A magnificent copy of Gutenberg's Bible, not dated, but supposed to have been printed about 1455, fresh and clean as if it had just come from the hands of the men of the New Craft, carefully set at their work, was bought for the very small sum of £100. It is exhibited in the first glass case in the Library. This is the edition often called the Mazarine Bible, from the circumstance that the first copy which obtained notice was found in the Mazarine Library at Paris.
A.D. 1794.
The Editio princeps of the Bible in German, printed by Eggesteyn about 1466, was bought for £50.
A chronological Catalogue, in two folio volumes, of a very large and valuable collection of pamphlets (which had hitherto been kept in the Radcliffe Library), extending from 1603 to 1740, was made in 1793-4, by Mr. Abel Lendon, of Ch. Ch. (B.A. 1795, M.A. 1798.)
Mr. Rich. S. Skillerne, of All Souls' (B.A. 1796, M.A. 1800), was employed in the Library.
With a view to the formation of a new Catalogue, the Curators at the end of the annual list made a first application for returns of such books existing in the several College libraries as were not
in the Bodleian, in order thereby to accomplish what would be a most useful work, and is still a great desideratum, a General Catalogue of all the books in Oxford.
A.D. 1795.
A brief list (filling sixty small octavo pages) was printed at the Clarendon Press, of the Editiones principes, the fifteenth-century books, and the Aldines, then in the Library. The name of the compiler does not appear. It is entitled, 'Notitia editionum quoad libros Hebr., Gr. et Lat. quæ vel primariæ, vel sæc. xv. impressæ, vel Aldinæ, in Bibliotheca Bodleiana adservantur.'
Four cabinets of English coins were presented by Thomas Knight, Esq., of Godmersham, Kent. Among them was an ornament (now exhibited in the glass case near the Library door) said to have been worn by John Hampden when he fell at Chalgrove Field[269]. It consists of a plain cornelian set in silver, with the following couplet engraved on the rim:—