ANNALS OF THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY. (continued 5)

On May 25, a plan for warming the Library was, for the first time, adopted. It consisted in introducing hot air simply at two small gratings at one end of the Library, from pipes communicating with a stove placed (with the consent of Exeter College) where the furnace of the present apparatus is situated, in the wall between the north-west corner of the Library and the Ashmolean Museum. As a means of warming the Library generally the system was wholly ineffectual, no benefit being experienced except by those who remained in the immediate vicinity of the gratings. It remained, however, in use until 1845, when pipes were laid down through a considerable part of the Library for the purpose of warming it by steam. This plan, however, did not give satisfaction, either on the ground of safety or of effectiveness. In 1855 Mr. Braidwood, the late distinguished head of the London Fire Brigade, was brought down to survey the apparatus and to examine generally how the Library could best be secured against fire; and, by his advice and that of Mr. G. G. Scott, the pipes were enclosed in slate casings, so as effectually to hinder contact with any inflammable materials, and two fire-proof iron doors were inserted at the entrances to the great Reading-room, in order to cut it off from the rest of the building[309]. But in 1861 steam was discarded for the safer and more effectual system, now in use, of warming by hot water; new pipes (cased in slate) were laid down by Messrs. Haden and Son, and were carried through the Examination Schools on the ground-floor of the quadrangle, as well as through the Library.

In Feb. Mr. J. P. Roberts, New College (B.A. 1821, M.A. 1826, now Minor Canon of Chichester) was appointed minister, vice Mr. P. Barrett, Wadham College (B.A. 1828); and Mr. Robert Eden, of St. John's College (Corp. Chr. Coll. B.A. 1825, M.A. 1827, now Vicar of Wymondham, Norfolk), was appointed vice Walker. From this time there appear to have been two assistants, although it was not until 1837 that that number was formally allowed by Statute.

A.D. 1822.

In July, the Rev. Dr. Bliss returned to the Library as Sub-librarian, in the room of Mr. Nicoll, appointed Regius Professor of Hebrew. And in October the Rev. Rich. French Laurence, M.A., of Pembroke College, succeeded Dr. Cotton, who quitted Oxford for Ireland.

'Tuesday, August 6, 1822, I was at the Library the whole day, and not a single member of the University came into the room, excepting Mr. Eden, the assistant. Oxford race-day.' This note occurs in vol. x. of Dr. Bliss's MS. antiquarian and miscellaneous memoranda. Considering that the time of the year was well-nigh the middle of the Long Vacation, it does not seem surprising that on one day there should have been no academic readers in the Library, even if there may have been academic riders on the race-course. The two occurrences have so little correspondence with each other that one would hope that the zealous Sub-librarian (who has deemed the same want of readers worth commemorating also in another note) assigned non causa pro causa.

A.D. 1823.

By the exertions of the brothers J. S. and P. B. Duncan, Esqs., Fellows of New College, distinguished for their efforts to promote the study of the Arts and Sciences in the University, a subscription-fund was raised for the purpose of adorning the Picture Gallery with plaster models of some of the finest buildings of Greek and Roman antiquity. The result was that in the present year the following series, by Fouquet, of Paris, was placed in the Gallery, at a total cost of about £400:—The Arch of Constantine, the Parthenon, the Temple of the Sybil at Tivoli, the Maison Carrée at Nismes, the Erechtheum and Lantern of Demosthenes at Athens, the Theatre of Herculaneum, and the Temple of Fortuna Virilis at Rome.

A large number of works by foreign authors, chiefly theological, was bought (for £375) at the sale at Leyden of the library of Jonas Wilh. Te Water, professor of Eccl. Hist. in that University. A separate catalogue, occupying twenty-three folio pages, was issued of these books.

Mr. E. P. New, of St. John's College (B.A. 1822, M.A. 1825, B.D. 1831), was appointed in December to assist in the compilation of the new Catalogue; but how long he remained in the Library does not appear.

A.D. 1824.

A collection of valuable original papers relating to affairs in Church and State, which had belonged to Archbishop Sheldon, were sold by his great-nephew, Sir John English Dolben, of Finedon, Northamptonshire, to the Library for £40 5s. They are now bound in six volumes, of which three are lettered Sheldon, and three Dolben. Of the first three, two contain letters from English, Welsh, Scotch and Irish Bishops, and the contents of the other are miscellaneous; of the second three, one contains miscellaneous letters and papers commencing at 1585, another has similar papers from 1626 to 1721, and the third contains miscellaneous ecclesiastical letters and documents. Some of the letters are addressed to the Archbishop's secretary, Miles Smyth, Esq. A short letter from Sir John Dolben to Dr. Bandinel, relating to his disposal of these papers, dated Oct. 12, 1824, is preserved in Bodl. MS. Addit. ii. A. 32. He had previously given, in 1822, a fine copy of a quarto Bible which had belonged to Sheldon, containing (1) the Prayer-Book and Metrical Psalms, printed at Cambridge in 1638, (2) the Old Test., printed by Field at London in 1648, and (3) the New Test., Cambr. 1637. At the end are some memoranda by the Archbishop of the births, baptisms, and deaths of members of the Sheldon and Okeover families, and of the legitimate children of Charles II and the Duke of York. The Library more than a century before had received benefactions from a member of the same family of Dolben; Gilbert Dolben, of Finedon, having given some printed books in 1697, together with a manuscript of Gower. And twenty vols. of Chamberlaine's State of Great Britain were given by Mr. J. E. Dolben in 1796. An additional volume of the Sheldon correspondence was given to the Library in 1840, by Dr. Routh, the President of Magdalen College. It is a copy-book of business-letters written by the Archbishop. In a note to Dr. Bandinel which accompanied the gift, and which is now fixed in vol. i. of Burnet's autograph copy of his Own Times, Dr. Routh says:—

'The President takes the opportunity of sending a volume containing the first draught of letters sent by Archbp. Sheldon to different persons, together with a few other contemporary papers. They were put into the President's hands by the late Sir John English Dolben, and as the University purchased of that gentleman what were commonly called the Sheldon Papers, he thinks they cannot be deposited anywhere more suitably than in the Bodleian Library.'

To the annual catalogue for this year was attached a special list, filling thirty-two folio pages, of the books (upwards of 1500 in number) which were bought at the Hague, at the sale of the library collected by the distinguished Dutch scholars and lawyers, Gerard and John Meerman. The sale-catalogue is a volume of more than 1200 pages. The books bought for the Library were chiefly such as supplied deficiencies in foreign history and law, together with some Greek[310] and Latin MSS., for the most part patristic and classical. The sum expended was £925. Some rare Spanish historical books (in which class of literature, thanks to Dr. Bandinel's care in keeping it steadily in view, the Library is now very rich) were bought at the sale of Don J. Ant. Conde.

But the chief distinction of this year lies in the acquisition, by bequest of Mrs. Elizabeth Dennis Denyer (widow of Mr. John Denyer, of Chelsea, who died in 1806) of a most valuable collection of early editions of the English Bible, numbering altogether about twenty-five. To show the rarity and worth of this collection, it will be sufficient to mention but a few of the volumes which it contains. Imprimis, Coverdale's first edition, 1535[311], and his second edition, 1537; Cranmer's, in April, 1540 and in 1541, and by Grafton in 1553; Matthew's, by Becke, in 1551; Tyndale's New Testament, in 1536, and another of his earliest editions; Hollybush's English and Latin Testament, 1538, and Erasmus' Testament, 1540. Besides the Biblical collection, Mrs. Denyer also bequeathed twenty-one English theological works, nearly all printed before 1600; including a beautiful copy of Fisher on the Penitential Psalms (by Wynkyn de Worde) and books by (amongst others) Bale, Bonner, Brightwell, Erasmus, Hooper, Joye, and Tonstall.

Mr. L. E. Judge, New College (B.A. 1827, M.A. 1830; Chaplain; deceased 1853), succeeded Mr. Roberts, in March, as assistant; but in July of the next year retired, and was succeeded by Mr. W. Bailey, also of New College (B.A. 1829).

A.D. 1825.

The sale at Paris of the library of L. M. Langlès, the keeper of the Oriental MSS. in the Bibl. Royale, afforded a large accession of books in that branch of literature which was his specialty.

Mr. Sim. J. Etty, New College (B.A. 1829, M.A. 1832, now Vicar of Wanborough, Wilts), was appointed assistant in the room of Mr. Eden. Mr. Etty remained in the Library until the year 1834. The Catalogue of Dissertationes Academicæ, which appeared in 1832, was in a great measure his work.

Two MSS. intended of old for the Library by Sir K. Digby, were bought in this year. To the account of them given at p. 58 supra, it should be added that the library left in France by Digby on his death (from which, no doubt, these volumes came) was bought back by George, Earl of Bristol, and finally sold by auction at London, in April and May, 1680. Sixty-nine MSS. were included in this dispersion. It should further be added to the previous notice that it was at Laud's instance, and through him as Chancellor of the University, that Digby presented his collection to the Library. A letter from the Archbishop, which accompanied the gift, is printed in Wharton's collection of his Remains, vol. ii. p. 73.

A.D. 1826.

There is not much to notice in the acquisitions of this year. A few Persian and other Oriental MSS. were purchased, and more in the two following years; and some Burmese MSS. were given by Sir C. Grey, Chief Justice of Calcutta. A curious volume of manuscript and printed papers relative to the siege of Oxford, 1643-46, was presented by Mr. W. Hamper, of Birmingham. In January, the Rev. Chas. Hen. Cox, M.A., Student of Ch. Ch., was appointed Sub-librarian in the room of Mr. Laurence.

A.D. 1827.

A very large collection of Academic Dissertations published in Germany, amounting to about 43,400, was bought at Altona for £332 16s. Of these a folio catalogue was published in 1834, which, by a singular error, bears on its title the date 1832, as the year in which this accession came to the Library. In 1828, 160 volumes of the same character were added, and other large additions were made in 1836 and 1837, but particularly in 1846, when no fewer than 7000 were purchased[312].

Mr. Henry Forster, New College (B.A. 1832, M.A. 1834; Esquire Bedel of Divinity; deceased 1857), succeeded Mr. Bailey, in March, as Assistant.

A.D. 1828.

A collection of 153 Northern MSS., chiefly in the Icelandic and Danish languages, formed by Finn Magnusen, was purchased from him for £350[313]. A catalogue (56 pp. quarto) was published in the year 1832. Amongst them are many early and curious volumes in poetry and history. Other collections of MSS. were sold by the same collector to the British Museum and to the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh.

