Note 258 — The Library.

Warton, in his second Dissertation, says that "great multitudes of their (the Jews) books fell into the hands of Roger Bacon;" and refers to Wood's Hist. et Antiquit. Univ. Oxon., vol. i., 77, 132—where I find rather a slight notification of it—but, in the genuine edition of this latter work, published by Mr. Gutch, vol. i., p. 329, it is said: "At their (the Jews) expulsion, divers of their tenements that were forfeited to the king, came into the hands of William Burnell, Provost of Wells; and their books (for many of them were learned) to divers of our scholars; among whom, as is verily supposed, Roger Bacon was one: and that he furnished himself with such Hebrew rarities, that he could not elsewhere find. Also that, when he died, he left them to the Franciscan library at Oxon, which, being not well understood in after-times, were condemned to moths and dust!" Weep, weep, kind-hearted bibliomaniac, when thou thinkest upon the fate of these poor Hebrew MSS.!