On bosses which intervene between each compartment are painted the arms of Bodley himself.
Bodley now began to solicit his great store of honourable friends to present books to the library. His proposal was warmly supported by his countrymen in Devonshire, where, as a contemporary records, “every man bethought himself now how by some good book or other he might be written in the scroll of benefactors.”
This scroll was the register which Bodley had provided for the enrolment of the names of all benefactors, with particulars of their gifts. It consists of two large folios, ornamented with silver-gilt bosses on their massy covers, which lie on a table of the great room.
Bodley’s own donations were large, and he employed a London bookseller to travel on the Continent and collect books for the library. Besides numerous private benefactors like Lord Buckhurst and the Earl of Essex in the early years, the Stationers Company agreed to give Bodley a copy of every book which they published on condition that they might borrow the books thus given if needed for reprinting. This arrangement, in making which Bodley said he met with many rubs and delays, was the precursor of the obligation of the Copyright Acts, by which a copy of every book published has to be presented to the Bodleian and the British Museum. In 1603 Sir Walter Raleigh made a donation of fifty pounds, and he no doubt had some share in influencing the bestowal of many of the books which had once belonged to the library of Bishop Hieron. Ossorius, and were carried off from Faro in Portugal, when that town was captured by the English fleet under Essex. Raleigh, an Oriel man, was a captain in the squadron. The library was opened with full solemnity in 1603, and in the following year King James granted letters patent naming the library after its founder. That was an honour most richly deserved, for Bodley was “the first practically public library in Europe; the second, that of Angelo Rocca at Rome, being opened only in this same year.”
To this library, two years later, James, the pedant, who seemed determined to prove that a learned king, too, could be a crowned ass, paid a visit. After making an excessively feeble pun anent the bust of the founder in the large room, which had been sent there by the Earl of Dorset, Chancellor of the University, he looked at the book shelves, and remarked that he had often had proof from the University of the fruits of talent and ability, but had never before seen the garden where those fruits grew, and whence they were gathered. He examined various MSS. and discoursed wisely on them; took up the treatise by Gaguinus entitled “De puritate conceptionis Virginis Mariæ,” and remarked that the author had so written about purity, as if he wished that it should only be found on the title of his book. The opportunity of thus displaying his learning was so grateful to the King, that he was moved to an astonishing act of generosity. He offered to present from all the libraries of the royal palaces whatever precious and rare books Sir T. Bodley might choose to carry away. It does not appear that the number or importance of books so granted was in the event very great. Upon leaving the room the King exclaimed, probably with sincerity, that were he not King James he would be a University man; and that were it his fate at any time to be a captive, he would wish to be shut up, could he but have the choice, in this place as his prison, to be bound with its chains, and to consume his days among its books as his fellows in captivity.
To this library came James’ ill-starred son, and here, it is said, he was tempted by Lord Falkland to consult the “Sortes Virgilianæ.” The passage which first met his eye runs thus in Dryden’s translation:
“Let him for succour sue from place to place
Torn from his subjects and his son’s embrace.
And when at length the cruel war shall cease
On hard conditions may he buy his peace.”
Lord Falkland then opened the Virgil in his turn, hoping that his “lot” might remove the gloomy impression of this bad omen.