A large number of Aldines were obtained at the sale of the collection of M. Renouard, the Aldine bibliographer, which took place in London, June 26-30. And the rare first edition of John Knox's Historie of the Church of Scotland was purchased for sixteen guineas.

Some additional rooms on the second story of the Schools' quadrangle, on the north and east sides, which went by the names of the Schools of Geometry and Medicine, were permanently attached to the Library, by vote of Convocation, on June 5.

On June 26, the nomination of the Rev. Stephen Reay, M.A., of St. Alban's Hall (afterwards B.D., and Laudian Professor of Arabic in 1840), as Sub-librarian in the room of Mr. C. H. Cox, was approved in Convocation. Mr. Reay was appointed to the charge of the Oriental department, his knowledge of Hebrew specially qualifying him for the care of the yearly increasing mass of Rabbinical lore. To this branch he added, and retained to the close of his life, the care of the 'Progress' Room, or room containing the publications, foreign and English, which appeared in parts. And on Dec. 20, the Rev. John Besly, M.A., Fellow of Balliol (afterwards D.C.L., and Vicar of Long Benton, Northumberland, deceased April 17, 1868, aged sixty-eight), was confirmed as Mr. Reay's colleague, in the place of Dr. Bliss.

A.D. 1829.

The great Hebrew collection, which at present forms so distinguished a feature in the contents of the Library, was virtually commenced in this year by the purchase, at Hamburgh (for £2080), of the famous Oppenheimer library, consisting of upwards of 5000 volumes, of which 780 are MSS[314]. Many Hebrew works had, it is true, come with Selden's library, in 1659; but little or nothing had been done since that period to advance upon that beginning. The additions made in this department from 1844 up to about the year 1857, are said, in Dr. Steinschneider's introduction to his catalogue (col. 50), to have numbered no fewer than about 2100 volumes[315].

David Oppenheimer, Chief Rabbi at Prague, devoted more than half a century to the formation of his library. On his death, Sept. 23, 1735, it came into the possession of his son, a Rabbi at Hildesheim, and thence into the hands of Isaac Seligmann at Hamburgh. Several catalogues were issued during this period, the last being one in octavo, at Hamburgh, in 1826, an index to which, compiled by Dr. J. Goldenthal, was printed at the expense of the Library in 1845. The collection would have been dispersed by auction, had it not been bought en masse for Oxford. It possesses extreme interest and value in the eyes of Jewish students, insomuch that for a series of years the Library was never without several foreign visitors engaged in its examination. A very elaborate catalogue of all the printed Hebrew books contained in it, and throughout the whole of the Library, was compiled by Dr. M. Steinschneider during the years 1850-1860, and printed at Berlin, where it was published in the latter year in a very thick quarto volume. The book is divided into two parts: the first containing a description of the Biblical, Talmudical, liturgical and anonymous volumes; the second containing the works of miscellaneous authors, in the alphabetical order of their names. Prefixed is a brief list of the Hebrew MSS. in the Library, with the numbers at present attached to them, and references to the catalogues in which they are described. Of several rare books in the Oppenheimer library there are duplicate copies, varying in condition and ornamentation; of some there are copies on red, yellow, and blue paper. Distinguished amongst all is a copy of the Talmud, printed in 1713-28, in twenty-four folio volumes, entirely on vellum. 'Perhaps,' says Archdeacon Cotton, 'this work is the grandest and most extensive vellum publication extant[316].'

Mr. Robert Bowyer, miniature painter to Queen Charlotte, who had devoted a considerable part of his life to the collection of drawings and engravings illustrating the Holy Scriptures, put forward a proposal for their purchase by subscription with a view to their being deposited in the Bodleian. Their number amounted to nearly seven thousand (including 113 drawings by Loutherbourg), described as being in fine condition and of great value; and they were inserted as additional illustrations in a copy of Macklin's folio Bible, which was enlarged thereby from its original extent of seven volumes to forty-five. Hence the collection passed, and passes, under the name of Bowyer's Bible. Mr. Bowyer, who had spent upon it upwards of three thousand pounds, proposed to dispose of it for £2500, and a committee was formed in London, upon which appeared the names of many distinguished persons, to raise a subscription for the purpose. But upon Mr. Bowyer's despatching an agent to Oxford, the matter met with so little encouragement here, the Librarian, in particular, being (as Dr. Bliss has noted upon his copy of the original proposal) unfavourable to it, that the project fell to the ground. The reasons why Oxford made so little response do not appear; probably the value set upon the collection was deemed to be greatly exaggerated. After the death of Mr. Bowyer (June 4, 1834, aged seventy-six) the Bible came into the hands of one Mrs. Parkes, of Golden Square, by whom it was disposed of, in 1848, in a lottery (together with a few other prizes) for which four thousand tickets were issued at one guinea each. The successful speculator was Mr. Saxon, a gentleman-farmer, near Shepton Mallet. In 1852 it was in the hands of Messrs. Puttick and Simpson, the well-known book-auctioneers, for sale. By them it was announced for an auction on Feb. 26, 1853, and was disposed of, about that time, to Messrs. Willis and Sotheran, the booksellers, for about £500. Since then it has been announced for sale at Manchester.

A.D. 1830.

A copy of the rare edition of Luther's translation of the Bible, printed at Wittemberg in 1541, was bought, through Messrs. Payne and Foss, for fifty guineas, at the sale, in London, of the library of the Archdeacon de la Tour, of Hildesheim, which was said to have been formerly the property of the English Benedictine Monastery of Landspring, and which was then, it appears, in the possession of Mr. — Solly. It contains some texts on the fly-leaves in the autograph, and with the signatures, of both Luther and Melanchthon, which seem to have been unnoticed at the time of the sale. A facsimile of a part of Luther's inscription is given in plate xxxi. in Mr. Leigh Sotheby's Illustrations of the Handwriting of Melanchthon[317]. The book is now exhibited in a glass case, in one of the windows of the Library.

A.D. 1831.

In December of this year, Viscount Kingsborough[318] presented a magnificent copy (being one of four which were printed on vellum) of his Antiquities of Mexico, or coloured facsimiles, executed at his expense, in seven folio volumes, of Mexican paintings and hieroglyphics preserved in the libraries of Paris, Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, Rome, Bologna, and Oxford (in Laud's and Selden's collections), together with preliminary dissertations. This sumptuous book is exhibited near the entrance of the library, in a case made expressly for its reception.

On June 30, the nomination, as Sub-librarian, of Rev. Ernest Hawkins, M.A., of Balliol, afterwards Fellow of Exeter, (of late well-known for his labours in the cause of Missions, as Secretary to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel), was approved by Convocation. He succeeded Dr. Besly, who had taken the Balliol College living of Long Benton, in Northumberland.

A.D. 1832.

A twelfth-century MS. of Scholia on the Odyssey was purchased for £100. The collection of Bibles, which had during some time past made some slow progress, was increased by copies of various early printed versions in European languages, and its further enlargement was steadily kept in view in succeeding years.

Six guineas were given for copies of Servetus' treatise De Trinitatis erroribus and his Dialogi de Trinitate, printed in 1531 and 1532, which are of very great rarity, in consequence of their having very generally shared the fate of their author.

A.D. 1833.

Some precious Shakespearian volumes, consisting of the Venus and Adonis of 1594 and 1617, the Lucrece of 1594 and 1616, with a subsequent edition of 1655, and the Sonnets of 1609, were presented by the well-known collector, Mr. Thomas Caldecott, who had been formerly a Fellow of New College. They are now incorporated with the Malone collection. Several MSS. of Sir William Jones were presented by the brothers Augustus and Julius C. Hare. An interesting and large collection of tracts on the Roman Catholic disabilities, affairs in Ireland, &c., in forty-five volumes, was purchased at the sale of the library of Charles Butler, of Lincoln's Inn.

An anonymous pamphlet, entitled, A Few Words on the Bodleian Library, appeared in this year; its author was Sir Edmund Head, M.A., Merton College. The object was to urge the desirableness of allowing books to be borrowed from the Library, after the example of Cambridge. One of the arguments by which the author supported the proposal, viz. that College tutors were unable to visit the Library in term time during the hours at which it is open, has since been entirely removed by the attachment of the Radcliffe Library as a Reading-room, which remains open until ten o'clock at night. The pamphlet was reprinted in the Report of the University Commission in 1852.

A.D. 1834.

Numerous purchases were made during the sale of Mr. Heber's library. Amongst these were some rare English tracts of the Reformers, Bale, Becon, Tyndal, Knox, &c.; a large and valuable collection of booksellers' catalogues and sale catalogues of books and coins between 1726 and 1814[319]; and a mass of some 1100 or 1200 plays, published in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries[320]. Numerous early Shakespeare editions were also obtained; inter alias, the first edition (1594) of the first part of the Contention betwixt the Houses of Yorke and Lancaster, for £64; Richard III, 1598, £17; fourth edit. of Henry IV, 1608, £12 12s.[321], &c. The greater part of the collection of editions of Horace up to the year 1738, formed by Dr. Douglas, a collection which was used in the preparation of the edition published at London, by James Watson, in 1760, was bought for £20. It consists of twenty-seven vols. in folio, thirty-nine in quarto, and 248 in octavo and smaller sizes. Dibdin (Introd. to the Classics) says that the whole collection consisted of 450 editions. A Prayer-Book of 1707, with MSS. collations by Rev. John Lewis, of Margate, of alterations in editions between 1549 and 1637, was bought for £8 8s. One of the chief gems in the Picture Gallery was bequeathed by James Paine, Esq., being the portrait of his father, James Paine, the architect[322], while instructing his son in drawing, by Sir Joshua Reynolds. This beautiful picture has retained its freshness of colour far more perfectly than most others of Sir Joshua's paintings; and it has recently, under the direction of the present Librarian, been carefully cleaned, and protected with glass and a curtain, that its brilliancy may incur no risk of deterioration. But this year is chiefly distinguished in the Annals of the Library by the bequest of the

Douce Collection.

