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

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

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

A.D. 1790.

A very large number of _Editiones principes_ and other early-printed books were purchased at the sale at Amsterdam of the library of P. A.

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

120 were received for duplicates sold to Messrs. Chapman and King.

Other small receipts from similar sales are found under the years 1793, 1794 and 1804.

A.D. 1791.

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

p. 949.

A.D. 1792.

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

A.D. 1793.

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

A.D. 1794.

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

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

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

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

A.D. 1795.

A brief list (filling sixty small octavo pages) was printed at the Clarendon Press, of the _Editiones principes_, the fifteenth-century books, and the Aldines, then in the Library. The name of the compiler does not appear. It is ent.i.tled, 'Not.i.tia editionum quoad libros Hebr., Gr. et Lat. quae vel primariae, vel saec. xv. impressae, vel Aldinae, in Bibliotheca Bodleiana adservantur.'

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

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

The Curators renewed a request, made ineffectually some time before, that the several Colleges would make out returns for the Library of all such books in their own collections as did not appear in the Bodl.

Catalogue. In the year 1801 they acknowledged the receipt of such lists from Magdalen[270], Balliol, Exeter, and Jesus; Oriel sent a list subsequently (in 1808?); but these were all that were ever forwarded.

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

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

A.D. 1796.

A few _incunabula_ and Aldines were purchased at Gottingen.

The annual list of donations was, for the first time, printed in this year. It does not include, however, a large gift which was partly received now, the presentation having been made in the year preceding.

It was the gift by Rev. Dr. Nath. Bridges of the MSS. collections made by Mr. John Bridges for his _History of Northamptonshire_. They number thirty-seven volumes in folio, eight in quarto, and one in octavo; and consist chiefly of extracts from Public Records and from the Episcopal Registers of Lincoln, the volumes in quarto containing Church notes for the several parishes. Some account of them is given in Mr. Whalley's preface to vol. i. of Bridges' _History_, published in 1791.

A.D. 1798.

The distinguished historical antiquary, Sir Henry Ellis, D.C.L., was appointed in this year, by his friend the Librarian, to be one of the a.s.sistant-librarians; commencing thus, while still an undergraduate Fellow of St. John's (which College he had entered in 1796) the studies and pursuits which eventually led to the post, so long and honourably held by him, of Princ.i.p.al Librarian and Head of the British Museum. In a letter with which the author of this volume was recently favoured by him ('_jam senior, sed mente virens_,') Sir Henry mentions that the Rev.

Henry Hervey Baber, of All Souls' College (B.A. 1799, M.A. 1805), who was afterwards one of his colleagues in the Museum, and who now (_aetat._ 92) is Vicar of Stretham, in the Isle of Ely, was his senior in the Bodleian, as Coadjutor-under-librarian, by a year or two. In consequence of the insufficiency of the statutable staff, the place of the one Under-librarian was at this time, and subsequently, shared by two occupants. In 1800 Sir H. Ellis signed, in conjunction with Mr. Price, the return printed in the first Record Commission Report relative to the Historical MSS. possessed by the Library.

A.D. 1799.

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

A.D. 1800.

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

A.D. 1801.

A large and valuable collection of MS. and printed music was received, at the beginning of this year or the close of the preceding, by the bequest of Rev. Osborne Wight, M.A., formerly a Fellow of New College, who died Feb. 6, 1800[271]. The MSS. number about 190 volumes. They contain anthems, &c., by Arnold, Bishop, Blow, Boyce, Croft, Greene, Purcell, &c; a large number of the works of Drs. Philip and William Hayes; with very many madrigals and motetts by early Italian and English composers, and some of Handel's compositions. The printed volumes consist chiefly of the original folio editions of Handel, Arnold's and Boyce's collections, and the works of Playford, Purcell, Croft, Greene, and other English composers. A MS. Catalogue of the whole was made by Rev. H. E. Havergal, M.A., about 1846, when the collection was put in order. The Library also possesses full band and voice parts of several of the odes and other compositions by both Philip and William Hayes.

Besides his books Mr. Wight also bequeathed 100 in the 3 per cents. 'to defray expenses.' Few additions have been made in the cla.s.s of old music since his gift. Some rare sets of madrigals have been purchased, specially, in 1856, those of Morley, Watson, Weelkes, Wilbye, and Yonge, for 24 14_s._ 6_d._; Mr. Vincent Novello gave, in 1849, MSS. of Handel's _Te Deum in D_, and Greene's anthem, 'Ponder my words,' and in the following year a MS. of part of the ancient Gregorian Ma.s.s, 'De Angelis,' harmonized by Sam. Wesley, in 1812; the Professor of Music, Sir F. Ouseley, Bart., gave some French _Cantates_ in 1856; and two or three volumes have been added by the present writer.

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

A.D. 1803.

An Arabic MS., in seven volumes, written in 1764-5, and containing what is rarely met with, a complete collection of the Thousand and One Tales of the _Arabian Nights' Entertainments_, was bought from Capt. Jonathan Scott for 50. Mr. Scott published, in 1811, an edition of the Tales, in six volumes, in which this MS. is described. He obtained it from Dr.

White, the Professor of Hebrew and Arabic at Oxford, who had bought it at the sale of the library of Edward Wortley Montague, by whom it had been brought from the East. It is noticed in Ouseley's _Oriental Collections_, vol. ii. p. 25.

A.D. 1805.

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