In 1805 a very choice collection of books, including many Editiones Principes, as well as books remarkable for the beauty of their printing or their binding, was bequeathed by Henry George Quin. In this collection are found some splendid specimens of printing and binding which will be mentioned by-and-by. In more recent times, also, we have received some valuable and interesting donations. In 1854, the Book of Armagh, a MS. of singular interest (to be referred to more particularly hereafter), was purchased for £300 by the Rev. W. Reeves, afterwards Bishop of Down and Connor. As he could not afford to retain the book himself, and only desired that it should be in safe custody in our Library, he parted with it for the same sum to the Archbishop of Armagh, Lord John George Beresford, who presented it to Trinity College.
In the same year Dr. Charles Wm. Wall, Vice-Provost, purchased, through Rev. Dr. Gibbings, several volumes of the original Records of the Inquisition at Rome, which had been removed to Paris by Napoleon I. Extracts from these have been published by Dr. Gibbings.
INTERIOR OF LIBRARY, 1858.
Amongst more recent benefactors to the Library the Rev. Aiken Irvine and Dr. Neilson Hancock deserve to be noticed, the former of whom bequeathed about 1,000 volumes, and the latter about 250, in 1881 and 1885 respectively. Space forbids the enumeration of less important donations.
The College authorities, meanwhile, were liberal in granting money for the purchase of books. Between November, 1805, and March, 1806, we find them giving fifty guineas for the Complutensian Polyglot, sixty-two for Prynne’s Records, and twenty-two and a-half for the first folio Shakespeare. Again, in the first six months of 1813 we find £126 spent on purchases at auctions, including some fifteenth-century books, and an Icelandic Bible which cost £14 15s. 9d. In addition to these purchases, the booksellers’ bills paid amounted to £230. Coming to a later period, we find for the ten years commencing with 1846 the average annual expenditure on purchases and binding was £668. After 1856, however, it was found necessary to contract the expenditure. The fixed sum now set apart annually for these purposes is £400. Extra grants are, however, made occasionally for special purchases. As the expense of the personal staff has considerably increased, the whole expenditure on the Library is larger than in 1856, and now amounts to about £2,000. The expense of administration may appear out of proportion to the amount available for the purchase of books. This is accounted for by the fact that English publications are received without cost.
The chief source of the growth of the Library in the present century has been the privilege granted by Act of Parliament in 1801—viz., the right to a copy of every book (including every “sheet of letterpress”) published in the United Kingdom. This privilege this Library shares with the British Museum, the Bodleian, that of Cambridge University, and the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh.[117] To the British Museum publishers are obliged to send their publications unasked; the other Libraries forfeit their right to any book not claimed by them within twelve months of publication. Accordingly, they jointly employ an agent in London for the purpose of claiming and forwarding books. The principal firms, however, send their publications as a matter of course, without waiting to be asked.
This obligation cannot be thought to be a grievance to authors and publishers, when we reflect to what an extent authors, and therefore publishers, are dependent on the resources of these Libraries. What work of research could be produced without the aid they give? We benefit by the generosity of our forefathers; we are only asked to hand on the torch and help to do for posterity what antiquity has done for us. A money grant, however satisfactory to the Libraries, would not accomplish the same public end, namely, the preservation of the literature of the time, independently of the particular tastes or predilections of the successive librarians. Even in the case of very expensive works, of which only a small number of copies is issued, publishers take the obligation into account, and the result is a relatively slight increase of price not felt by the purchasers of such works.