Francis Douce, the donor of this magnificent library (who died on March 30, in this year), is said to have been induced to make this disposition of his treasures through the courteous reception afforded to him by Dr. Bandinel, upon the occasion of a visit to Oxford, in 1830. The gatherings of a lifetime with which the Bodleian was thus enriched, consist of 393 manuscripts, ninety-eight charters, about 16,480 printed volumes, a very large collection of early and valuable prints and drawings, and some coins[323]. For the most part, the books which thus came were of classes in which the Library was then deficient. Nearly all the finest specimens of Missal-painting which it now possesses are found among the Douce MSS., several of which are exhibited in a glass case at the further end of the Library. Chief among these are three volumes of Horæ, one executed, perhaps by G. da Libri, at the beginning of the sixteenth century for Leonora Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino, a second belonged to Mary de Medici, and the other was completed in 1527 for B. Sforza, second wife of Sigism. I of Poland. These are priceless gems, rivalled only by such as the Bedford Missal. In the same case is a Psalter on purple vellum, probably of the ninth century, which came from the old Royal Library of France, and which, from this circumstance and its age, has sometimes been called Charlemagne's Psalter. The printed books are rich in history, biography, antiquities, manners and customs, and the fine arts[324]. In Bibles (English and French), Horæ, Primers, Books of Common Prayer and Psalters, the collection is very strong. Among the Psalters is a copy of Archbishop Parker's rare metrical version. Early French literature is also a conspicuous feature, in which the Library had previously been very deficient. Of fifteenth-century typography there are no fewer than 311 specimens. The finest of these is a magnificent copy of Christoforo Landino's Italian translation of Pliny's Natural History, printed on vellum by Nic. Janson, at Venice, in 1476. It is enriched with exquisite illuminated borders at the commencement of each book, a specimen of which, together with a description of the volume, is given in Shaw's Illuminated Ornaments, pl. xxxviii[325]. There are also a large number of fragments of works by early English printers, including two by Caxton, which are unique. One of these is a portion (two quarters of an octavo or duodecimo sheet) of an edition of the Horæ, conjecturally assigned by Mr. Blades to 1478, and the other is of an edition of the Booke of Curtesye, probably printed in 1491, consisting of two quarto pages. There is also one of the two known copies of a curious placard, issued by Caxton, inviting those who were disposed to buy 'ony pyes of two and thre comemoracions of Salisburi vse' to come to him at Westminster, and they should have them 'good chepe[326].' The other copy is in the possession of Earl Spencer. A very different, but still very curious, item is a large collection of chap-books and children's penny books of the last century and commencement of the present; and two folio volumes are filled with black-letter ballads. A catalogue of the library was published in one volume, in folio, in 1840; the part containing the printed books was the work of Mr. H. Symonds, of Magdalen Hall (B.A. 1840, M.A. 1842, now Precentor of Norwich), and that which describes the Fragments, the Charters and the Manuscripts was drawn up by Rev. H. O. Coxe. From the year 1839 until the commencement of 1842, Mr. Thomas Dodd, formerly a well-known London dealer in prints, and author of the Connoisseur's Repertory, was employed in making a catalogue of the Douce prints and drawings. This catalogue still remains in MS. Four very grand studies of heads, drawn either by Raffaelle or Giulio Romano, have recently been framed and hung at the western end of the Library.

On June 25, Convocation sanctioned the transfer to the Library of the room immediately over the entrance in the gateway-tower of the Schools, (now called the Mason Room) which had been hitherto assigned as the 'Savile Study,' on condition that a small room in the adjoining south-east angle of the quadrangle should be prepared at the expense of the Bodleian for the reception of the MSS. and printed books, instruments, &c., which were given to the University by Sir Henry Savile for the use of his Professors. This is the room in which the Savile library (which includes also some books given by Dr. Wallis and Sir Christopher Wren) is still preserved, under the charge of the Savilian Professors of Geometry and Astronomy.

On July 5, Convocation confirmed the nomination of Rev. William Cureton, M.A., of Ch. Ch. (afterwards so well known for his Syriac studies, which gained him the patronage of the Prince Consort and a Canonry at Westminster), to the Sub-librarianship vacated by Rev. E. Hawkins.

Mr. Edmund Grove, of Magdalen College (who never graduated), was appointed Assistant in April, vice Mr. Stephen Exup. Wentworth, of Balliol (B.A. 1833, M.A. 1835). Mr. Wentworth appears to have succeeded Mr. Forster in 1832.

A.D. 1835.

The original MS. of Burnet's History of his Own Times, with a copy prepared for the press, a portion of his History of the Reformation, and some other papers by him, was purchased, from a family descended from the Bishop, for £210. An account of these MSS. may be found at p. 474 of the Appendix to Burnet's History of James II, being an extract from the Own Times which Dr. Routh edited, with additional notes, when ninety-six years old, in 1852. The copy prepared for the press is expressly mentioned in the catalogue for 1835 as forming part of the purchase; and yet that copy appears from a passage in a letter from Rawlinson, dated Aug. 18, 1743, to have been then in the hands of that collector, whence it would have been supposed that it must have passed at once into the possession of the Library. After mentioning the book, Rawlinson says, 'I purchased the MSS. of a gentleman who corrected the press where that book was printed, and amongst his papers I have all the castrations[327].'

The MS. of Lewis' Life of Wyclif, with some additions by the author, was bought for £4 14s. 6d. Various other MSS. by Lewis were already in the Library among Dr. Rawlinson's collections. The purchases of printed books were chiefly amongst early editions of Classics (Juvenal, Ovid, Virgil, &c.), Fathers (Augustine, Jerome), Schoolmen, and a very large series of fifteenth-century editions of the Decretals, Digest, Institutes, and other works in Canon and Civil Law. These were obtained at the sale of the famous library of Dr. Kloss, of Frankfort, whose collection was so remarkably rich in books bearing MS. notes by Melanchthon.

A curious collection of papers and pamphlets, printed and MS., relating to Spanish affairs, and of much interest to students of Spanish history, contained in thirty-two volumes in folio and eighty in quarto, was purchased for £40. It was lot 4583 in Heber's sale, by whom it had been bought at the Yriarte sale for more than £100.

A.D. 1836.

Aubrey's collection of notes and drawings concerning Druidical and Roman antiquities in Britain, together with some miscellaneous historical notes, entitled by him Monumenta Britannica, in four parts (now bound in two folio volumes), was purchased, for £50, of Col. Charles Greville. Accounts of Avebury and Stonehenge, which are important from their early date (the former being the earliest known), are to be found in these curious and interesting volumes[328]. The remainder of Aubrey's MSS. came to the Library in 1860, upon the transfer of the books from the Ashmolean Museum. See sub anno 1858.

A collection of about 300 tracts, relating to American affairs and the War of Independence, in forty-one vols., formed by Rev. Jonathan Boucher[329], was bought for £8 18s. 6d. These are now included in the series of tracts called Godwyn Pamphlets, in continuation of those which came, in 1770, from the donor so named. Another large gathering of American tracts, collected by Mr. George Chalmers, when engaged in writing his History of the Revolt, was bought in 1841 for £24 13s.; at the same time, the first and only volume of his History, which itself was never actually published, was bought for £2 7s.

Sale Catalogues. See 1834.

When the new Copyright Act was introduced into Parliament in this year, it was proposed to allow £500 per annum to the Bodleian, in the manner adopted with regard to six other libraries, in lieu of the old privilege of receiving a copy of every book entered at Stationers' Hall. The Curators, however, on May 27, resolved that it would be highly desirable to retain the privilege, but that, should an alteration be made, it would be inexpedient to receive an annual grant by way of compensation; and in consequence of this opinion, the proposed abolition of the privilege was abandoned.

A.D. 1837.

The magnificent series of historical prints and drawings which is called, from the name of its collectors and its donor, the Sutherland collection, was presented to the University on May 4 in this year, although it was not actually deposited in the Library until March, 1839[330]. The six volumes of the folio editions of Clarendon's History of the Rebellion and Life, and of Burnet's Own Times, are inlaid and bound in sixty-one elephant folio volumes, and illustrated with the enormous number of 19,224 portraits of every person and views of every place in any way mentioned in the text, or connected with its subject-matter[331]. The gathering was commenced in 1795 by Alexander Hendras Sutherland, Esq., F.S.A.; on his death (May 21, 1820) it was taken up by his widow[332], who spared neither labour nor money to render it as complete as possible, and by whom its contents were, consequently, nearly doubled. At length, desiring, in accordance with her husband's will, that the results of her own and his labour should be always preserved intact, Mrs. Sutherland presented the whole collection to the Bodleian. Its extent may be in some degree appreciated when it is mentioned that there are (according to Mrs. Sutherland's statement in the preface to the Supplementary Catalogue) 184 portraits of James I, of which 135 are distinct plates; 743 of Charles I, of which 573 are distinct plates, besides sixteen drawings; 373 of Cromwell (253 plates); 552 of Charles II (428 plates); 276 of James II; 175 of Mary II (143 plates); and 431 of William III, of which 363 are separate plates[333]. There are also 309 views of London and 166 of Westminster. Amongst those of London is a drawing on many sheets, by a Dutch artist, Antonio van den Wyngaerde, executed between 1558-1563. It affords a view which extends from the Palace at Westminster to that at Greenwich, both included; and comprehends also Lambeth Palace and part of Southwark, with the palace there of the Protector Somerset, in which the Mint was situated. The whole amount expended on the formation of the series is estimated at £20,000.

The collection is accompanied by a handsomely printed Catalogue, compiled by Mrs. Sutherland, and published in 1837 in three volumes quarto, two containing the portraits, and one the topography[334]. A Supplement to this was printed in the following year, in the preface to which Mrs. Sutherland records her transfer of the collection. She adds that 'the University of Oxford, by the manner in which it has received the collection, has afforded her the high gratification of witnessing the fulfilment, in their utmost extent, of the wishes of its founder; and in the liberal step which its future conservators have taken, to insure a direct and easy means of reference to the prints, she finds proof of their intention to comply with her own earnest desire, that the books should be as freely open to those really interested in them as may be consistent with their safe preservation. Under the superintendence of the compiler, but at the expense of the University, a copy of the Catalogue has been prepared, in which every print is marked with the page which it respectively fills in the volumes; by means of this, every difficulty of reference, and every doubt as to the print intended to be described, is obviated, and the manuscript indices will be preserved from the injury of constant use. In order to prevent the possibility of disappointment in referring from this marked catalogue, every print (with four exceptions only) of which the page has not been ascertained, has been struck out, although probably several of the portraits not at present found are still in the volumes.' The following letter of thanks was addressed by Convocation to the donor[335]:—

'To Mrs. Sutherland, of Merrow, in the County of Surrey.

'Madam,—We, the Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford, feel ourselves called upon to acknowledge, in a public and formal manner, the splendid donation recently made by you to our Bodleian Library.

'It is doubtless a source of much gratification to us that our University should have been selected by you as the fittest depository of so valuable a collection; but we are not, on that account, less disposed to appreciate and admire the feeling which has led you to make so considerable a sacrifice, and to relinquish the possession of what has been to you, for many years, an object of constant interest and occupation.

