[264] Harl. MS. 5901, fol. 85.
[265] Gutch, Collect., i, 271.
[266] Athenæ Oxonienses. London, 1691–2. 2 vols., fol., ii, 604. Wood, in speaking of Mill’s Greek Testament, begun in 1681, says that the first sheets were begun at his Lordship’s cost, “at his Lordship’s printing house, near the Theater” (Fasti Oxon., 3rd ed., ii, 381). This was probably the hired house occupied by the University press prior to its removal to the Theatre, concerning the site of which Hearne remarks (Reliq., i, 254), “One part of the wall, being a sort of bastion, is now to be seen, just as we enter into the Theater-yard, at the west corner of the north side of the Schools, viz., where the late printing-house of Bp. Fell stood.” Moxon, in 1683, recognised the Bishop’s “ardent affections to promote Typographie” in England, by dedicating to him the second volume of his Mechanick Exercises, the first practical work on printing written by an Englishman.
[267] A copy of this letter may be seen in the preface to Hickes’ Thesaurus, 1705, p. xliii.
[268] The Gothic and Runic punches, and the punches and matrices of the Saxon, formed part of the interesting exhibit of the Oxford University Press at the Caxton Exhibition in 1877.
[269] Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, iv, 147.
[270] The Oxford Ethiopic types appear to have gone astray, if not at this period, shortly afterwards; for Dr. Mawer, writing to the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1759 respecting his proposed Supplement to Walton’s Polyglot, says that the use of the University types had been offered him (in 1743) for printing a specimen of his work, “but,” he adds, “an obstruction was here thrown in my way by reason of the Ethiopic types being most of them lost, and incapable of printing half a page.” (Todd’s Life of Walton, London, 1821, i, 332.)
[271] Nichols, Lit. Anec., iv., 146. One of the first works printed in the recovered types was King Alfred’s Saxon version of Boethius’ Consolationis Philosophiæ Libri. Oxford, 1698, 8vo. It was edited by Mr. Christopher Rawlinson, from a transcript by Francis Junius among the MSS. at Oxford. Opposite the title is a head of Junius by Burghers, from a sketch by Van Dyck, in the Picture Gallery.
[272] A. J. Butler, Ancient Coptic Churches of Egypt. Oxford, 1884. 2 vols., 8vo, ii, 257.
[273] These additions duly appeared in the second Oxford specimen of 1695, from which the inventory at p. [148] is quoted.