linson MSS., but it was refused by the Curators, on the ground that sufficient evidence was not produced of its having ever been the property of the College.
A.D. 1840.
Ninety specimens of the Aldine press, together with other volumes chiefly printed at Venice by A. de Asula, were purchased at the sale of the library of Dr. Samuel Butler, Bishop of Lichfield. From the same library was purchased, in the following year, a collection of portions of more than twenty of the very earliest editions of Donatus' De Octo Partibus Orationis, many of which were unknown; these had previously come from the library of Dr. Kloss. A ninth-century MS. of St. Gregory's Sacramentary was purchased for £63; and early MSS. of Juvenal, Lucan, &c. A fine and perfect copy of Caxton's Dictes and Sayinges of the Philosophres, printed in 1477, was purchased for £50. It had previously been sold, at Dr. Vincent's sale in 1816, for £99 15s.; this sum, which is marked in pencil on a fly-leaf, having been altered by some practical joker, by the insertion of a figure, to £199 15s., Mr. Blades has in consequence recorded that as being the price at which the Library secured the volume[340].
The Rev. Rob. J. M'Ghee, Rector of Holywell, Hunts, deposited in the Bodleian (as also in the University Library, Cambridge, and in that of Trinity College, Dublin,) a collection of thirty-one volumes relating to the controversy with the Church
of Rome, and to the Moral Theology taught at Maynooth. The volumes consist of editions of the Douay and Rheims versions, of some Irish diocesan Statutes, of Bailly's Theologia Moralis, and Delahogue's Dogmatic Treatises, and of various Irish polemical pamphlets; and they are enclosed in a mahogany case, with glass door. In consequence of reference having been made to this collection by the donor, at a County Meeting held at Huntingdon, Dec. 28, 1850, upon the occasion of the 'Papal Aggression,' some slight degree of public attention was called to it; and a controversial volume was in consequence published by Mr. M'Ghee, in 1852, entitled, The Church of Rome; a Report on the Books and Documents on the Papacy, deposited in the University Library, Cambridge, &c.
Shakespeare; Richard III and Hamlet. See [1834].
The first non-academic minister was appointed in Mr. H. S. Harper (vice Mr. Firth), of whose valuable services and acquaintance with details the Library still enjoys the benefit. Mr. Harper had acted for three years previously as an under-assistant.
[340] As Mr. Blades' valuable work on The Life and Typography of Caxton, 1863, gives most accurate descriptions of all the copies and fragments of our great printer's works which are preserved in the Library, it is only necessary to refer the reader to it for detailed information. A notice of two, however, which were unknown to be Caxtons at the time of Mr. Blades' investigations, will be found in the account of Bishop Tanner's books, p. [155]; and two fragments, among Douce's books, are mentioned at p. [250].
A.D. 1841.
The very large and valuable MS. collections of the Rev. John Brickdale Blakeway, relating to the history of Shropshire, were presented by his widow. Mr. Blakeway was minister of St. Mary's Church, Shrewsbury, for thirty-two years, and died March 10, 1826. He was long engaged in gathering materials for a county history, and his collections now form fifteen closely-written volumes in folio, nine in quarto, and two in octavo, arranged, and lettered on their backs, according to their several subjects, viz. Pedigrees, County History, Parochial History, &c. A list of them is given at the end of the Annual Catalogue. They were supplemented in 1850 by the purchase (for £42) of a copy of Mr. T. F.