'We shall prize the matchless volumes about to be committed to our care, not merely as being embellished with the richest specimens of the graphic art, but as possessing a real historical character; as enhancing, in no slight degree, the value of works which we have long been accustomed to regard as most important contributions to the annals and literature of our Country.

'Given at our House of Convocation, under our Common Seal, this first day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirty-seven[336].'

A few other books were sent by Mrs. Sutherland at the same time, including Boydell's Shakespeare, Heath's Chronicle, Scott's edition of Dalrymple's Preservation of Charles II, Faber's Kit-Cat Club, Wilson's Catalogue of an Amateur, &c. And in 1843 she increased her former gift by the presentation of copies of a large number of illustrated, biographical, and historical works, many of which are in a like manner enriched with additional engravings. Chief amongst these is a copy of Park's edition of Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors, enlarged from five vols. 8^o. to 20 vols. 4^o. by the insertion of prints, portraits, and some of the original drawings. Similarly enlarged copies of Dr. Dibdin's works are also included; together with framed oil-portraits of Frederic, King of Bohemia, and of Mr. Sutherland.

A curious collection of rare Dutch tracts, in two vols., printed at Amsterdam between 1637 and 1664, and relating to English, Irish, and Scottish affairs, chiefly during the Civil Wars, was bought for £2 13s. And an enormous gathering of English pamphlets, on every kind of subject, in prose and verse, between about 1600 and 1820, said to number 19,380 articles, and which had accumulated in the stores of the well-known bookseller, Mr. Thomas Rodd, was bought of him for £101 14s. 6d. These exceeding, from their number, the powers of the then very slender staff of the Library for arrangement and cataloguing, remained piled up in cupboards for about twenty-five years. But a general clearance out of all neglected corners taking place on the appointment of the present Librarian to the Headship, they were then sorted (to a certain extent), bound, numbered, and incorporated in the general Catalogue; when they proved to be a valuable addition to the pamphlet-literature, comparatively few of them being found to be duplicates.

Shakespeare; Romeo and Juliet. See 1834.

Sanscrit MSS. See 1842.

A grant was made by Convocation of £400 annually, for five years, towards the expense of the new Catalogue, the printing of which was commenced in the summer. A statute also was passed providing that there should be two 'ministri,' or assistants, with salaries regulated by the Curators.

The Rev. Herbert Hill, M.A., Fellow of New College, was approved by Convocation, on Oct. 26, as Sub-librarian, in the room of Mr. Cureton, who removed in this year to the British Museum. Mr. Hill, however, only held the office for one year. And Mr. Richard Firth, New College (B.A. 1839, M.A. 1849, now, and from 1850, a Chaplain in the diocese of Madras), became minister in the room of Mr. F. J. Marshall, New College (B.A. 1834, M.A. 1837, Chaplain of New College, deceased 1843), who had probably entered the Library in 1834 in the place of Mr. Etty.

A.D. 1838.

One of the 'curiosities of literature' was obtained by the purchase (for £10 10s.) of the System of Divinity, in a Course of Sermons on the first Institutions of Religion, by Rev. Will. Davy, A.B., Vicar of Lustleigh, Devon. It is a work in twenty-six volumes, of which only fourteen copies were printed, entirely by the hands of the indefatigable author himself, between the years 1795 and 1807. It is very roughly executed, the author having purchased only just so much old and worn-out type, as sufficed for the printing of two pages at once; accomplishing in this way the work upon which he had set his heart, 'arte meâ, diurno nocturnoque labore' (as he says in a Latin preface), in consequence of having failed to procure in any other way the publication of his book. The copy in our Library is distinguished by having many additions inserted, printed (in many cases with later and better type) upon small slips[337].

A set of the Monthly Review, from the commencement to 1828, in 200 volumes, in which the names of the contributors are appended in MS. to their several articles, together with a volume of Correspondence with the Editor, Ralph Griffiths, LL.D., between 1758 and 1802 (now numbered Bodl. MS. Addit. VII. D. 11), was bought for £42.

Among the donations were: 1. A collection of twenty-one Oriental works, printed between 1808-1835 by the East India Company, presented by the Directors, and, 2. A valuable series, MS. and printed, of the Statutes of various Italian cities, presented by George Bowyer, Esq. (the present baronet, who succeeded to the title in 1860), who also in the years 1839, 1842, and 1843, forwarded large additions to the printed series. These volumes are now kept distinct as a separate collection. Altogether there are seventy-eight printed volumes, besides four MSS.

On Nov. 15, a Statute was approved by Convocation which raised the stipend of the Sub-librarians from £150 to £250.

From the year 1825 an annual folio Catalogue had been printed, containing, in one list, all the accessions accruing in each year from purchases, gifts, and the supply of new publications from Stationers' Hall. The issue of these lists was discontinued after the appearance of that for the years 1837 and 1838 jointly; except that in 1843 one for that year was printed in octavo.

A form of declaration and promise for due use of the privilege of admission to the Library, to be made by all graduates upon taking their first degree, in lieu of the oath formerly required, was approved by Convocation, on June 9[338]. In accordance with this form, which is still used, each graduate now promises: 'Me libros cæterumque cultum sic tractaturum ut superesse quam diutissime possint, et, quantum in me est, curaturum ne quid Bibliotheca detrimenti aut incommodi capiat.' The same declaration is subscribed in the Library by all non-graduates who are admitted to read there, with the addition of a promise that they will devote their attention 'ad studia et silentium.' The statutable penalty for any wilful mutilation or abstraction of any book, or portion of a book, is immediate expulsion from the Library and University, 'sine ulla spe regressûs.'

On the resignation of Rev. H. Hill, Sub-librarian, in this year, he was succeeded by Rev. H. O. Coxe, M.A., of Worcester College, who had previously worked for five years and a-half in the Department of MSS. in the British Museum[339]. Mr. Coxe's nomination was approved by Convocation on Nov. 16.

A.D. 1839.

An application was made by Magdalen College for the return of a copy of the Statutes of the College, found among the Rawlinson MSS., but it was refused by the Curators, on the ground that sufficient evidence was not produced of its having ever been the property of the College.

A.D. 1840.

Ninety specimens of the Aldine press, together with other volumes chiefly printed at Venice by A. de Asula, were purchased at the sale of the library of Dr. Samuel Butler, Bishop of Lichfield. From the same library was purchased, in the following year, a collection of portions of more than twenty of the very earliest editions of Donatus' De Octo Partibus Orationis, many of which were unknown; these had previously come from the library of Dr. Kloss. A ninth-century MS. of St. Gregory's Sacramentary was purchased for £63; and early MSS. of Juvenal, Lucan, &c. A fine and perfect copy of Caxton's Dictes and Sayinges of the Philosophres, printed in 1477, was purchased for £50. It had previously been sold, at Dr. Vincent's sale in 1816, for £99 15s.; this sum, which is marked in pencil on a fly-leaf, having been altered by some practical joker, by the insertion of a figure, to £199 15s., Mr. Blades has in consequence recorded that as being the price at which the Library secured the volume[340].

The Rev. Rob. J. M'Ghee, Rector of Holywell, Hunts, deposited in the Bodleian (as also in the University Library, Cambridge, and in that of Trinity College, Dublin,) a collection of thirty-one volumes relating to the controversy with the Church of Rome, and to the Moral Theology taught at Maynooth. The volumes consist of editions of the Douay and Rheims versions, of some Irish diocesan Statutes, of Bailly's Theologia Moralis, and Delahogue's Dogmatic Treatises, and of various Irish polemical pamphlets; and they are enclosed in a mahogany case, with glass door. In consequence of reference having been made to this collection by the donor, at a County Meeting held at Huntingdon, Dec. 28, 1850, upon the occasion of the 'Papal Aggression,' some slight degree of public attention was called to it; and a controversial volume was in consequence published by Mr. M'Ghee, in 1852, entitled, The Church of Rome; a Report on the Books and Documents on the Papacy, deposited in the University Library, Cambridge, &c.

Shakespeare; Richard III and Hamlet. See 1834.

The first non-academic minister was appointed in Mr. H. S. Harper (vice Mr. Firth), of whose valuable services and acquaintance with details the Library still enjoys the benefit. Mr. Harper had acted for three years previously as an under-assistant.

A.D. 1841.

The very large and valuable MS. collections of the Rev. John Brickdale Blakeway, relating to the history of Shropshire, were presented by his widow. Mr. Blakeway was minister of St. Mary's Church, Shrewsbury, for thirty-two years, and died March 10, 1826. He was long engaged in gathering materials for a county history, and his collections now form fifteen closely-written volumes in folio, nine in quarto, and two in octavo, arranged, and lettered on their backs, according to their several subjects, viz. Pedigrees, County History, Parochial History, &c. A list of them is given at the end of the Annual Catalogue. They were supplemented in 1850 by the purchase (for £42) of a copy of Mr. T. F. Dukes' Antiquities of Shropshire (4^o. Shrewsbury, 1844), divided into two large volumes, and enriched by the author with many MS. additions and copies of ancient deeds, and with upwards of 700 portraits and original drawings of churches, fonts, &c. relating to almost every parish in the county. As Mr. Blakeway's collections are not accompanied with engravings or drawings, these volumes largely assist to make the materials for the history of this county complete.

A parcel of 136 early French and Anglo-Saxon coins was presented by Her Majesty the Queen, out of a mass of upwards of 6700 which were found in digging at the bank of the river Ribble, at Cuerdale, in Lancashire, and were adjudged to belong to Her Majesty in right of the Duchy of Lancaster. The largest part of the Saxon coins were of the reigns of S. Edmund of East Anglia (in number 1770) and of Alfred (793); of the Continental, of Charles le Chauve (712) and, apparently, of Charles le Simple (2942).

Some rare and interesting books issued by English printers about the middle of the sixteenth century were acquired in this year; among them, the Boke of Common Prayer, printed by Oswen, at Worcester, in 1552, bought for the very moderate sum of £3 16s. Two rare American Psalters were purchased, the one called The Massachuset Psalter, printed at Boston in 1709, for £2, and the other, the Psalms in blank verse with tunes, printed at Boston in 1718, for £1 19s.

Shakespeare, Henry VI. See 1834.

American Tracts. See 1836.

Donatus. See 1840.

