In July, the Rev. Dr. Bliss returned to the Library as Sub-librarian, in the room of Mr. Nicoll, appointed Regius Professor of Hebrew. And in October the Rev. Rich. French Laurence, M.A., of Pembroke College, succeeded Dr. Cotton, who quitted Oxford for Ireland.
'Tuesday, August 6, 1822, I was at the Library the whole day, and not a single member of the University came into the room, excepting Mr. Eden, the assistant. Oxford race-day.' This note
occurs in vol. x. of Dr. Bliss's MS. antiquarian and miscellaneous memoranda. Considering that the time of the year was well-nigh the middle of the Long Vacation, it does not seem surprising that on one day there should have been no academic readers in the Library, even if there may have been academic riders on the race-course. The two occurrences have so little correspondence with each other that one would hope that the zealous Sub-librarian (who has deemed the same want of readers worth commemorating also in another note) assigned non causa pro causa.
A.D. 1823.
By the exertions of the brothers J. S. and P. B. Duncan, Esqs., Fellows of New College, distinguished for their efforts to promote the study of the Arts and Sciences in the University, a subscription-fund was raised for the purpose of adorning the Picture Gallery with plaster models of some of the finest buildings of Greek and Roman antiquity. The result was that in the present year the following series, by Fouquet, of Paris, was placed in the Gallery, at a total cost of about £400:—The Arch of Constantine, the Parthenon, the Temple of the Sybil at Tivoli, the Maison Carrée at Nismes, the Erechtheum and Lantern of Demosthenes at Athens, the Theatre of Herculaneum, and the Temple of Fortuna Virilis at Rome.
A large number of works by foreign authors, chiefly theological, was bought (for £375) at the sale at Leyden of the library of Jonas Wilh. Te Water, professor of Eccl. Hist. in that University. A separate catalogue, occupying twenty-three folio pages, was issued of these books.
Mr. E. P. New, of St. John's College (B.A. 1822, M.A. 1825, B.D. 1831), was appointed in December to assist in the compilation of the new Catalogue; but how long he remained in the Library does not appear.
A.D. 1824.
A collection of valuable original papers relating to affairs in Church and State, which had belonged to Archbishop Sheldon, were sold by his great-nephew, Sir John English Dolben, of Finedon, Northamptonshire, to the Library for £40 5s. They are now bound in six volumes, of which three are lettered Sheldon, and three Dolben. Of the first three, two contain letters from English, Welsh, Scotch and Irish Bishops, and the contents of the other are miscellaneous; of the second three, one contains miscellaneous letters and papers commencing at 1585, another has similar papers from 1626 to 1721, and the third contains miscellaneous ecclesiastical letters and documents. Some of the letters are addressed to the Archbishop's secretary, Miles Smyth, Esq. A short letter from Sir John Dolben to Dr. Bandinel, relating to his disposal of these papers, dated Oct. 12, 1824, is preserved in Bodl. MS. Addit. ii. A. 32. He had previously given, in 1822, a fine copy of a quarto Bible which had belonged to Sheldon, containing (1) the Prayer-Book and Metrical Psalms, printed at Cambridge in 1638, (2) the Old Test., printed by Field at London in 1648, and (3) the New Test., Cambr. 1637. At the end are some memoranda by the Archbishop of the births, baptisms, and deaths of members of the Sheldon and Okeover families, and of the legitimate children of Charles II and the Duke of York. The Library more than a century before had received benefactions from a member of the same family of Dolben; Gilbert Dolben, of Finedon, having given some printed books in 1697, together with a manuscript of Gower. And twenty vols. of Chamberlaine's State of Great Britain were given by Mr. J. E. Dolben in 1796. An additional volume of the Sheldon correspondence was given to the Library in 1840, by Dr. Routh, the President of Magdalen