early printed versions in European languages, and its further enlargement was steadily kept in view in succeeding years.
Six guineas were given for copies of Servetus' treatise De Trinitatis erroribus and his Dialogi de Trinitate, printed in 1531 and 1532, which are of very great rarity, in consequence of their having very generally shared the fate of their author.
A.D. 1833.
Some precious Shakespearian volumes, consisting of the Venus and Adonis of 1594 and 1617, the Lucrece of 1594 and 1616, with a subsequent edition of 1655, and the Sonnets of 1609, were presented by the well-known collector, Mr. Thomas Caldecott, who had been formerly a Fellow of New College. They are now incorporated with the Malone collection. Several MSS. of Sir William Jones were presented by the brothers Augustus and Julius C. Hare. An interesting and large collection of tracts on the Roman Catholic disabilities, affairs in Ireland, &c., in forty-five volumes, was purchased at the sale of the library of Charles Butler, of Lincoln's Inn.
An anonymous pamphlet, entitled, A Few Words on the Bodleian Library, appeared in this year; its author was Sir Edmund Head, M.A., Merton College. The object was to urge the desirableness of allowing books to be borrowed from the Library, after the example of Cambridge. One of the arguments by which the author supported the proposal, viz. that College tutors were unable to visit the Library in term time during the hours at which it is open, has since been entirely removed by the attachment of the Radcliffe Library as a Reading-room, which remains open until ten o'clock at night. The pamphlet was reprinted in the Report of the University Commission in 1852.
A.D. 1834.
Numerous purchases were made during the sale of Mr. Heber's library. Amongst these were some rare English tracts of the Reformers, Bale, Becon, Tyndal, Knox, &c.; a large and valuable collection of booksellers' catalogues and sale catalogues of books and coins between 1726 and 1814[319]; and a mass of some 1100 or 1200 plays, published in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries[320]. Numerous early Shakespeare editions were also obtained; inter alias, the first edition (1594) of the first part of the Contention betwixt the Houses of Yorke and Lancaster, for £64; Richard III, 1598, £17; fourth edit. of Henry IV, 1608, £12 12s.[321], &c. The greater part of the collection of editions of Horace up to the year 1738, formed by Dr. Douglas, a collection which was used in the preparation of the edition published at London, by James Watson, in 1760, was bought for £20. It consists of twenty-seven vols. in folio, thirty-nine in quarto, and 248 in octavo and smaller sizes. Dibdin (Introd. to the Classics) says that the whole collection consisted of 450 editions. A Prayer-Book of 1707, with MSS. collations by Rev. John Lewis, of Margate, of alterations in editions between 1549 and 1637, was bought for £8 8s. One of the chief gems in the Picture Gallery was bequeathed by James Paine, Esq., being the portrait of his father, James Paine, the architect[322], while instructing his son in drawing, by Sir Joshua Reynolds. This beautiful picture has retained its freshness of colour far more perfectly than
most others of Sir Joshua's paintings; and it has recently, under the direction of the present Librarian, been carefully cleaned, and protected with glass and a curtain, that its brilliancy may incur no risk of deterioration. But this year is chiefly distinguished in the Annals of the Library by the bequest of the