Part 22 (1/2)

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.