The number of printed books in the Library in 1792 was about 46,000. In 1844 it had risen to 96,000, a large part of the increase being due to the acquisition of the Fagel Library. When the books were last counted (August, 1891), the printed books numbered 222,648, the MSS. 1,938, giving a total of 224,586. It should be remembered that we count volumes, not separate publications, hence a volume containing say thirty pamphlets counts only as one book. Many of the older volumes contain two or more books of considerable size bound in one.
This may suffice for the history of the Library: I now proceed to speak of its contents. If precedence is given to antiquity, the first objects to claim our attention are the Egyptian papyri. These were presented by Lord Kingsborough about 1838, and a catalogue of them was published by Dr. Edward Hincks. One of these is very finely embellished with pictures representing the history of a departed soul; several resemble the corresponding pictures in the papyrus of Ani, of which a fac-simile was recently published by the British Museum. Some of the pictures wanting in this (our) papyrus are supplied in others of the collection, such as the weighing of the soul, the ploughing, sowing, and reaping in the fields of Elysium.
It is, chronologically, a great step from these Egyptian MSS. to the oldest of our Greek and Latin MSS. Of Greek Biblical MSS. we have indeed few, but two of these are of considerable importance. One is the celebrated palimpsest codex of St. Matthew’s Gospel, known amongst Biblical critics as Z. The original text of this, in a beautiful large uncial character, was written not later than the sixth century. But at a later date (about the 13th century) this ancient writing was partially erased, and extracts from some of the Greek Fathers written over it. The old writing was detected by Dr. John Barrett, formerly Librarian, who published the text in what was called “engraved fac-simile,” which gives a very correct idea of the original writing, although the form of each individual letter may not always be exactly represented. Dr. Barrett added a learned dissertation on both the more ancient and the later contents of the MS. Dr. Tregelles, with the help of chemical applications, was enabled to read some letters which had escaped Dr. Barrett, and he published an account of his discoveries in a quarto tract. He also entered his new readings in a copy of Barrett’s work. Strange to say, these two records of Tregelles differed considerably, and accordingly, when the present writer undertook to re-edit Barrett’s text with Tregelles’ additions, he found it necessary to examine the MS. throughout. In so doing, he was able to read several hundred letters and marks (such as marks of quotation, numbers of sections and canons, etc.) which had escaped both Barrett and Tregelles, besides correcting a few errors. The additions and corrections were made on Barrett’s plates, and the new edition was published in 1880.[118]
There is also a palimpsest fragment of Isaiah, apparently of somewhat earlier date, of which a lithographed fac-simile was included in the volume just mentioned. This fac-simile enabled Dr. Ceriani, of Milan, to identify the recension to which a certain group of MSS. of the Septuagint belongs.[119]
Of the Gospels, there is a copy (63) in a cursive hand of the tenth century with scholia. Under a portrait of St. Matthew is traceable a palimpsest fragment of a Greek Evangelistarium. There was anciently another copy of the Gospels (64), which, however, was reported missing in 1742. Most probably it had been lent to Bulkeley (a Fellow), who in fact collated it for Mill. It is now in the library of the Marquis of Bute.
Another important though not very ancient MS. of the New Testament is the celebrated Codex Montfortianus, historically notable as being pretty certainly the actual MS. on whose authority the verse I John v. 7 was admitted into Erasmus’ third edition, and thence into the received text. It is not older than the fifteenth century. A collation of the text of the Epistles is given by Barrett in his volume, Codex Rescriptus S. Matthæi. Dr. Orlando Dobbin in 1854 devoted a volume to the MS., giving a complete collation of the Gospels and Acts. According to his researches, the text of the Epistles is copied from a MS. in Lincoln College, Oxford, the verse I John v. 7 being interpolated by the copyist.
This manuscript has the distinction that we know the names of nearly every person through whose hands it passed. On folio 56 is the note, “Sum Thomae Clementis, olim fratris Froyhe,” and on a leaf at the end is “Mayster Wyllams, of Corpus Christi....” After Clement it came into the possession of William Chark, from him to Dr. Thomas Montfort, and then to Ussher. Professor Rendel Harris, in his book on “The Origin of the Leicester Codex,” has discussed the history of the Montfort Codex. He makes the suggestion that Froyhe is an error for Roye, the accidental repetition of a letter changing “fratris Roye” into “fratris Froye” or “Froyhe.” There is proof that the MS. was in Franciscan hands (the names Ἰησους, Μαρία, ϕρἀγκωκος, are scribbled in it more than once). Barrett, for example, shows that Williams was a Franciscan, and frater Froyhe, or Roye, was probably of the same order. Now there was a very remarkable member of the Franciscan order, named William Roye, educated at Cambridge, who, however, in 1524, forsook the order, and joined Tyndale at Hamburg. It is not impossible that the codex in question was actually written by him. These, with a fragment (14th century) of the Epistle to the Romans, and a small Psalter dated 1533, exhaust our Greek Biblical manuscripts.