Brande Hollis and Dr. John Disney, were bought at the sale of the library of the latter.
[293] The money was raised by loans of £2000 from the Radcliffe Trustees and £3644 from the University Bankers. They were both repaid by the year 1820.
[294] De Backer's Bibliothèque des écrivains de la comp. de Jésus; quatr. série, p. 93. 8vo. Liège, 1858.
[295] Bibliogr. Decam. iii. 429.
[296] See under the year [1852].
[297] The first MSS. of Dante which the Library possessed, came in the Canonici collection; they are in number fifteen. This fact is worth mentioning, on account of an extraordinary story told by Girolamo Gigli, in his Vocabolario Cateriniano, p. cciii. (a book the printing of which was commenced at Rome in 1717, but which was suppressed, by bull, before completion), that in the Bodleian Library at 'Osfolk,' there was a MS. of the Divina Commedia, which, from being employed in enveloping a consignment of cheese (and so imported into England by a mode of conveyance said to have been usually adopted by Florentine merchants, with a view of spreading at once a knowledge of their luxuries and their literature), had become so saturated with a caseous savour as to require the constant guardianship of two traps to protect it from the voracity of mice. Hence, according to this marvellous travellers' story, the MS. went by the name of The Book of the Mousetrap! (See Notes and Queries, i. 154.)
[298] Bodl. MS. 965.
A.D. 1818.
A return was made to the House of Commons of such books received since 1814, in pursuance of the Copyright Act, from Stationers' Hall, as it had not been deemed necessary to place in the Library. The list is but a trifling one, consisting chiefly of school-books and anonymous novels, with music; but, nevertheless, it is sufficient to show the great need of caution in rejecting any books excepting such as are of the simplest elementary character, and the advantage of erring rather on the side of inclusiveness than exclusiveness. Miss Edgeworth's Parents' Assistant, Mrs. H. More's Sacred Dramas, Mrs. Opie's Simple Tales, and an edition of Ossian, were all consigned to the limbo of 'rubbish.' But the Cambridge Return (which is much more detailed than that from Oxford[299]) shows a recklessness of rejection which speaks little for the judgment of the Librarians for the time being. Besides school-books and music, a large number of pamphlets figure in the list, including some by Chalmers and Cobbett; the Theology includes Owen's History of the Bible Society; the History includes Memoirs of Oliver Cromwell and his Children; the Poetry, Byron's Siege of Corinth, L. Hunt's Story of Rimini, and Wordsworth's Thanksgiving Ode; and the Novels, [Peacock's] Headlong Hall, one by Mrs. Opie, and—The Antiquary! The far wiser plan is now carried out in the Bodleian of rejecting nothing; even the elementary works that do not need entering in the Catalogue, are so kept that access can be had to them at all times and examination made; and the music is from time to time sorted and bound. And this plan was commenced in the
year of which we are writing; for, (in consequence, of course, of this return being called for by the House of Commons,) the Curators ordered, on May 27, that all publications sent from Stationers' Hall should in future be entered and preserved.