The hitherto somewhat narrow funds of the Library received in this year a welcome increase by the bequest of the large sum of £36,000 in the Three per Cents. from Rev. Robert Mason, D.D., of Queen's College, deceased Jan. 5. He bequeathed also a further sum of £30,000 for a new library to his own College. In commemoration of this munificent legacy, one room, devoted to the reception of costly illustrated works, and works of some degree of value or rarity in various languages, has been styled the Mason Room (see p. 251). The elegant model of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, now exhibited in the Library, came by his bequest, together with a painting of the Zodiac of Tentyra, in Egypt, which is hung in the Picture Gallery.

A.D. 1842.

Seven Sanscrit MSS. had been given to the Library in 1837 by B. H. Hodgson, Esq., the British Resident in Nepaul, before which time there were but a very few works in that language scattered through some of the various Oriental collections, and most of them recently acquired[341]. But in this year the real foundation of the present very large and valuable collection was laid, by the purchase for £500 of the MSS. obtained by Professor H. H. Wilson (dec. May 8, 1860) during his residence in India, numbering 616 works and 540 volumes, of which 147 are MSS. of the Vedas. A brief list of them is attached to the Annual Catalogue for 1842, and the whole are fully described in the catalogue of the Sanscrit MSS., compiled by Theod. Aufrecht, M.A., now Professor of Sanscrit in the Univ. of Edinburgh, the second and last part of which was published in 1864. The greater part of Mr. Wilson's collection consists of MSS. written in the last and present centuries.

Some small collections towards the history of Cheshire, made by Rev. F. Gower, were purchased in this year and in 1846.

In printed books the chief purchase was a copy (at the price of fifty guineas) of the original and hitherto unknown edition of the poems of Drummond, of Hawthornden. It is in quarto, with a portrait, having the letter-press only on one side of the page, and was printed at Edinburgh by Andro Hart in 1614. There are three or four small corrections in Drummond's own handwriting[342].

Bowyer. Italian Municipal Statutes. See 1838.

Laing. Almanac by W. de Worde. See 1755.

Old Plays. See 1834.

In March, Mr. J. B. Taunton, All Souls' College (B.A. 1843, M.A. 1848), was appointed Assistant vice Mr. F. E. Thurland, New College (B.A. 1841, M.A. 1846, now Rector of Thurstaston, Cheshire), who was made an extra, in the place of Mr. Symonds, resigned. Mr. Thurland had, probably, succeeded Mr. Grove in 1838 or 1839.

The stipend of the Librarian was increased by £150, by a statute which passed on May 6. By the same statute an annual payment was ordered of £20 to the Janitor, in lieu of fees hitherto taken for showing the Library or Picture Gallery to Members of the University. These, undergraduates as well as graduates, have now, if wearing their academical dress, the right of free entrance for themselves and friends; other visitors are admitted, by a regulation made five or six years ago, at the very moderate fee of threepence each person. (See p. 134.)

A.D. 1843.

The valuable collection of Oriental MSS. formed by the celebrated traveller, James Bruce, of Kinnaird, was purchased for £1000. It consists of ninety-six volumes, of which twenty-six are in Ethiopic, and seventy in Arabic; there is also one Coptic MS. on papyrus. Included in vol. iv. of an Ethiopic copy of the Old Testament is one of the three copies of the Book of Enoch, which were brought by Bruce from Abyssinia, and which were then (if they be not even still) the only manuscripts of the book to be found in Europe. One of the three had been given by Bruce himself to the University, in 1788, through the hands of Dr. Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury; it is written on forty leaves of vellum, in triple columns, and is now exhibited in the glass case near the entrance of the Library. It was from this MS. that Dr. Laurence, afterwards Archbishop of Cashel, first made the translation which he published in 1821, and then subsequently, in 1838, published the original text. The second copy ('elegantissimum et celeberrimum') was given by Bruce to Louis XVI, and is now in the Imperial Library at Paris. By the purchase of the third, the Bodleian is, therefore, the possessor of two out of the three.

Two unsuccessful attempts had previously been made to dispose of the collection by auction. It was first announced for sale by Mr. Christie, for May 17, 1827, to be disposed of in one lot; and a list was issued, abridged from the catalogue made by Dr. Alex. Murray, the editor of Bruce's Travels. The issue of this proposed sale is recorded by Douce in the following MS. note on his copy of the auction catalogue: 'These MSS. were put in by the owner at £5500, and after an elaborate eulogium on them by Mr. Christie, no bidding or advance took place, and they were of course withdrawn. Had the owner offered them for £500, I should think the same result would have happened.' The second attempt was made in 1842, when the MSS. were offered for sale by Mr. George Robins, on May 30, but it appears that even all the eloquence of that most moving of auctioneers failed to elicit a bid corresponding to the expectation of the seller; and so the collection fortunately remained intact, to be disposed of to our Library in the year following.

A catalogue of the Ethiopic MSS. of the collection was issued in a small quarto volume (eighty-seven pages), in 1848, as part vii. of the General Catalogue of MSS. It was compiled by a German scholar, well acquainted with this branch of Oriental literature, Dr. A. Dillmann, and contains, besides Bruce's books, three of Pococke's MSS., one of Laud's, one of Clarke's, and three others; in all thirty-five.

Valuable materials for the history of Devon were secured by the purchase (for £90) of the collections made for that purpose by Jeremiah Milles, D.D., Dean of Exeter, and Pres. of the Soc. of Antiquaries. The library of Dean Milles (who died Feb. 13, 1784) was sold by auction by Mr. Leigh Sotheby, in April; and these collections, comprised in eighteen volumes in folio, one in quarto, and one in octavo, formed a principal feature in the sale.

In this year the new Catalogue of the general Library of printed books, exclusive of the Gough and Douce libraries, and the collections of Hebrew books and Dissertations, of which already special catalogues were in print, was completed and published in three folio volumes. It had been commenced in the year 1837, and was prepared by the Rev. Arthur Browne, M.A., Chaplain of Ch. Ch. (now a retired Chaplain of the Royal Navy), whose share comprises the letters P-R, and the commencement of S; the Rev. Henry Cary, M.A. (son of the Translator of Dante, then Incumbent of St. Paul's, Oxford, but now, by returning to his previous profession of the Law, a barrister in Australia), who is responsible for the letters F-K, and part of L; and Rev. Alfred Hackman, M.A., Chaplain and Precentor of Ch. Ch., and now Sub-librarian, who completed the greater part of it, viz. the letters A-E, L (from London)-O, S (from Shakespeare)-Z. The whole charges of the printing of the Catalogue amounted to £2990 12s.[343]; the previous cost of compilation was about £2000.

Bowyer. Italian Municipal Statutes. See 1838.

Sutherland. Illustrated Books. See 1839.

A.D. 1844.

Sir William Ouseley, the editor of the three volumes entitled Oriental Collections (brother to Sir Gore Ouseley, whom he accompanied when he went as ambassador to Persia in 1810), gathered, during some forty years spent in accumulation, about 750 Oriental MSS., chiefly in Persian, but including also a few in Arabic, Sanscrit, Zend, &c. Of these, in 1831 a catalogue (in 24 pp. quarto) was issued by the owner, who wished to dispose of them collectively, but no purchaser was then found, and they consequently remained in Sir William's possession. After his death, however (in Sept. 1842), they were again proposed for sale en masse, and the Library became a purchaser in this year for the sum of £2000. Many of the volumes are specimens of the best styles of Persian writing and illumination, while others are of great antiquity and rarity. The printed Oriental collection was also increased by various works printed in the East Indies in 1830-1839, which were presented by the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and by some Sanscrit and Mahratta books given by Rev. G. Pigott, Chaplain at Bombay.

A.D. 1845.

This year is rendered noticeable in the later annals of the Library by the fact that not a single MS. was purchased during its course. But a very valuable collection of Arabic, Persian and Sanscrit MSS. formed by Brigadier Gen. Alex. Walker, during his service in India, was presented by his son, Sir Will. Walker, of Edinburgh[344]. These are kept as a distinct collection, like other donations or purchases of similar extent; the Sanscrit portion is described in the catalogue compiled by Prof. Aufrecht. The collection of printed Hebrew books was increased by the purchase (for £176 14s. 6d.) of 483 volumes from the library of the celebrated lexicographer, Gesenius, of Halle, who died Oct. 23, 1842, and whose library was sold by auction at Halle, in Jan. 1844. Two curious collections of tracts were also bought; the one in English consisting of 300 volumes, ranging from 1688 to 1766, and chiefly treating of the case of the Non-jurors, the Bangorian controversy, and the affairs of the city of London (for £22 10s.); and the other in French, consisting only of four small volumes, but containing a very large number of 'Merveilles,' strange histories of strange wonders, between 1557 and 1637, of great rarity and singularity. These were obtained at the sale of the library of Mr. Benj. Heywood Bright, No. 3796, for £13.

On Dec. 23, the present writer (then a Clerk of Magdalen College) was appointed Assistant, vice Mr. Taunton, after upwards of five years' previous service as a supernumerary, having first entered the Library in June, 1840.

A.D. 1846.

The original MS., or first copy, of Wood's History and Antiquities of Oxford, in English, was purchased for the moderate sum of £8 8s. Already the Library possessed the corrected copy, in the author's autograph, in two large folio volumes, which had formed part of his collection in the Ashmolean Museum, but were transferred to the Bodleian as early as the year 1769. The volume now obtained had been in the possession of Edw. Roberts, Esq., of Ealing, a letter to whom from Mr. Joseph Parker, of Oxford, is inserted, dated July 4, 1827, in which he mentions the sale of the book to Mr. B. Roberts, and says that it was purchased at a sale at Burford, in 1797 or 1798.

A curious and valuable account-roll of Sir John Williams, Knt., Master of the Jewels to Henry VIII, which specifies all the treasures which were in his custody, was bought for £25[345].

The department of Italian topography, antiquities and art was largely enriched by the purchase from Rev. R. A. Scott (for £234 6s.) of a collection of 1426 volumes made by his brother the late George C. Scott, Esq., during ten years' residence in Italy.

Dissertations. See 1828.

Gower's Cheshire. See 1842.

Thorkelin. See 1828.

A.D. 1847.

A valuable MS. of Star-Chamber Reports, from June 17, 1635, to June 4, 1638, was purchased for £11. Several similar volumes of Reports are among the Rawlinson MSS. Two curious collections of pamphlets were bought; the one consisting of tracts, broadsides and proclamations relating to the Gunpowder Plot, made by H. Glynn, Under-secretary of State (£12 10s.); the other, a series of State special Forms of Prayer, from 1665 to 1840 (£10 10s.)

