Part 12 (2/2)

[154] Ballard MSS. xiii. 45.

A.D. 1700.

Considerable fears were entertained for the safety of the Divinity School and that portion of the Library which is built over it. About thirty-two years before, some failure had been observed in the roof of the former, which was rectified under the superintendence of Sir Christopher Wren. When Bishop Barlow's books were brought to the Library, in 1692 or 1693, the galleries on either side of the middle room were erected; and, as the beams of the roof of the School were then observed to give from the wall, they were anch.o.r.ed on both sides, under the direction of Dr. Aldrich. But the tight bracing had now caused the south wall, that which adjoins Exeter College garden, to bulge outwards, so that the book-stalls were found to have started from the wall by three and a-half inches at the top and two and a-half at the bottom; the wall itself was seven and a-half inches out of the perpendicular, and the four great arches of the vault of the School were all cracked.

Hereupon Dr. Gregory, the Savilian Professor, was despatched to London to consult Sir C. Wren again, and, by his advice, additional b.u.t.tresses of great depth and strength were erected on the south side, the weight of the bookstalls was removed from the roof of the School by their being trussed up to the walls with iron cramps; and the cracks in the vault were filled with lead or oyster-sh.e.l.ls, and in some places with the insertion of new stones, and were then 'wedged up with well-seasoned oaken wedges.' This work went on through the summers of 1701 and 1702; and in 1703 some similar repairs were executed in some of the other Schools. The letters and papers of Wren on the subject, with the draughts, and reports of the workmen employed, are preserved in Bodley MS. 907. They are printed in [Walker's] _Oxoniana_, iii. 16-27.

In this year died Henry Jones, M.A., Vicar of Sunningwell, Berks[155].

He bequeathed to the Library sixty volumes in MS., very miscellaneous in character, and chiefly of the 16th and 17th centuries. Some of them had belonged to Bishop Fell. The bequest probably came to Oxford some few years after Mr. Jones' death, as the books are entered (in a full and accurate list) by Hearne, in the Benefaction Book, among the gifts of about the years 1706-12. It was from a modern transcript among these that Hearne edited the _Historia Regum Angliae_ of John Ross or Rouse; and seventy-one doc.u.ments from No. 23, which is an Hereford Chartulary, were printed by Rawlinson at the end of his _History of Hereford_, 8^o, Lond. 1717. One volume has for many years been missing from the collection, viz., a funeral oration, by John Sonibanck, on the death of Queen Elizabeth of York, in 1503. A list of the MSS. is printed from the Benefaction Register, in Uffenbach's _Commercium Epistolic.u.m_, pp.

200-208.

Between 1700 and 1738 Sir Hans Sloane is recorded to have given considerably more than 1400 volumes, together with his picture in 1731; but the majority of them do not appear to have been considered of much value, and only 415 are specified by name in the Benefaction Register.

Dr. Hyde, in a letter to Hudson, which accompanied a list of the books for which the latter had asked with a view to registration, says he scarce thinks the entry to be 'for the credit of the business, _nos inter nos_[156].' But Hudson appears to have thought that the omission proceeded rather from carelessness, for, in a letter to Wanley, he says that he thinks Hyde a.s.signed '_non causa pro causa_[157].'

[155] Steele's _MSS. Collections for Berks_; Gough MS. 27.

[156] Walker's _Letters by Eminent Persons_, i. 173.

[157] Ellis's _Letters of Eminent Literary Men_, Camd. Soc. pp. 302-3.

A.D. 1701.

The long-entertained idea of resigning the Librarians.h.i.+p was at length carried out by Dr. Thomas Hyde in this year, for the reasons given in the following letter, which was addressed by him to the Pro-Vice-Chancellor, probably Dr. Charlett. It is here printed from a copy sent by Hyde to Wake, then Rector of St. James, Westminster, and preserved amongst the Wake Correspondence in the library of Ch. Ch.:--

'March 10, 1700/01, 'CHRIST CHURCH, OXON.

'SIR,--I being a little indisposed by the gout, acquaint you thus by letter, that what I long agoe designed (as you partly knew) I am now about to put in execution. That is to say, I shall shortly lay down my office of Library-keeper, about a month hence, which resolution I do now declare, and I do hereby give you timely and statuteable notice of the same as Pro-Vice-Chancellor, entreating that, as the Statute requires, you will in two days order Mr. Cowper to draw a Programma to be set up at the Schools to the sence of the enclosed paper, he best knowing forms and lawyers' Latin.

'Among the Bodleian Statutes in the Appendix, in the Statute _de causis amovendi aut libere recedendi_, you will find that upon the Library-keeper's notice thus given, you are in two days' time to fix up the programma preparatory to make it known that about a month hence (which is about the end of this term) that office will be actually resigned and void.

'My reasons for leaving the place are two, viz. one is because (my feet being left weak by the gout) 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. And at other times when books were sometimes bought, it was (as you well know) never left to me to buy them, the Vice-Chancellor not allowing me to lay out any University mony. And therefore some have blamed me without cause for not getting all sorts of books.

'Before the Visitations I did usually spend a month's time in preparing a list of good books to offer to the Curators; but I could seldom get them bought, being commongly (_sic_) answered in short, that they had no mony. Nay, I have been chid and reproved by the Vice-Chancellor for offering to put them to so much charge in buying books. These things at last discouraged me from medling in it. But, however, I leave the Library three times bigger than I found it[160], and furnished with a Catalogue of which I found it dest.i.tute. I wish the University a man who may take as much pains and drudgery as I have done whilst I was able to do it.

'I entreat you with all speed to cause the Register to put up the programma signed with your name, that so things may be regularly and statutably dispatched in order, until the time of actuall resignation shall come.

'In the mean time I remain, 'Your humble servant, 'THOMAS HYDE.'

John Hudson, M.A., of Queen's, afterwards D.D. and Princ. of St. Mary Hall, was elected in Hyde's room; he was opposed by J. Wallis, M.A., of Magd., the Laudian Professor of Arabic, but was chosen by 194 votes to 173[161]. A letter to him from Hyde on his election, with advice about the entering of Sir H. Sloane's books in the Register, the augmentation of Mr. Crabbe's salary, the Catalogues and the Statutes, is printed in [Walker's] _Letters by Eminent Persons_, i. 173. He had previously, in 1696-98, given seventy books to the Library, and in 1705-10 he added nearly 600. Hyde did not long survive his resignation, dying before one year had elapsed, on Feb. 18, 1702. He was buried at Handborough, near Oxford.

In this year Thomas Hearne, the famous antiquary, was appointed Janitor, or a.s.sistant, in the Library. He tells us in his _Autobiography_ (p. 10) that, from the time of his taking the degree of B.A. in Act term, 1699, 'he constantly went to the Bodleian Library every day, and studied there as long as the time allowed by the Statutes would admit,' and that the fact of this his 'diligence being taken notice of by all persons that came thither, and his skill in books being likewise well known to those with whom he had at any time conversed,' occasioned Hudson's appointing him to be an a.s.sistant immediately upon his own election as Librarian.

It appears, from the Visitors' Book, that a payment of 10 was made to him in this year, and that, in the next year, 30 were voted to him for his a.s.sistance in making an Appendix to the Catalogue of printed books[162], and for enlarging and correcting the Catalogues of MSS. and Coins. Extra payments of 50_s._ were also made to him in 1704 and 1706, and of 20_s._ in 1709.

_The Bodley Speech._ See 1682.

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