It is strange that, notwithstanding Selden's and Laud's large additions, the Library had therefore very little more than doubled since 1620.
It is recorded in vol. li. of the same Diary (p. 187) that the old series of portraits which were painted on the wall of the Picture Gallery was renewed in November of this year. These portraits, amounting in number to about 222, ran round the gallery, immediately under the roof; many of them were fancy-heads of ancient philosophers and writers, but besides these there were some real portraits of English writers and divines, up to the time of James I. A list of the whole series, as well as of the oil paintings in the Gallery, was printed by Hearne together with his Letter containing an Account of some Antiquities between Windsor and Oxford. Of the renovation of the wall-paintings he thus speaks in his preface to Rossi Historia Regum Angliæ (1716): 'Non possim quin bibliothecæ Bodleianæ Curatores laudem, qui pictori Academico [i.e. Wildgoose] in mandatis dederunt, ut veteres effigies renovet nitorique pristino restituat: quippe quas eo pluris æstimendas esse censeo, quod eas in galeria depingendas jusserit ipse Bodleius, Loci Genius.' When the Gallery was re-roofed in 1831, all these paintings were, however, removed [see p. [15]].
About the end of this year the Arundel Marbles, which, strange to say, had been exposed to the open air within the quadrangle of the Schools ever since they were given to the University, were removed into one of the rooms on the ground-floor, where they still remain. It was said that they had suffered more 'since they were exposed to our air, than they did in many hundred years before they came into it[185].' But the influence of the air was not all they had to contend against, for Hearne tells us that the defacing of the Marble Chronicle (of which there are portions that were read
by Selden, which now can no longer be read at all) and some others, was owing not merely to exposure to the weather, but 'to the abuses of children who are continually playing in the area, and of other ignorant persons[186].'
[185] Letters by Eminent Persons, 1813, vol. i. p. 297.
[186] Letters by Eminent Persons, 1813, vol. i. p. 204.
A.D. 1715.
We learn from Hearne's MS. Diary [vol. liii.] that differences between him and Dr. Hudson (of which he makes frequent mention) increased during this year. He was reported to the Vice-Chancellor in April for absence from the Library through his duties as Bedel, by reason of which readers had difficulty in obtaining books lodged above stairs. To this complaint his reply was that he was not bound, as Second Librarian, exclusively to do such 'drudgery,' but that Dr. Hudson was himself obliged by statute to deliver out such books as were under lock-and-key, and books in quarto and octavo, either personally or by his own special deputy. At the same time a complaint was made against him by three Bachelors of Arts of Queen's College, for refusing books to them which were out of the faculty of Arts prescribed to them by the statutes of the Library. Hearne's only reply to the Vice-Chancellor in this case was the asking whether they had, also in accordance with the Statutes, come to the Library in their hoods, if under two years' standing; at which 'he smiled.' It appears, therefore, that this requirement had already become obsolete. Dr. Hudson, however, regarded the matter more seriously, and threatened that Hearne should be turned out of both his places.
April 15. (Good Friday!) 'This morning Dr. Hudson went out of town, and that pert jackanapes Bowles (who is Dr. Hudson's servitor) came to tell me that he is gone, and that the sweeper of the Library being dead, I must not admitt any one to sweep the
Library as formerly. I returned answer I had nothing to do in that case. In the afternoon I was at study in the Library, and Bowles brings up a woman and girl, and set them to sweeping, and left them there, tho' this should not have been, they being not sworn nor admitted as sweepers. Indeed all things are now done very irregularly in the Library by the permission of Dr. Hudson, and by the impudence of this pert, silly servitour, and I am afraid much mischief is done withall. The whole Library and galleries and studies and the Anatomy School used to be swept this day; they began about eight, and had not done till four or five in the afternoon. But now the Library only below stairs was swept over, and that very slightly, and all things were left in a bad condition, to my very great concern[187].'