Works relating to the history of America, in which the Library is now very rich, begin in this year to form a specially noticeable feature in the catalogue of purchases. Many rare tracts had been of old in the Library, but much of the completeness of the present collection is due to the energy of the well-known American bibliophilist, Henry Stevens, Esq.

A.D. 1848.

A collection of Hebrew MSS., numbering 862 volumes and nearly 1300 separate works, was purchased at Hamburgh for £1030. It had been amassed by Heimann Joseph Michael (born Apr. 12, 1792, deceased June 10, 1846), who had devoted thirty years to the formation of his library. One hundred and ten vellum MSS. are included in it, written for the most part between 1240 and 1450. Michael's printed books amounted to 5471; these were purchased by the British Museum. A short catalogue of the collection, drawn up from the owner's papers, was issued at Hamburgh in 1848, with a preface by Dr. L. Zunz, and an index to the MSS. by Dr. M. Steinschneider. They will ere long be re-catalogued, together with all the other Hebrew MSS. in the Library, by Dr. Neubauer, who has now, in the present year, commenced his important task.

A.D. 1849.

The valuable collection of Oriental MSS. formed by Rev. W. H. Mill, D.D., Regius Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge, during his residence in India as Principal of Bishop's College, Calcutta, was purchased from him for £350. A small remaining portion of his collection, comprising thirty-six volumes, was bought in 1858, after his death, for £35. In all there are 160 volumes, of which 145 are in Sanscrit. These latter are fully described in Prof. Aufrecht's Sanscrit Catalogue.

The chief purchases of printed books were made at the sale at Berlin, in May, of the library of Professor C. F. G. Jacobs, the editor of the Anthologia Græca (who died March 30, 1847), whence a large number of classical dissertations, many of them authors' presentation copies, were obtained[346], and at the sale of the library of Rev. Hen. Francis Lyte (deceased 1847) which took place in July. A collection of 360 sermons, published by Non-juring divines between 1688 and 1750, is an interesting item in the year's list; another is a copy of Pliny's Historia Naturalis, printed at Rome by Sweynheym and Pannartz in 1473, with a MS. collation of three very early codices made by Ang. Politian in 1490, which was bought for £21, at an extremely curious sale at Messrs. Leigh Sotheby's, in Feb., of books 'selected from the library of an eminent literary character' (M. Libri?).

The two statutable Assistants at this time and for one or two years previously were Mr. J. M. Price, All Souls' College (B.A. 1849, M.A. 1852, now Vicar of Cuddington, Bucks,) and Mr. W. W. Garrett, New College (B.A. 1849). The former of these was succeeded about 1850, by the last undergraduate Assistant, Mr. J. C. Hyatt, Magd. Hall (B.A. 1852, now Perp. Curate of Queenshead, Yorkshire). Since then, in consequence of the difficulty of reconciling attendance on College lectures, &c. with attention to the continually increasing work of the Library, the junior Assistants have been taken from the City instead of from the undergraduate members of the University, as had been generally the case hitherto.

In pursuance of an address from the House of Commons, Sept. 4, 1848, on the motion of Mr. Ewart, various returns relative to public libraries were obtained, which were printed by Parliament in 1849, State Paper, No. 18. The following is the reply from Dr. Bandinel there printed:—

'Bodleian Library, 'January 9, 1849.

'Sir,—In compliance with your letter, dated Oct. 27, 1848, desiring certain Returns respecting the Bodleian Library, I have to state—

'1. As to the number of books received under the various Copyright Acts, no distinct register of the books so received has been kept, but they have, at the end of each year, been incorporated into the general collection, so that I am unable to give the number of the books so received.

'2. The number of printed volumes in the Bodleian Library amounts to about 220,000; but this statement will very inadequately express the real extent of the collection, as so many works have been bound together in one volume.

'3. The number of manuscripts is about 21,000.

'4. All graduates of the University have the right of admission to the Library; other persons must apply for admission to the regular authorities.

'5. No register is kept of persons consulting the Library; accordingly, the number of students who have frequented it during the last ten years cannot be ascertained.

'I have, &c. 'BULKELEY BANDINEL, 'Bodleian Librarian. 'George Cornewall Lewis, Esq., 'Under-Secretary of State, Whitehall.'

The estimate of printed volumes here given is believed to be as nearly accurate as it was possible to make it, as considerable pains were taken in forming the calculation. The number of separate printed books and tracts may be reckoned as at least treble the number of volumes. With regard to the reply to the fifth enquiry some explanation is requisite. A register is kept of all the octavo and most of the quarto volumes taken out for readers, of all the volumes from special and separate collections, and of all the MSS.; but no account is kept of the folios and other books on the ground-floor of the great room, which are accessible to readers themselves, and frequently used by them without the help of the assistants. Consequently, any return of the number of readers entered on the register would not adequately represent the whole number of students who use the Library, although, of course, it would, with a margin for allowance, afford a very fair approximation. No record, however, of separate visits of readers is kept, as distinct from the books required; so that although a reader may be at work for days or weeks together, yet, if he continue to use only the same books, one entry alone will be made of his name.

A.D. 1850.

The Hebrew collection was still further increased in this year by the purchase of sixty-two MSS., of which fifty-seven had been brought from Italy; and in 1851, by the purchase of some printed books collected by Dr. Isaac L. Auerbach, of Berlin, who had recently deceased. Every year about this time[347] saw additions to this branch of the Library, made chiefly through the agency of the late Mr. Asher, the well-known Jewish bookseller of Berlin, and also through the late Hirsch Edelmann, a learned Rabbi, who was for years a frequent reader in the Bodleian, from whence he commenced the publication of a series of extracts (see under the year 1693). Mr. Edelmann died a few years since in Germany. A series of works illustrating the history, civil and ecclesiastical, the geography, &c. of Hungary, Transylvania, Croatia, and other neighbouring provinces of the Austrian Empire, amounting to 400 volumes, was purchased for £78; and a similar but much larger collection, relating to the history of Poland, numbering no fewer than 1200 volumes, was purchased for £366. Three hundred and twenty volumes of early printed works, some of which were fine specimens of incunabula, were obtained at the sale of the duplicates from the Royal Library at Munich. It was announced at the end of the Annual Catalogue that a special list of these, together with a catalogue of the Hebrew MSS. noticed above, and of the Hungarian and Polish collections, would be printed and circulated in the following year; this, however, was not done.

A series of 600 English sermons, printed between 1600 and 1720, bound separately, was purchased for £59.

Various specimens of the first beginning of printing in one of the Friendly Islands, Vavau, consisting of the Bible in the Tonga language, and of several elementary books, were presented by Capt. Sir Jas. Everard Home, R.N. as also some elementary books printed at Apea by the natives, under the direction of the Missionaries, for the use of the natives of the Navigators' Islands.

Dukes' Shropshire Collections. See 1841.

A.D. 1851.

At the sale of the books of the poet Gray, by Messrs. Sotheby and Wilkinson, on Aug. 28, his copies of Clarendon and of Burnet's Own Times (vol. i.), with many MSS. notes written by him in the margins, were bought for £49 10s. and £2 18s. respectively[348]. Perfect specimens of facsimiles, which would defy detection, were obtained for the completion of the Library copy of Coverdale's Bible; being pen-and-ink copies of the title, from Lord Leicester's copy, and of the map of Palestine, from Lord Jersey's copy, executed with admirable skill by the late well-known facsimilist, Mr. J. Harris.

A Supplemental Catalogue of the printed books, comprehending all the accessions which had been made during the years 1835-1847, was published in this year, in one folio volume, under the editorship of the Rev. Alfred Hackman, M.A., by whom the greater part of the earlier Catalogue had been compiled, as mentioned at p. 268.

On March 27, Convocation voted an addition of £50 per annum to the stipends of the Sub-librarians.

Recovery of Pococke MS. 32. See p. 81.

Malone's Correspondence. See p. 232.

A.D. 1852.

In the Report of the University Commission, which was issued in this year, various suggestions were embodied which had been made by several witnesses. Sir Edmund Head renewed his plan of allowing books to be taken out of the Library by readers, and was supported by the opinions of Professors Wall and Jowett; but the proposal was met with the strong counter-testimony of Mr. H. E. Strickland[349], Prof. Vaughan, Dr. W. A. Greenhill (at that time a constant reader in the Library), Prof. Donkin, Mr. E. S. Foulkes, and others. And the Commissioners were not prepared to report in favour of a plan which would at once lessen what was described as being one of the great advantages of the place, namely, the certainty of finding within its walls every book which it possessed. At the same time, they were disposed to recommend a relaxation in some instances of the strictness of the rule, and concurred in a suggestion made by Dr. Macbride and Mr. Storey Maskelyne, that duplicates should be allowed to circulate. Most, however, of the suggestions for extension of facilities to readers, as well as of the reasons alleged for alteration of system, have now been answered by the opening (through the liberality of the Radcliffe Trustees) of the Radcliffe Library as a noble reading-room for both day and evening. As the hours during which the Library may be used extend now, in consequence of this addition, from nine a.m. to ten p.m., it is at once apparent that the Bodleian presents greater advantages to students than can anywhere else be enjoyed; to which is to be added the readiness and quickness (specially testified to, in 1852, by Dr. Greenhill) with which, under all ordinary circumstances, readers are supplied with the books which they require. The Commissioners in their Report called attention to a suggestion of Sir Henry Bishop, then Professor of Music, for the establishment of a classified musical library, which should comprehend, not merely the music received by the Bodleian from Stationers' Hall, but all superior foreign music as well, of every school and every age. Such collections the Professor said were only to be found at Munich and Vienna.

The Report and Evidence upon the recommendations of the Commissioners, which were issued by the Hebdomadal Board in the following year, did not differ widely in testimony or suggestions from those of the Commission. Dr. Pusey and Mr. Marriott agreed in deprecating the allowing removal of books, speaking (as did several of the witnesses before the Commission) from actual experience as constant readers in the place; and Dr. Bandinel mentioned, in a paper of observations which he contributed, the fact that he had been told by the Librarian of the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh that between 6,000 and 7,000 volumes appeared to have been lost there from the facilities afforded to borrowers. A comparative tabular statement respecting the arrangements and rules of the libraries at Berlin, Dresden, Florence, Munich, Paris and Vienna, drawn up by Mr. Coxe from the Parliamentary Report on Libraries, which showed very favourably in behalf of the Bodleian, was subjoined by Dr. Bandinel to his evidence.

