A Hebrew MS. of the Pentateuch, probably of the thirteenth century, was bought for £32 10s. Some tracts relating to the period of the Great Rebellion were bought at the sale of Dr. Bandinel's extensive Caroline collection.
On March 4, the Curators accepted the gift of a bust of Rev. F. W. Robertson, late incumbent of Trinity Chapel, Brighton, which had been purchased by subscription. It is now placed in the Picture Gallery.
A large number of purchase-duplicates, which had accumulated during the course of many years, were removed from the Library and sold by auction, in London, by Messrs. Sotheby and Wilkinson, in May. Among them were some of great rarity. The sale, which lasted five days, produced £766 2s. 6d.; of which £110 5s. were given for a specimen of the St. Alban's press, the
Rhetorica Nova of Gul. de Saona, printed in 1489. A second and smaller sale, containing many English works of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, took place on April 12, 1865, at which a copy of Chettle's Kind-Harts Dreame (1593), produced £101, and Decker's Guls Horne-Booke, 1609, £81. The proceeds of the whole sale amounted to £750 18s. 6d.
The Rev. Alfred Hackman, M.A., Chaplain and Precentor of Ch. Ch., and P. C. of St. Paul's, Oxford, and an Assistant in the Library of twenty-five years' standing, was approved by Convocation, on April 12, as Mr. Coxe's successor in the Sub-librarianship; after a discussion, which led to the abrogation by Convocation, in February, of a provision in the Statutes forbidding the holding cure of souls in connection with that office or that of Head-librarian without special licence from the Curators.
[361] These engravings are deposited in the gallery of the Radcliffe, under the charge of a separate Keeper, the Rev. J. Treacher, M.A. They do not belong to the Bodleian.
A.D. 1863.
Among the purchases made in this year were the following: Card. Ximenes' rare treatise entitled Crestia, printed at Valentia in 1483 (£25); Court-Rolls of Tamworth, Solihull, and other neighbouring places, obtained from Mr. Halliwell; and a collection, in three thick folio volumes, of placards, hand-bills, &c., relating to the town of Coventry, formed by Mr. W. Reader, a printer in that place.
Capt. Montagu Montagu, R.N., who died at Bath, on July 3 in this year, bequeathed a collection of about 700 volumes, in various branches of literature, which was received at the Library about the beginning of 1864. There are about ninety editions and versions of the Psalter, with works on Psalmody, including a metrical version by Capt. Montagu himself; a large number of editions of Anacreon, Horace, Juvenal, Phædrus, Petrarch, Boileau, and Fontaine's Fables; a few MSS. of Juvenal, Petrarch,
&c. with a large series of autograph letters, chiefly obtained at Upcott's sale. There are, besides, a number of topographical and biographical works illustrated, more Sutherlandico, with additional engravings, together with many parcels of separate prints arranged for the same purpose. One item of particular interest which accompanied the collection is a small sketch of Napoleon I, in profile, admirably executed by the well-known Italian artist, Giuseppe Longhi. It now hangs, framed and glazed, in the Library, together with a letter from Longhi himself, in French, dated at Milan, June 4, 1828, in which he narrates the occasion on which it was taken. He attended, in 1801, at Lyons, as a member of the 'Consulte Cisàlpine,' for the settling the affairs of the Republic of Italy, under the presidency of the First Consul. It happened that during the delivery of a long harangue, full of tedious flattery, Napoleon sat vis-à-vis with the orator; and Longhi saw that an opportunity for exercising the cunning of his pencil had come. The light, which streamed in through the great window of the Church (!) where they were assembled, brought out the profile very clearly; there was little fear of being cut short by the speaker's suddenly ceasing his declamation, or of being interrupted by movement on the part of the unconscious subject of the operation, for the latter sat immersed in thought upon matters far away, while regarding the speaker with a pensive air; and so, while Napoleon sat pondering, Longhi sat sketching. And everybody, he declares with a pardonable pride, at Lyons and Paris, pronounced the likeness to be excellent. A small bust of Napoleon, now placed in the great window, came to the Library at the same time. A catalogue of Capt. Montagu's books, comprising forty octavo pages, was printed and circulated with the Annual Statement for 1864.