Bodleian's librarians in the eighteenth century were mostly clerks in holy orders and it was not uncommon for them to fail to open the library at all on a Saturday if they were "taking duty in the country," on the following day. There is preserved in the Bodleian a scrap of paper which an angry scholar affixed to the door of the library in 1806 when he found it closed contrary to the statutes. On it were these words in Greek: "Woe unto you who have taken away the key of knowledge! Ye enter not yourself and hinder those who come."
How striking is the difference between the lax administration of the 18th century and that of the 20th can be seen by a study of the Bodleian staff-calendar, an annual of over 400 pages in which are listed day by day the special duties of various members of the staff, with all sorts of suggestions for the improvement of the service.
King George III in his famous interview with Dr. Johnson asked whether there were better libraries at Oxford or at Cambridge. The sage replied that he believed the Bodleian was larger than any library they had at Cambridge, at the same time adding, "I hope whether we have more books or not than they have at Cambridge we shall make as good use of them as they do,"—a reply which I always like to associate with the remark of Dr. Cogswell: "I would as soon tell you how many tons the Astor Library weighs, as how many volumes it contains."
While the university library at Cambridge has never been the recipient of such large and rich donations as has the Bodleian, it is today one of the best stocked university libraries in the world. Its first benefactor was Thomas Scott of Rotheram, archbishop of York, who not only gave 200 books and manuscripts, but also the first library building. Despite other benefactions the collection appeared "but mean" in the eyes of John Evelyn when he visited it in 1654.
Among the earliest gifts to one of the college libraries at Cambridge there are some volumes which raise curious questions. According to Dr. Montague R. James, the provost of King's College, Cambridge, one book has the Bury bookmark and evidently came from that source; another belonged to the canons of Hereford, another to Worcester, and another to Durham. How and under what conditions did the early collegiate and monastic bodies part with these? "Was there not very probably an extensive system of sale of duplicates? I prefer this notion," writes Dr. James, "to the idea that they got rid of their books indiscriminately, because the study of monastic catalogs shows quite plainly that the number of duplicates in any considerable library was very large. On the other hand it is clear that books often got out of the old libraries into the hands of quite unauthorized persons: so that there was probably both fair and foul play in the matter."
The most famous librarian of Cambridge University library was Henry Bradshaw, who not only left a strong impress upon the paleographers and historians of his day, but did much for librarianship by his contributions to bibliography and his work on the printed catalogs issued by the Cambridge University library. He believed in making the library as accessible as possible to those who were entitled to its use. The watchwords of his administration were "liberty and discretion," liberty for the people to go freely about the whole library, examining and borrowing such books as they liked, and discretion on the part of the administration in putting such extremely moderate restrictions upon this freedom that the security of its most precious books were safeguarded and the presence of the books most constantly needed for reference was assured without undue interference with freedom of access to the shelves or the borrowing of books from the library.
His management of the university library was not in all respects satisfactory, due mostly to the fact that the staff was very inadequate to the task of the attempted reclassification of the large collection of books, and also to the crowded condition of the building. Bradshaw did not have a marked capacity for working through subordinates. "He could not," said one of his assistants, "bring himself to allow any one to answer letters for him." He used to carry large numbers of unanswered letters in his coat pockets and would sometimes take them out and show them with a certain mischievous glee and say in his droll way, "I am too wicked. What shall I do?" No one knew this failing better than himself. He once remarked to Thomas Buchanan Read, who wanted some information from him, "You had better come and get what you can by word of mouth. I offend lots of my friends by not answering their letters, or by losing them like yours." One friend, to whom he had long promised a visit and who could not get a definite answer to his invitations, sent Bradshaw two post cards on one of which was written "Yes," and on the other "No," asking him to post one or the other. Bradshaw promptly posted both, although by the next mail he wrote to say that he would come,—and he kept his promise.
Bradshaw used to say that whenever he was asked to send back an interesting book he "suffered from a chronic paralysis of the will and could not return it until the fit had passed away." In matters of routine business he was, however, seldom behind time and his library accounts were always accurately kept. He was very strict about the observance of the library rules and could never tolerate seeing books mishandled. Dr. Zupitza, a great friend and admirer of Bradshaw, tells how one day he was making notes in ink from the famous manuscript of Bede's "Ecclesiastical history," in the Cambridge University Library when Bradshaw happened to notice him. "You Germans have no reverence," said the librarian as he rushed at the ink bottle and carried it away. A manuscript of that character was not to be approached with anything more dangerous than a lead pencil.
Bradshaw had no personal ambition and was only too eager to give away such information as he possessed. He put his vast store of knowledge at the disposal of his large group of friends and their books were all the better for his bibliographical zeal. He himself left comparatively little finished work. "My province," he once wrote, "is to give help on certain details which most people don't care about."
Before leaving Oxford and Cambridge, a word must be said about the individual college libraries. Many of these date from the 15th century when it was the exception rather than the rule for university students to own books. Books were rented from both booksellers and tutors. The college libraries then, as today, did not have enough copies of text-books to go around. The statutes of St. Mary's College, Oxford, dating from 1446, forbade a scholar the continual use of a book in the library for more than one hour or at most two hours, for fear that others wanting the book might be hindered from the use of it. Most of the two score colleges of Oxford and Cambridge have their own libraries, many of them filled to overflowing with precious manuscripts and old authors. While the manuscripts, like those of Corpus Christi, naturally attract scholars from all over the world, the libraries are now comparatively little used by the students of the universities themselves. This is not surprising when it is known that to some of them no books have been added for a century or more. There is no union depository catalog in a central place showing what these libraries contain and very little correlation, although there has been some specialization, as in the dramatic collection at Trinity College, Cambridge, or the modern history at Merton College, Oxford.