The great feature of this year was the acquisition of the Italian Library of the Count Alessandro Mortara, consisting of about 1400 volumes, choice in character and condition, for £1000. The Count, who was distinguished for his literary taste and knowledge of the literature of his own country, had, although holding the nominal office of Grand Chamberlain to the Duke of Lucca, taken up his abode in Oxford some ten years previously, on account of his desire to examine the Canonici MSS. and of his friendship with Dr. Wellesley, the late Principal of New Inn Hall. He became a daily reader in the Bodleian, where the interest which he took in the place, together with his polished, yet genuine, courtesy, made him a welcome and popular visitor. It was upon returning to Italy (where he died, June 14, 1855, at Florence), that he disposed of his valuable collection. A catalogue, compiled by himself, with occasional short notes, was issued with the purchase-catalogue for the year. He also drew up a catalogue of the Italian MSS. in the Canonici collection, which was published, in a quarto volume, in 1864. (See under 1817.)

Among miscellaneous purchases were a few volumes which were wanted to make the Library set of De Bry's Voyages complete, an imperfect copy of the Oxford Liber Festivalis (see 1691), and a large collection of Dr. Priestley's writings (believed to have been made by himself), in thirty-nine vols.

A.D. 1853.

A portion of the collection of Hebrew MSS. formed by Prof. Isaac Sam. Reggio, at Goritz, amounting to about seventy-two volumes, was purchased for £108. Many other MSS. in this class of literature occur yearly in the accounts at this time. But the great acquisition of 1853 was the Breviarium secundum regulam beati Ysidori, dictum Mozarabes, printed on vellum at Toledo, by command of Cardinal Ximenes, in 1502. £200 were given for this book, which is the only vellum copy known, and which is in most immaculate condition. It is of extreme rarity even on paper, as it is believed that only thirty-five copies were printed.

An imperfect copy of Caxton's Chronicle, 1480, was bought for £21; and a large gathering of Norfolk tracts was obtained at the sale of Mr. Dawson Turner's library.

It was in this year that Dr. Constantine Simonides visited the Library in the hope of disposing of some of the products of his Eastern ingenuity, but failed here, as also at the British Museum, although successful in most other quarters. It is much to be lamented that the talent and ability which he undoubtedly possessed in no small degree were devoted to such unworthy purpose as his history discloses. The story of his interview with Mr. Coxe, then Sub-librarian, is well known, and was reproduced in an article in the Cornhill Magazine for Oct. 1867 (p. 499); and as the version there given appears to be substantially correct, it will be sufficient to borrow it from its pages:—

'On visiting the [Bodleian Library, Mr. Simonides] showed some fragments of MSS. to Mr. Coxe, who assented to their belonging to the twelfth century. "And these, Mr. Coxe, belong to the tenth or eleventh century?" "Yes, probably." "And now, Mr. Coxe, let me show you a very ancient and valuable MS. I have for sale, and which ought to be in your Library. To what century do you consider this belongs?" "This, Mr. Simonides, I have no doubt," said Mr. Coxe, "belongs to the [latter half of the] nineteenth century." The Greek and his MS. disappeared.'

An account of this visit was given in the Athenæum for March 1, 1856, and a full narrative, including a letter from Sir F. Madden respecting the dealings with Simonides on the part of the British Museum, is to be found in S. L. Sotheby's Principia Typographica, vol. ii. pp. 133-136f[350].

A.D. 1854.

A very interesting series of eighteen autograph letters from Henry Hyde, the second Earl of Clarendon, was presented to the University by 'our honoured Lord and Chancellor,' the Earl of Derby[351]. They are best described in the following letter to the Vice-Chancellor, which accompanied the gift, and which is now bound in the same volume:—

'Knowsley, Oct. 17, 1854.

'My Dear Sir,—In looking over some old papers here the other day, I found (how they came here I know not) some original and apparently autograph letters, which appeared to me to be curious. They are private letters, addressed by Lord Clarendon, to the Earl of Abingdon, as Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, during, and on the suppression of, the Duke of Monmouth's Rebellion. I have no doubt of their genuineness; and if from the connexion of the University with the writer[352], as well as the locality, you think they would be worth depositing in the Bodleian Library, I shall have great pleasure in offering them to the acceptance of the University for that purpose; and in that case would send with them a miniature pencil drawing of the Duke of Monmouth, which is not too large to be let into the cover of the portfolio which should contain the letters, and for the authenticity of which I can so far vouch that it has been in this house since 1729, at least; since it appears in a catalogue of the pictures and engravings here which formed the collection at that time.

'I am, my dear sir, 'Yours sincerely, 'DERBY.'

The portrait in question, which is a beautifully executed drawing, in an oak frame, marked on the back, 'Duke of Monmouth, by Foster,' is now fixed, as desired, in the present morocco binding of the volume.

A collection of early editions of the Prayer-Book (including Whitchurch's May and June editions of 1549 and that of 1552), of the Metrical Psalter, and of Visitation Articles (amongst others, Edward the Sixth's Articles of 1547, and Injunctions of the same year), with a few miscellaneous books, was bought of the Rev. T. Lathbury, M.A., the well-known writer on English Church history, for £300. Various rare English books were purchased at Mr. Pickering's sale, and foreign dissertations, &c. at that of the library of Professor Godfrey Hermann, the Greek editor and commentator (who died Dec. 31, 1848), at Leipsic, in April.

A.D. 1855.

Three Greek Biblical MSS. of great antiquity were obtained from the collection of Prof. Tischendorf, being Nos. 3-5 of the volumes described in a small quarto catalogue issued (anonymously) by him of Codices Græci, &c. One of these three is of the ninth century, containing the Gospel of St. Luke, with portions of the other Gospels, which was bought for £125; another of the eighth century, containing the whole of St. Luke and St. John, bought for £140; the third, also of the eighth century, containing the greatest part of Genesis, for £108.

Rev. T. R. Brown's Dictionary, &c. printed by himself. See 1838.

A.D. 1856.

A volume containing two autograph letters of Luther was bought for £20, together with a large collection of printed books (formed by — Schneider, of Berlin,) relating to him and the German Reformation, with various editions of his works, for £300. Another volume, with some small additional papers in the Reformer's hand, was subsequently obtained.

The ever-increasing Bible collection received the addition of the very rare ed. princ. of the Bohemian Bible, printed at Prague in 1488, which was obtained for £17 10s., and a still more rare edition of the Pentateuch, with New Test., &c. printed at Wittemberg in 1529, obtained for eighteen guineas. A Roman Missal, printed 'ad longum, absque ulla requisitione,' (i. e. in a kind of 'Prayer-book-as-read' form,) Lyons, 1550, was obtained for £20. It was arranged by Nicholas Roillet, Chanter of the Church of S. Nicetius at Lyons, with the view of avoiding difficulties and delays, 'sacerdotesque expectantibus molestos reddentes, ipsosque erga dictos circumstantes scandalum generantes, qui existimant illos non solum ignaros sed nescientes quid agendum vel faciendam habeant;' and was issued with the papal imprimatur of Paul III. But as Pius V and Clem. VIII subsequently forbade any variation whatsoever from the authorized Roman form, this Missal, like the Breviary of Card. Quignones, was, with others, suppressed. And hence its rarity.

Fifty guineas were given for a very large collection of Chinese works, numbering altogether about 1100, which had been gathered by Rev. F. Evans, for some time a missionary in China. Some of the Chinese books in the Library have been subsequently examined and catalogued by Professor Summers, of King's College, London.

On May 22, a new body of Library Statutes was confirmed by Convocation, after a complete revision of the previous regulations. The principal changes, besides the omission of various obsolete requirements, were the adding five elected Curators, holding office for ten years, to the old ex officio body of eight; the providing for the removal of books to the extra-mural 'Camera,' or reading-room, about to be added; the fixing the stipend of the Librarian (including all the former fees and small separate payments) at £700, and that of the Sub-librarians at £300, and the assigning to the former a retiring pension after twenty years' service of £200, and after thirty years', of £300, and to the latter, after thirty years', of £150; and the making a few alterations with regard to the times at which the Library should be closed, these times being lessened by about one week in the course of the year.

A report from the eminent architect, Mr. G. G. Scott, on the means which might be adopted for the enlargement of the Library, and for rendering it fire-proof, dated in Dec. 1855, was printed in this year, together with one from Mr. Braidwood on the warming apparatus (see under 1821). Mr. Scott's report contained suggestions for the extension of the Library throughout the whole of the quadrangle and adjoining buildings, including the Ashmolean Museum, and proposed that the Divinity School should be assigned as a reading room, for which the great degree of light afforded by its large windows appeared peculiarly to fit it. The subsequent assignment, however, of the Radcliffe Library as a reading-room for the Library, removed the immediate necessity for any other extension. In 1858 a paper on the subject, illustrated with a plan of the Library, was printed by the late Dr. Wellesley, who, after considering the various modes then suggested for the enlargement of the Library, recommended the adoption (from the British Museum) of presses running up direct from the ground through all the floors, by which the dangers attendant upon the increase of weight of the wall-pressure would be obviated.

A.D. 1857.

A collection of manuscripts, more interesting as to their history than as to their actual contents[353], was presented by William and Hubert Hamilton, in memory, and in accordance with the wish, of their celebrated father, Sir William Hamilton. It comprises fifty-eight volumes (thirty-nine in folio, sixteen in quarto, and three in octavo) from the library of the Carthusian Monastery of Erfurt, famous as the place of Luther's early abode. A short catalogue of them, by Joh. Broad, was printed at Berlin in 1841, with a prefatory notice, from which we learn that they were preserved at Erfurt until 1805, when the library was broken up and dispersed on the occupation of the city by the French army, who stabled their horses in the place where the books were deposited, and burned many of them for fuel, while others were carried away and secreted with a view to their safety. Some of the latter were bought by the Count de Buelow, on whose death they were purchased from the subsequent possessors by Broad, and finally sold by him to Sir W. Hamilton. 'Nunc in eam terram demigrant,' says the bibliopolist, 'quæ, quodcunque alicujus pretii est aut materialium aut spiritualium rerum, in suo gremio accumulare a Providentia Divina destinata videtur.' Another collection of MSS., from the same library at Erfurt, was on sale by Mr. J. M. Stark, the well-known bookseller (now of London), at Hull, in 1855, who issued a small catalogue of them in duodecimo.

A valuable collection of Italian and Spanish MSS., amounting to about forty-six volumes, came to the Library by the bequest of Rev. Joseph Mendham, M.A., of Sutton Coldfield, who died Nov. 1, 1856. The most important part of these is a series of twenty-eight volumes relating to the Council of Trent, which were purchased at the sale of the Earl of Guildford's library in 1830 by Thorpe, the bookseller, for £35, and re-sold by him to Mr. Mendham in 1832 for fifty guineas. It was chiefly from the materials afforded by these that Mr. Mendham drew up his Memoirs of the Council of Trent, published in 1834. They are described in Thorpe's Catalogue of MSS. on sale in 1831, and in the preface to Mr. Mendham's book.

