Part 7 (1/2)

There is no copy of Virgil now in the Library amongst those which it possessed previously to 1642, which is 'exquisitely bound' as well as 'n.o.bly printed;' it is not therefore possible to fix on the particular volume which the King consulted.

A.D. 1645.

A small slip of paper, carefully preserved, is the memorial of an interesting incident connected with the last days in Oxford of the Martyr-King whose history is so indissolubly united with that of the place. Amidst all the darkening anxieties which filled the three or four months preceding the surrender of himself to the Scots, King Charles appears to have s.n.a.t.c.hed some leisure moments for refreshment in quiet reading. His own library was no longer his; but there was one close at hand which could more than supply it. So, to the Librarian Rous, (the friend of Milton, but whose anti-monarchical tendencies, we may be sure, had always. .h.i.therto been carefully concealed) there came, on Dec. 30, an order, 'To the Keeper of the University Library, or to his deputy,'

couched in the following terms: 'Deliver unto the bearer hereof, for the present use of his Majesty, a book int.i.tuled, _Histoire universelle du Sieur D'Aubigne_, and this shall be your warrant;' and the order was one which the Vice-Chancellor had subscribed with his special authorization, 'His Majestyes use is in commaund to us. S. Fell, Vice Can.' But the Librarian had sworn to observe the Statutes which, with no respect of persons, forbad such a removal of a book; and so, on the reception of Fell's order, Rous 'goes to the King; and shews him the Statutes, which being read, the King would not have the booke, nor permit it to be taken out of the Library, saying it was fit that the will and statutes of the pious founder should be religiously observed[104].'

Perhaps a little of the hitherto undeveloped Puritan spirit may have helped to enliven the conscience of the Librarian, who, had he been a Cavalier, might have possibly found something in the exceptional circ.u.mstances of the case, to excuse a violation of the rule; but, as the matter stood, it reflects, on the one hand, the highest credit both on Rous's honesty and courage, and shows him to have been fit for the place he held, while, on the other hand, the King's acquiescence in the refusal does equal credit to his good-sense and good-temper. We shall see that this occurrence formed a precedent for a like refusal to the Protector in 1654 by Rous's successor, when Cromwell showed equal good feeling and equal respect for law.

[104] Bp. Barlow's Argument against Lending Books. _MS._

A.D. 1646.

'When Oxford was surrendered (24^o Junii, 1646) the first thing Generall Fairfax did was to set a good guard of soldiers to preserve the Bodleian Library. 'Tis said there was more hurt donne by the Cavaliers (during their garrison) by way of embezzilling and cutting off chaines of bookes then there was since. He was a lover of learning, and had he not taken this special care, that n.o.ble library had been utterly destroyed, for there were ignorant senators enough who would have been contented to have had it so. This I doe a.s.sure you from an ocular witnesse, E. W. esq[105].'

[105] Aubrey's _Lives_; in _Letters by Eminent Persons_, ii. 346.

A.D. 1647.

John Verneuil, M.A., Sub-librarian, died about the end of September. He was a native of Bordeaux, and came into England as a Protestant refugee shortly before 1608. In that year he entered at Magdalene College, and was incorporated M.A. from his own University of Montauban in 1625.

Besides his share in the Appendix to the Catalogue noticed under the year 1635, the following small book of a similar kind in English was issued by him: _A Nomenclator of such Tracts and Sermons as have beene printed, or translated into English upon any place or booke of Holy Scripture; now to be had in the most famous and publique Library of Sir Thomas Bodley in Oxford_. This is the t.i.tle of the second and enlarged edition, which appeared in 1642 in a small duodecimo volume, printed at Oxford, by Henry Hall. The first edition (which was not entirely confined to books in the Library) was printed under the author's initials by William Turner in 1637. Some books communicated by friends are here cited, which would, says Verneuil, have been accessible in the Bodleian, 'had the Company of Stationers beene as mindfull of their covenant as my selfe have beene zealous for the good of this our Library.' In an interesting undated letter from Sir Richard Napier, Knt.

(while apparently an undergraduate of Wadham College, before 1630) to his uncle the Rev. Richard Napier, which is preserved in Ashmole MS.

1730, fol. 168, is the following curious pa.s.sage relating to the facilities for studying in the Library, which were afforded to him by Verneuil:--

'I have made a faire way to goe into the Library privately when I please, and there to sitt from 6 of the clocke in the morneing to 5 at night. I have a private place in the Library to lay those bookes and to write out what I list, without being seene by any, or any comeing to me.

I have made the second Keeper of the Library [_i.e._ Verneuil] my friend and servant, who promised me his key at all tymes to goe in privately, when as otherwise it is not opened above 4 houres a day, and some days not att all, as on Hollidays, and their eves in the afternoone, yett then by his meanes I shall [have] free accesse and recesse at all tymes.

He hath pleasured me so farr as to lett me write in his counting house, or his little private study in the great publick library, where I may very privately write, and locke up all safely when I depart thence; he will write for me when I have not the leisure, or will transcribe any thinge I shall desire him, and if it be French translate it, for that is his mother tonge.'

Probably the practice here mentioned of admitting readers by favour into the Library at unstatutable times grew in the course of years to a considerable height, or was found (as might naturally be expected) productive of mischievous consequences, for on Nov. 8, 1722, it was 'ordered by the Curators that no person under any pretence whatsoever be permitted to study in the said Library at any other time than what is prescribed and limited by the Bodleian Statutes.'

Verneuil was succeeded in his office in the Library by Francis Yonge, M.A., of Oriel College.

Milton's gift of his _Poems_. See under 1620.

A.D. 1648.

At the end of the Readers' Register for 1647-8, 1648-9, is a list of nine volumes 'olim surrepti,' of which five had been replaced by other copies. Entries are made in the same place of some coins which were given in 1648-50. At this period the Library appears to have been well attended by readers; about twelve or fifteen quarto and octavo volumes being daily entered, those of folio size being accessible (as, in regard to a portion of the Library, is still the case) by the readers themselves, and not registered because at that time chained to their shelves. The register for the next years (as well as those which followed, up to the year 1708) appears to be lost, so that it cannot be ascertained whether this daily average continued during the Usurpation; but thus far it seems that Dr. John Allibond's description of the state of the Library as consequent on the Puritan visitation of the University in 1648, is not borne out by facts. For that loyal humourist, in his _Rustica Academiae Oxoniensis nuper reformatae Descriptio_, which is supposed to commemorate the condition of Oxford in Oct. 1648, writes thus of our Library:--

'Conscendo orbis illud decus Bodleio fundatore: Sed intus erat nullum pecus, Excepto janitore.

Neglectos vidi libros multos, Quod mimime mirandum: Nam inter bardos tot et stultos There's few could understand 'em.'

A.D. 1649.

'The Jews proffer 600,000 for Paul's, and Oxford Library, and may have them for 200,000 more[106].' They wished to obtain the first for a synagogue, and to do a little commercial business with the second. It is said in Monteith's _History of the Troubles_ (translated by Ogilvie, 1735, p. 473) that the sum they offered was 500,000, but that the Council of War refused to take less than 800,000: probably they afterwards increased this their original bid to 600,000.

Philip, Earl of Pembroke, the Puritan Chancellor of the University, gave a splendidly bound copy of the Paris Polyglott, printed in 1645 in 10 vols.