William Dunn Macray

“ But the present narrative, while it embraces a wider range, is, at the same time, independent throughout of all that have preceded it, being largely compiled from sources available only to those who are familiar with the stores of the Library and habituated to their use, as well as from private accounts and papers, for access to which, as for other kind assistance, the writer is indebted to the Librarian. Yet it is only as an attempt that the volume asks to be received and judged; for a work of this kind cannot at once attain completeness. ”

“ The first stone of the western end of the Library, with the Convocation House beneath, was laid on May 13, 1634; it was fitted up with shelves and ready for use by 1640. Selden's books were placed here in 1659. The hideous great west window is a monument of the bad taste of the time; it is much to be hoped that it may some day be replaced by a window more worthy of its conspicuous position, and affording a less marked contrast with its opposite neighbour, the noble east window erected by Bodley himself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Himself a successful student, he became eager to help others to whom thus the advantages of a library were denied; and, for a while without fee or reward, undertook a public Greek lecture in the Hall of Merton College, to which college he had been elected in 1563 [16] . And when, after years thus spent in academic pursuits, Thomas Bodley betook himself to diplomatic service abroad, he still, amidst all the distractions of foreign and domestic politics, preserved his affection for the scenes and the studies of his early familiarity. ”

“ On April 6 died Richard Rawlinson, D.C.L., a Bishop among the Non-jurors, notwithstanding that he passed in the world as a layman. From the time of Bodley, Laud, and Selden, he was the greatest benefactor the Library had known; and his only rivals since his own day have been Gough and Douce. In point of numbers, his donation of MSS. far exceeded all. From the short autobiographical notice of himself, given in his own collections for a continuation of the Athenæ Oxon. ”

“ 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 ”

“ In May of this year died Henry Hyde, Lord Cornbury, son of Henry Hyde, Earl of Rochester, and great-grandson of the great Earl of Clarendon. He had made a will bequeathing all the Chancellor's MSS. to the University of Oxford, to be printed at their press, and the profits to be devoted to a school for riding and other athletic exercises in the University, should such an institution be accepted, or else to other approved uses. Dying before his father, through the effects of an accident, his bequest was void, as he was never actually in possession of the papers to which it referred ”

“ 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 young man of this place is about making a Catalogue of all the singular books in this place, in the College libraries as well as the Bodleian.... We have a young man in this place, his name is Curtis, who was an apprentice to me, who has hitherto only dealt in books of curiosities, in which he is greatly skilled, superior in many respects to De Bure, Ames, or his continuator. [Pg 201] He has been employed five or six years in the Bodleian Library, and since at Wadham, Queen's and Balliol. ”

“ The Library was largely enriched with books which were then modern, in which it appears to have been very deficient, by the legacy of the library of Rev. Charles Godwyn, M.A., Fellow of Balliol College. The collection, which is still in the main kept undivided (although a few folio and quarto volumes are placed in the general class marked Art.) , consists chiefly of works in English and general history, civil and ecclesiastical, published in the eighteenth century, and includes besides the later Benedictine editions of the Fathers. There is also a series of theological and literary pamphlets ”

“ Strangers are admitted upon being introduced by a Master of Arts or higher graduate, or upon producing sufficient letters of introduction; but every facility is afforded to strangers who make personal application to the Librarian for permission to make researches for any definite and special purpose.
The Library is under the control of a Board of Curators, consisting of the Vice-Chancellor, the two Proctors, the five Regius Professors of Divinity, Civil Law, Medicine, Hebrew, and Greek, and five Members of Congregation, elected by that House for ten years. ”

“ Francis Junius, born at Heidelberg in 1589, who had passed a large part of his life in England as librarian to that Howard Earl of Arundel who collected the marbles which go under his name at Oxford, as well as the MSS. similarly entitled, which are preserved in the British Museum and at Heralds' College, bequeathed to the Library, on his decease at Windsor in this year, all his Anglo-Saxon MSS. and his own life-long collections bearing on the philology of the Northern nations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I am weary of the toil and drudgery of daily attendance all times and weathers; and secondly, that I may have my time free to myself to digest and finish my papers and collections upon hard places of Scripture, and to fit them for the press [158] ; seing that Lectures (though we must attend upon them) will do but little good, hearers being scarce and practicers more scarce.
'I should have left the Library more compleat and better furnish'd but that the building of the Elaboratory [159] did so exhaust the University mony, that no books were bought in severall years after it. ”

“ James, in his Preface, gives as his reason for this course, the frequent difficulty (already experienced even in so small a collection) of deciding to what class a book should be assigned, and the inconvenience resulting from division of the works of the same author. He points out the value of the Library to foreigners, who can there consult 16,000 volumes for six hours a day, excepting Sundays and [Pg 47] holidays [72] . As instances of the copiousness of its stores, he mentions that there are to be found above 100 folio and quarto volumes on Military Art, in Greek, Latin, and other languages ”

“ The Syriac MSS. of the well-known Orientalist, Dr. Bernstein, were purchased by the Delegates of the Press, with a view to assisting in the great work of a Syriac Lexicon, upon which Mr. (now Dr.) Payne Smith was (and still is) engaged.
The printing of the Annual Catalogues of purchases was discontinued, after the issue of the Catalogue for this year. Written registers are now kept in the Library of all the books bought in the course of each year; and only a list of benefactors, with the statement of accounts, is annually printed for circulation in the University and amongst donors. ”

“ He, doubtless, was the donor of the volume. Susannah Hall's daughter, Elizabeth, was married to a Thomas Nash, who died in 1647; but though he died without issue, the initials 'T. N.' may well stand for some member of the family who bore the same names. That, therefore, a Hall should possess the book, and subsequently give it to (most probably) a Nash, goes far to establish its genuineness as a Shakespeare relic. ”