On June 18, the Rev. Robert Payne Smith, M.A., of Pembroke College, was appointed an Assistant Sub-librarian for the Oriental department, in consequence of the increasing infirmities of the aged senior Sub-librarian, Mr. Reay.

A.D. 1858.

On Oct. 30, an offer made by the Trustees of the Ashmolean Museum for the transfer of the printed books, coins, and MSS. there contained to the Bodleian, in order to facilitate the devotion of a part of the building to the purposes of an Examination School, was accepted by the Curators; but a similar offer with regard to the antiquities was declined. The latter consequently remain in their old repository, but the collections in Natural History were transferred to the New Museum. It was not, however, until 1860, that the books were actually received into the Library, where they now fill one small room. Altogether they amount to upwards of 3700 volumes, forming five different series. First are those of Elias Ashmole himself, numbering originally 2175, but reduced by losses before the transfer to 2136, of which about 850 are MSS[354]. This collection is extremely rich in heraldic and genealogical matter, together with an abundance of astrology. The printed books are chiefly scientific and historical; these, with the books in the following collections, are now in process of incorporation into the new General Catalogue of the Library. A list of the MSS. is given in Bernard's catalogue, A.D. 1697; but a very elaborate and minute account, forming a thick quarto volume, was drawn up by Mr. W. H. Black, the well-known antiquary, and published in 1845. As this, however, was destitute of an index, it remained comparatively useless until 1866, when a full Index, edited by the writer of this volume, was published under the direction of the Delegates of the University Press.

The next collection is that of Anthony à Wood, containing about 130 MSS. and 970 printed volumes[355], which were bequeathed to the Museum by the owner on his death in Nov. 1695. The former are of extreme value for the history of Oxford and the neighbourhood; among the latter are most curious sets of the pamphlets of the time, with the ballads, fly-sheets, chap-books, almanacks, &c. just such 'unconsidered trifles' as most men suffer to perish in the using, but a few, like Wood, lay by for the amusement and information of future generations. There are also seven volumes of his own correspondence, including letters from Dugdale, Evelyn, &c. Of the MSS. a list is to be found in the old Catalogue of 1697; a fuller and better one, compiled by William Huddesford, M.A., the Keeper of the Museum, was printed in a thin octavo volume, in 1761, which was reprinted by Sir Thomas Phillips, at Middlehill, Worcestershire, in 1824. There are also bundles of charters and deeds, chiefly monastic, but nearly all more or less mutilated or injured by damp and dirt, so as to be partially useless.

The third collection is that of Dr. Martin Lister, physician to Queen Anne, who died Feb. 2, 1711/2. Besides his books, he was the donor of various other gifts to the Museum, in return for which he was created M.D. of Oxford, in 1683. The books are chiefly medical and scientific, and number in a written catalogue 1451 volumes (including thirty-two MSS.), but thirty-five of these were missing when the transfer from the Museum was made.

The collections of Sir William Dugdale, which form a fourth series, number forty-eight volumes. A list of these is in the old Catalogue of 1697.

In the fifth place there are the MSS. of the well-known antiquary, John Aubrey. These are about twenty in number, of which fifteen are in his own hand, and are described in Britton's Life of him, printed for the Wilts Topographical Society, pp. 88-123. Collections for the history of Wiltshire, entitled Hypomnemata Antiquaria, form one of Aubrey's own works[356], but unfortunately the second volume (marked with the letter B) is missing. It was borrowed from the Museum, in 1703, by William Aubrey, the author's brother, and was never returned. A paper on the subject was inserted by Rev. J. E. Jackson, in 1860, in vol. vii. of the Wiltshire Archæological Magazine, and a reward for information as to the present locale of the missing volume was subsequently publicly offered, but to no purpose, by the same gentleman. A small MS. of Horæ, which had belonged to Sir Thomas Pope, the founder of Trinity College, is among Aubrey's books. A MS. of Matthew of Westminster, (now e Mus. 149) had been given to the Library by Aubrey, in 1675, through Ant. à Wood.

There are also five or six MSS. which were given to the Museum by William Kingsley before 1700. Some few others, which were given by E. Lhuyd and Dr. W. Borlase, together with a volume of W. Huddesford's correspondence, are now incorporated with the Ashmole MSS., and are described in Mr. Black's catalogue, as well as the latest gift of this kind which was made to the Museum, viz. a little volume of Private Thoughts, by Bishop Wilson, of Sodor and Man, which was presented in 1824 by Lieut. Brett, R.N.

Thirty-nine choice Persian and Arabic MSS., which had formed part of Sir Gore Ouseley's collection, were bought from his son, Sir Fred. Gore Ouseley, Bart., the present Professor of Music, for £500. The rest of the collection came by gift, as will be seen under the following year.

At the sale (in June-Aug.) of the library of Dr. Bliss, a large number of volumes (still kept separate) were purchased, including a volume of original letters of Charles I, Clarendon, &c., and poems by Lord Fairfax (see p. 97); together with many from the series of books of Characters collected by Dr. Bliss, and from his like series, both of books printed in London shortly before the fire of 1666, and of books printed at Oxford. The Library obtained by his bequest his own interleaved copy of the Athenæ, with many MS. additions[357].

A copy of the octavo Bible printed by Barker in 1631 (not 1632, as generally said), in which the word 'not' was omitted in the seventh commandment, was bought for £40. For this error (which looks very much like a wicked jest) the printer was fined 1000 marks by the High Commission Court[358], and the edition was rigidly suppressed, all the copies which could be found being condemned to the flames.

Another purchase was a large collection of political tracts in seventy volumes, chiefly relating to foreign affairs, which had been formed by Mr. — Hamilton, of the Diplomatic Service.

A.D. 1859.

Numerous MSS., chiefly classical, patristic, or Italian, were purchased at the sale of M. Libri's collection in London, in March. Amongst them was a Sacramentary, of the commencement of the ninth century, which was obtained for £43; and a copy of S. Cyprian's Epistles, also of the ninth century, for £84. Four volumes of the correspondence of Scholars at home and abroad with E. H. Barker, of Thetford, were also added to the Library from the sale of Mr. Dawson Turner's library. They are now numbered Bodl. MSS. 1003-1006. And the munificent gift of a very valuable collection of 422 volumes of Arabic and Persian MSS. was received from J. B. Elliott, Esq., of Calcutta. These chiefly consist of the MSS. which Sir Gore Ouseley (who died Nov. 18, 1844,) obtained during his diplomatic service in the East, commencing his collection when stationed at Lucknow, and completing it while ambassador in Persia; of which Mr. Elliott had been the purchaser. A small remaining part had previously been bought by the Library, as noted under 1858. In 1860, Mr. Elliott added to his former gift a series of Eastern coins, and various handsome specimens of Eastern weapons; the latter are now exhibited in a case in the Picture Gallery. Five Sanscrit MSS. were received from Fitz-Edward Hall, Esq., of Saugur, who, at the same time, expressed his munificent intention of presenting hereafter the whole of his large collection.

In this year, after considerable enquiry had been made respecting different modes of cataloguing, and Mr. Coxe had reported on the arrangements adopted in the great libraries at home and some of those abroad, it was resolved by the Curators, upon that gentleman's recommendation, that the plan in use in the British Museum should be immediately introduced, for the purpose of commencing a new General Catalogue of all the printed books (excepting the Hebrew, of which a separate catalogue had been made) in the whole Library. By this plan, three or five copies, according as the case may be that of a single or double entry, are written simultaneously on prepared paper, as with a manifold-copier, the transcribers writing out in this way the entries of titles previously examined and corrected by the cataloguers. The separate titles are then mounted, arranged in alphabetical order, and bound in volumes. By this plan two copies of the Catalogue are at once written with the labour of one, while surplus slips are also provided for the formation hereafter of a classified catalogue as well. The use of the Catalogue, however, is thus confined to the Library itself; and the literary world in general must still refer to the printed Catalogues of 1843 and 1851. A commencement of the new undertaking was made in this year; but it was not until 1862 that the present staff (as to numbers) of assistants was employed, and the work completely organized. At present the letters A-E, G-H are catalogued; and the extent to which the whole Catalogue will run may be estimated from the fact that the letters B, C, and G fill sixty, sixty-five, and thirty-four volumes respectively. All the books are seen and examined separately; anonymous authors are, if possible, traced out; many errors in previous catalogues are corrected, and the number of entries is very largely increased.

A.D. 1860.

The resignation of the Librarianship by Dr. Bandinel, after forty-seven years of office in the capacity of Head, and a total of fifty of work in the Library, forms a leading feature in the Bodley Annals of this year. At the age of seventy-nine the natural infirmities of age were felt by himself to be incapacitating him for the duties which he had so long and so regularly discharged, while at the same time the continually increasing pressure of work and enlargement of the Library, made those duties much more onerous than they had been even a quarter of a century before. And so he resolved to withdraw at Michaelmas from the place to which he had been so heartily and entirely devoted, and which under his headship had been doubled in contents. The parting was not without a great struggle; it was the abandoning what had been the cherished occupation of his life, and with the ceasing of that occupation he felt a too-certain foreboding (which he expressed to the writer of these pages) that the life would soon cease as well. A well-merited tribute was paid to him by Convocation in June, in both increasing the amount of his statutable pension, so that he retired on a full stipend, and in specially enrolling him among the Curators of the Library. But he was seldom seen in the old place after his resignation; on two or three occasions only did he again mount the long flight of stairs which had of late tried both his strength and breath severely; and then, when only seven months had elapsed, on Feb. 6, 1861, he passed away. And little more than a fortnight previously, on January 20, his old colleague, Professor Reay, departed this life, at the age of seventy-eight. He also had retired on his pension at Michaelmas, 1860, and had been succeeded as Oriental Sub-librarian by Rev. R. Payne Smith (Assistant-librarian in the same department since 1857), whose appointment was confirmed by Convocation on Nov. 22. Memoirs of Dr. Bandinel and Mr. Reay are given in the Gentleman's Magazine, (1861, pp. 463-6), which do justice, in the case of the former, to his watchful solicitude for the Library and his thorough acquaintance with it; and in the case of the latter (evidently from intimate personal acquaintance), to his great kindliness of heart, and simplicity and gentleness of character.