A.D. 1716.

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

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

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

[191]Letters by Eminent Persons, i. 271, 300. [On p. 270 forTurner, readTanner.]

[192]Hearne'sMS. Diary, liii. 148.

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

Arms in the window.See1610.

[193]Hearne'sDiary, lix. 141;Reliqq. Hearn.i. 366.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hudson's successor, Bowles, had previously been his Assistant for some years, and as, while Hearne was Under-keeper, he had come into sharp collision with that irascible antiquary (see under1715), his election now was a matter of sore annoyance to the latter. Hearne dwells upon it in hisDiarywith great bitterness and at great length: 'Competitors were Mr. Hall, of Queen's, and that pert conceited coxcomb Mr. Bowles (who is not yet Regent Master) of Oriel College. Bowles carried it by a great majority, having about 160 votes, and Mr. Hall about 77. I think it the most scandalous election that I have yet heard of in Oxford.' Of his supporters he speaks thus:—'Charlett and such rogues, who contrived to bring in that most compleat coxcombBowles to be Head-Librarian, to the immortal scandal of all that were concern'd in it[195].' And even, when ten years later he records Bowles' death, he indulges, in forgetfulness of charity to the departed, in the following strain: 'Of this gentleman (a most vile, wicked wretch) frequent mention hath been made in these Memoirs. He took the degree of M.A. Oct. 12, 1719. 'Tis incredible what damage he did to the Bodl. Library, by putting it into disorder and confusion, which before, by the great pains I had taken in it (&c.), was the best regulated library in the world[196].' Bowles' name never occurs in theDiarywithout some opprobrious epithet being attached to it, which may be accounted for partly from his having taken the oaths of allegiance after declaring he would never do it (a defection which Hearne never forgave in any one), but chiefly also from his having personally excluded Hearne from the Library, when the latter refused to resign his keys in 1715, by procuring new locks and keys, which he kept in his own custody.

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

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

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

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

[196]Vol. cxxii. p. 158.

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

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

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

Visitors' Fees.See1713.

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

Sir Godfrey Kneller presented his own portrait to the Gallery.

[197]Hearne'sDiary, xci. 196.

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

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

Chrysanthus, Patriarch of Jerusalem.See1715.

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

[198]Vol. xcvi. p. 101.

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

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

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

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

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

Sale of Duplicates.See1745.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[204]Gent. Magaz.1732, p. 583.

[205]None of them, however, are now in the state described in a note inLetters by Eminent Persons, ii. 89, where it is said that many 'have received so much injury as to be altogether useless, crumbling into pieces on the slightest touch.' Perhaps the unique copy ofThe Children of the Chapel Stript and Whiptwhich Warton says was amongst Tanner's books, but which has never appeared in any Bodleian Catalogue, may have perished from this cause. For a notice of the disappearance of two of Churchyard's tracts, see under the year1659, p. 81.

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

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

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

[206]Pref. toChron. de Dunstaple, p. xii.Autobiogr.p. 11, &c.

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

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

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

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

In this year died Nathaniel Crynes, M.A., Fellow of St. John's College and Superior Bedel of Arts, to which latter office he had been elected Jan. 26, 1715/16[209]. He bequeathed to the Library all such books out of his own valuable collection as it did not already possess, the rest going to his own College. His books in octavo and smaller sizes, with a few quartos, are still kept distinct, under his own name, and number 968 volumes,many of which are of great rarity. Seven MSS. were presented by him in 1736. In 1727 he purchased some duplicates from the Library, for £3 16s.8d., and a story, told by Warton in connection with this purchase, of his fortunately rejecting books which bore the name of Milton, will be found under the year1620. There is a biographical notice of him in J. Haslewood's Introduction to Juliana Barnes'Boke of St. Alban's, Lond. 1810, pp. 86-7. In the Accounts for 1746 occur special payments to Fr. Wise, and to one Mr. Gerard Bodley, for cataloguing and arranging Crynes' books.

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

Trott'sClavis Linguæ Sanctæ. See1686.

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

[210]Memorandum by Owen himself, in reply to a question from Rawlinson, Rawl. MS. C. 989, f. 142. This volume contains a collection of letters to Owen, chiefly from Browne Willis and Rawlinson, between the years 1748-1756. It affords proof that Owen was what his correspondents would call an 'honest' man,i.e.a Jacobite. In one letter, Willis sends him a Latin inscription in praise of Flora Macdonald, which he says is 'on a fair lady's picture, in an honest gentl. seat in the province of St. David's;' in another, Rawlinson sends him, as a contribution to the Oxford collection of verses on the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales, this Jacobite epitaph:—'Here lies Fred., Down among the dead;Had it been his Father, Most had much rather;Had it been his Brother, Better than any other;Had it been a Sister, More would have mist her;Wer't the whole generation, Happy for the nation;But since it is only Fred., There is no more to be said.'

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

[211]Rawl. MS. C. 989.

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

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

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

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