“ John Davies, of Camberwell, the storekeeper at Deptford dockyard, caused a chair to be made out of the remains of the ship, 'The Golden Hind,' in which Sir F. Drake accomplished his voyage round the world, which had been kept at Deptford until the timber decayed, and presented it to the Library. It stands now in the Picture Gallery, beside a chair which is said (but on what [Pg 95] authority is not known) to have belonged to Henry VIII [127] , and bears a plate on which are inscribed some verses, in Latin and English, by Abraham Cowley. ”

“ The closing year of these memorials is distinguished by the acquisition of a volume described by Archdeacon Cotton, in his Typographical Gazetteer, as being 'of the very highest rarity.' It is a fine copy of the Breviarium Illerdense, printed at Lerida, in Spain, in 1479, by Henry Botel. Besides being remarkable from its rarity, there is special interest attaching to the volume from the fact that it was printed at the sole expense of the bell-ringer of the cathedral! ”

“ On other festival days, being days for which services are appointed in the Prayer-Book, and on which Sermons are, consequently, preached before the University, as well as on the days of Latin Litany and Sermon (viz. the first day of each Term) , the Library is opened when the Sermon is over, i.e. ordinarily at 11 o'clock.
All graduate members of the University have the right to use the Library. Undergraduates are admitted upon bringing letters of recommendation from their Tutors. ”

“ The valuable collection of Oriental MSS. formed by the celebrated traveller, James Bruce, of Kinnaird, was purchased for [Pg 267] £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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Another object of interest among the maps is a piece of tapestry, in three fragments, containing portions of the counties of Hereford, Salop, Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Gloucestershire, Middlesex, &c. They are said by Gough, in a MS. note in his collections for a third edition of his Topography, to be parts of the three great maps of the Midland Counties, formerly at Mr. Sheldon's house at Weston, Long Compton, Warwickshire, which are the earliest specimens of tapestry weaving in England, the art having been introduced by William Sheldon, who died in 1570. ”

“ Opie, and—The Antiquary! The far wiser plan is now carried out in the Bodleian of rejecting nothing; even the elementary works that do not need entering in the Catalogue, are so kept that access can be had to them at all times and examination made; and the music is from time to time sorted and bound. And this plan was commenced in the [Pg 228] year of which we are writing; for, (in consequence, of course, of this return being called for by the House of Commons,) the Curators ordered, on May 27, that all publications sent from Stationers' Hall should in future be entered and preserved. ”

“ A facsimile from one page is to be found in Shaw's Illuminated Ornaments, 1833, with a description by Sir F. Madden. It belongs to the Douce collection.
In a separate glass case adjoining the preceding (in which was formerly exhibited a fine specimen of the typography of the Royal Press at Berlin, in a German Bible given by the King of Prussia) is now displayed a fine Bible printed at Glasgow in 1862, in two folio volumes, and illustrated with very beautiful photographs by Frith, which was called the Queen's Bible from its being dedicated by permission to Her Majesty. ”

“ It has been universally supposed that his voluminous and invaluable collections came en masse subsequently to his death, but the Library Register shows that Oxford was indebted to him for a considerable and important portion during his life. In this year we find that he sent the papers which relate to the life of the great Duke of Ormonde, with a large number of others bearing on the history of Ireland from the time of Queen Elizabeth, comprised in thirty volumes folio and quarto. ”

“ Prince, the Oxford bookseller:—
'Our Bodleian Library is putting into good order. It has been already one year in hand. Some one, two or three of the Curators work at it daily, and several assistants. The revenue from the tax on the Members of the University is about £460 per annum, which has existed 12 years. This has increased the Library so much that it must be attended to, and a new Catalogue put in hand. They have lately bought all the expensive foreign publications. ”

“ A beautiful copy of the Koran which had been in the library of Tippoo Sahib (now exhibited in the glass case near the door) was presented, together with another MS. from the same collection, by the East India Company. Dibdin speaks of it as a work 'upon which caligraphy seems to have exhausted all its powers of intricacy and splendour,' and adds the following description: [Pg 209] —
'The preservation of it is perfect, and the beauty of the binding, especially of the interior ornaments, is quite surprising. ”

“ The proportion was singularly overestimated in 1819, for Clarke, in his Repertorium Bibliographicum published in that year (p. 68) , states that the Library contains upwards of 160,000 volumes, of which 30,000 are manuscripts! The annual rate of ordinary increase of printed books at present, apart, of course, from the accession of any entire collection or special purchase, may be reckoned at about 3000 volumes, exclusive of magazines, of which two-thirds come from Stationers' Hall under the provisions of the Copyright Act. ”

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

“ Hudson (of which he makes frequent mention) increased during this year. He was reported to the Vice-Chancellor in April for absence from the Library through his duties as Bedel, by reason of which readers had difficulty in obtaining books lodged above stairs. To this complaint his reply was that he was not bound, as Second Librarian, exclusively to do such 'drudgery,' but that Dr. Hudson was himself obliged by statute to deliver out such books as were under lock-and-key, and books in quarto and octavo, either personally or by his own special deputy. ”

“ A few of the panels of this roof have been preserved, one bearing the figures of two cats, which used to be an object of interest to juvenile visitors, and a series bearing the letters which compose Sir Thomas Bodley's name, together with a portrait of him upon a centre panel. A high-backed arm-chair, the Librarian's seat of office in the Library, was formed out of oak from [Pg 16] the roof, and an engraving hangs in the Gallery which represents the room before its change for the worse. ”

“ 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. ”