocabolario Cateriniano_, p. cciii. (a book the printing of which was commenced at Rome in 1717, but which was suppressed, by bull, before completion), that in the Bodleian Library at 'Osfolk,' there was a MS. of the _Divina Commedia_, which, from being employed in enveloping a consignment of cheese (and so imported into England by a mode of conveyance said to have been usually adopted by Florentine merchants, with a view of spreading at once a knowledge of their luxuries and their literature), had become so saturated with a caseous savour as to require the constant guardianship of two traps to protect it from the voracity of mice. Hence, according to this marvellous travellers' story, the MS. went by the name of _The Book of the Mousetrap_! (See _Notes and Queries_, i. 154.)

[298] Bodl. MS. 965.

A.D. 1818.

A return was made to the House of Commons of such books received since 1814, in pursuance of the Copyright Act, from Stationers' Hall, as it had not been deemed necessary to place in the Library. The list is but a trifling one, consisting chiefly of school-books and anonymous novels, with music; but, nevertheless, it is sufficient to show the great need of caution in rejecting any books excepting such as are of the simplest elementary character, and the advantage of erring rather on the side of inclusiveness than exclusiveness. Miss Edgeworth's _Parents' Assistant_, Mrs. H. More's _Sacred Dramas_, Mrs. Opie's _Simple Tales_, and an edition of _Ossian_, were all consigned to the limbo of 'rubbish.' But the Cambridge Return (which is much more detailed than that from Oxford[299]) shows a recklessness of rejection which speaks little for the judgment of the Librarians for the time being. Besides school-books and music, a large number of pamphlets figure in the list, including some by Chalmers and Cobbett; the _Theology_ includes Owen's _History of the Bible Society_; the _History_ includes _Memoirs of Oliver Cromwell and his Children_; the _Poetry_, Byron's _Siege of Corinth_, L. Hunt's _Story of Rimini_, and Wordsworth's _Thanksgiving Ode_; and the _Novels_, [Peacock's] _Headlong Hall_, one by Mrs. Opie, and--_The Antiquary_! The far wiser plan is now carried out in the Bodleian of rejecting nothing; even the elementary works that do not need entering in the Catalogue, are so kept that access can be had to them at all times and examination made; and the music is from time to time sorted and bound. And this plan was commenced in the year of which we are writing; for, (in consequence, of course, of this return being called for by the House of Commons,) the Curators ordered, on May 27, that _all_ publications sent from Stationers' Hall should in future be entered and preserved.

A very valuable and curious series of original editions of Latin and German tracts, issued by the German Reformers between 1518 and 1550, in eighty-four volumes, was bought for £95 15_s._ Additions have been made to this collection at various times subsequently, so that now it probably comprises as complete a gathering of these controversial publications, so easily lost or destroyed from their small extent and often ephemeral character, as can anywhere be found. A kindred collection (although not of like value or interest) was obtained through the gift by Mr. A. Müller, a well-known bookseller at Amsterdam, of a series of tracts, in sixty-two volumes, and chiefly in the Dutch language, on the controversy with the Remonstrants in 1618-19. A MS. Catalogue, by Mr. Müller, dated March 3, is kept in the Librarian's study. Besides the books, Mr. Müller gave a few coins, including one struck on leather during the siege of Leyden in 1574, and some natural curiosities, which latter are now preserved in the New Museum. A _black negro baby_, preserved in spirits (!) has, however, unaccountably disappeared; let us hope it was decently buried. Seventeen panes of painted glass, probably by disciples of Crabeth, who painted the windows in the Church of Gouda, also formed part of this very miscellaneous donation; these, most probably, are included among the curious fragments which decorate some of the Library windows.

Six Persian MSS. were given by the late venerable Principal of Magdalen Hall, and Lord Almoner's Reader in Arabic, Dr. Macbride. The signature of this gentleman, who has only been removed by death while these sheets have been passing through the press, occurs in the Admission-book of the last century, as having been admitted to read in the Library, while still an undergraduate of Exeter College, on May 10, 1797.

_Alderman Fletcher's illustrated copy of Gulch's Wood._ See under 1610.

Mr. John Walker, Queen's College (B.A. 1820; Chaplain of New College, M.A., 1823), succeeded Mr. Fenton as _minister_ in July.

[299] The minuteness of specification is such that '_Turner's Real Japan Blacking, a Label_' is duly entered.

A.D. 1819.

A copy of the extremely rare Polish version of the Bible, made by the Socinians at the expense of Prince Nicholas Radzivil, and printed in 1563, was bought for £45[300]; and a folio Psalter, printed by Fust and Schoeffer in 1459, (finished Aug. 29), on vellum, for £70. The second vellum printed book in the Library is a copy of Durandus' _Rationale_, printed by the same printers in the same year, but completed on Oct. 6. This was bought in 1790 for £80 10_s._ Large additions were made to the collection of Aldines.

The name of Lady Hester Stanhope occurs among the benefactors as presenting an Arabic MS. of the Romance of Antar, in thirty volumes.

[300] The rarity of this edition was caused by its being bought up and destroyed by the sons of Prince Radzivil.

A.D. 1820.

From Messrs. Payne and Foss was bought, for £150, the famous MS. of the Greek New Testament called, from its former possessor, the 'Codex Ebnerianus.' It is a small quarto, containing 425 leaves of fine vellum, in excellent condition and well written, and ornamented with eleven rich paintings, besides occasional arabesque borders, &c. It comprehends all the books of the New Testament except the Apocalypse, and is assigned in date to the twelfth or thirteenth century. The former owner, whose name it perpetuates, Jerome William Ebner von Eschenbach, of Nuremberg, obtained it, it is said, when first brought from the East 'ex singulari Numinis providentia.' While in his possession, a small descriptive volume, comprising forty-four pages and an engraved facsimile, was published by Conrad Schoenleben, under the title of _Notitia egregii codicis Græci Novi Testamenti manuscripti_, &c. 4^o. Norib. 1738. This was incorporated by De Murr in his _Memorabilia Bibliothecarum publicarum Norimbergensium_, published in 1788, part ii. p. 100, who added thirteen well-engraved plates of the illuminations, binding and text. It was formerly bound in leather-covered boards, ornamented with gold, with five silver-gilt stars on the sides, and fastened with four silver clasps. This cover being much decayed, Ebner cased the volume in a most costly binding of pure silver, preserving the silver stars, and affixing on the outside a beautiful ivory figure (coæval with the MS.) of our Saviour, throned, and in the attitude of benediction. Above the figure, Ebner engraved an inscription in Greek characters, corresponding to the style of the MS., praying for a blessing upon himself and his family.

A MS. of Terence, of the eleventh or twelfth century, which also belonged to Ebner, was bought from Payne and Foss, at the same time, for ten guineas. It is described in De Murr, _ubi supra_, pp. 135-7.

Fifty Greek manuscripts were bought for £500, which had formerly been in the possession of Giovanni Saibante, of Verona. The library of this collector is noticed in Scipio Maffei's _Verona Illustrata_ (fol. 1731),