'Against my King I do not fight,
But for my King and kingdom's right.'
The Curators renewed a request, made ineffectually some time before, that the several Colleges would make out returns for the Library of all such books in their own collections as did not appear in the Bodl. Catalogue. In the year 1801 they acknowledged the receipt of such lists from Magdalen[270], Balliol, Exeter, and Jesus; Oriel sent a list subsequently (in 1808?); but these were all that were ever forwarded.
[269] Lord Nugent, in his Memorials of Hampden, erroneously mentions this as being preserved in the Ashmolean Museum. He also repeats two mistaken readings first given in Miss Seward's Anecdotes, iv. 358 (a volume dedicated to Price, the Librarian), where a small woodcut of the ornament is given.
[270] A complete Catalogue of the Library of this College, compiled by Rev. E. M. Macfarlane, M.A., of Linc. Coll., was issued by the College, in three handsomely-printed quarto volumes, in 1860-62. The books of all writers belonging to the College, are entered separately in an Appendix in vol. iii.
A.D. 1796.
A few incunabula and Aldines were purchased at Göttingen.
The annual list of donations was, for the first time, printed in this year. It does not include, however, a large gift which was partly received now, the presentation having been made in the year preceding. It was the gift by Rev. Dr. Nath. Bridges of the MSS. collections made by Mr. John Bridges for his History of Northamptonshire. They number thirty-seven volumes in folio, eight in quarto, and one in octavo; and consist chiefly of extracts from Public Records and from the Episcopal Registers of Lincoln, the volumes in quarto containing Church notes for the several parishes. Some account of them is given in Mr. Whalley's preface to vol. i. of Bridges' History, published in 1791.
A.D. 1798.
The distinguished historical antiquary, Sir Henry Ellis, D.C.L., was appointed in this year, by his friend the Librarian, to be one of the Assistant-librarians; commencing thus, while still an undergraduate Fellow of St. John's (which College he had entered in 1796) the studies and pursuits which eventually led to the post, so long and honourably held by him, of Principal Librarian and Head of the British Museum. In a letter with which the author of this volume was recently favoured by him ('jam senior, sed mente virens,') Sir Henry mentions that the Rev. Henry Hervey Baber, of All Souls' College (B.A. 1799, M.A. 1805), who was afterwards one of his colleagues in the Museum, and who now (ætat. 92) is Vicar of Stretham, in the Isle of Ely, was his senior in the Bodleian, as Coadjutor-under-librarian, by a year or two. In consequence of the insufficiency of the statutable staff, the place of the one Under-librarian was at this time, and subsequently,