Part 17 (1/2)

[206] Pref. to _Chron. 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-masters.h.i.+p 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.)

A.D. 1739.

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. of _Wood'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.D. 1740.

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 4_s._ for its restoration.

A.D. 1745.

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 16_s._ 8_d._, 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 year 1620. 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 6_s._ 8_d._ yearly.

A.D. 1746.

Trott's _Clavis Linguae Sanctae_. See 1686.

A.D. 1747.

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 Princ.i.p.al of his College in 1763), was unanimously elected his successor[210].

Rawlinson mentions, in a letter to 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.'

[211] Rawl. MS. C. 989.

A.D. 1749.

A Runic Primstaff, or Clog Almanack, was given by Mr. Guy d.i.c.kens, a gentleman-commoner of Ch. Ch. It is now exhibited, together with another (_see_ p. 105), in the gla.s.s case near the entrance of the Library.

Pointer, in his _Oxoniensis 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.D. 1750.

A copy _on 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 10_s._! The volume was imperfect at the end, ceasing at Job x.x.xii. 5, and seven leaves followed in contemporary and beautiful MS., which also ended imperfectly at Ps. x.x.xvi. 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 Consistoria.n.u.s,' many other of whose MSS. and printed books came by Rawlinson's bequest; but through how many hands the missing leaves had pa.s.sed in the seventy subsequent years ere they were thus marvellously restored to their place, it is impossible to tell[212].