[287] Hooke in 1685 was one of the Chaplains attending Monmouth in his rebellion! Lockhart Papers, 1817, vol. i. p. 148.
[288] Gent. Magaz. vol. lxxv. ii. 569.
[289] Bibliogr. Decam. iii. 429.
[290] Portions of the Letters A F and P which had been thus prepared were subsequently printed, but the whole work was then for some years suspended, and afterwards commenced de novo. And nearly thirty years elapsed before it was finally completed.
[291] Previous grants amounting to £260, had been made in 1820.
[292] Three of these are described in Mr. Coxe's Catalogue, cols. 812-14.
A.D. 1817.
The large Canonici collection of MSS. was obtained from Venice in this year, for the sum of £5444, a purchase unprecedented in greatness in the history of the Library[293]. The collection was formed by Matheo Luigi Canonici, a Venetian Jesuit, who was born in 1727 and died in Sept. 1805 or 1806. Indefatigable in his passion for antiquities, he first formed a Museum
of statues and of medals at Parma, but, in consequence of the Jesuits being expelled from the State, this was sold to the government. He then at Bologna set himself to collect religious objects of interest, and had succeeded to some extent, when the rector of his society observed to him that such a collection was little suitable to a poor monk, and he consequently disposed of it to a Roman prince. Finally, at Venice, he commenced the gathering of a library, in which it is said, as one evidence of its extent, there were more than four thousand Bibles written in fifty-two languages[294].
The MSS. purchased by the Bodleian amount in number to about 2045. Dibdin, almost immediately upon the acquisition, noticed it thus[295]:—