CONTENTS.
| PAGE. | |||
| Annals | [1] | ||
| Appendix | A. | Account of a 'Tartar Lambskin' Cloak | [307] |
| " | B. | Vellum-printed Books, added since 1830 | [310] |
| " | C. | List of MSS. from Monastic and other Libraries | [313] |
| " | D. | MSS. and Miscellaneous Curiosities exhibited in the Library and Picture Gallery | [319] |
| " | E. | Numismatic Collection | [339] |
| " | F. | Past and Present Officers of the Library | [341] |
| " | G. | Rules of the Library | [344] |
| Lithograph of Shakespeare-autograph, to face page | [301] | ||
ANNALS
OF THE
BODLEIAN LIBRARY.
In the north-east corner of St. Mary's Church, a church full of nooks little known to ordinary visitors, is a dark vaulted chamber (dark, because its windows have been built up), whose doors, when opened, only now reveal the abiding-place of the University fire-engines. Here of old sat the Chancellor of the University, surrounded by the Doctors and Masters of the Great Congregation, in a fashion which was formerly depicted in the great west window of St. Mary's Church, and is still represented on the University seal, and which, in the early part of the last century, was adopted by Dr. Richard Rawlinson as his book-plate, being engraved from the impression attached to his own diploma in Civil Law. Above this chamber there is another, lighted by four windows, containing forty-five feet in length and twenty in breadth, and now assigned as the lecture-room of the Professor of Law. Here was begun about 1367, and finally established and furnished in 1409, the first actual University Library, called after Bishop Thomas Cobham, of Worcester, who about 1320 (seven years before his death) had commenced preparations for the building of the room and the making provision for its contents[1].
Wood tells us that before this time there were indeed some books kept in chests in St. Mary's Church, which were to be lent out under pledges, as well as some chained to desks, which were only to be read in situ; but this University chest soon gave way to the formal Library, as, at a later period, another University chest was lost in funded investments and a banker's balance[2]. Another precursor of the general Library was found in the collection bequeathed to Durham College (on the site of which now stands Trinity College) in 1345 by one of its founders, the earnest lover and preserver of books, Philip of Bury; he of that charming book, that 'tractatus vere pulcherrimus,' the Philobiblion. He,—who apostrophizes books as the masters who teach without flogging or fleecing, without punishment or payment; as ears of corn, full of grain, to be rubbed only by apostolic hands; as golden pots of manna; as Noah's ark and Jacob's ladder, and Joshua's stones of testimony and Gideon's lamps and David's scrip, and who says that in the noblest monasteries of England he found precious volumes defiled and injured by mice and worms, and abandoned to moths,—gave strict injunctions for the care of the large collection, gathered from all quarters, with which he enriched his College[3]. It was to be free for purposes of study to all scholars, who might have the loan of any work of which there
was a duplicate, provided they left a pledge exceeding it in value, but for purposes of transcription no volume was to go beyond the walls of the house. A register was to be kept, and a yearly visitation was to be held[4]. Some of these books, on the dissolution of the College by Henry VIII, are said to have been transferred to Duke Humphrey's Library, and some to Balliol College.