Annals of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, A.D. 1598-A.D. 1867 / With a Preliminary Notice of the earlier Library founded in the Fourteenth Century

by William Dunn Macray

[15] Ibid. fol. 94^a.

[16] Bodley appears to have been altogether an accomplished linguist. James, in the preface to the first Catalogue of 1605, after speaking of his proficiency in the classical languages, adds, 'Linguas vero exoticas, veluti Italicam, Gallicam, Hispanicam, Hebræam præcipue, cæterarum omnium parentem, tam perfecte callet, ut illo neminem fere scientiorem invenies.' And in one of four letters addressed to him on the interpretation of passages in the Old Testament, which are printed among the Epistles of J. Drusius, De Quæsitis (1595, p. 40), Drusius says, 'Vere dicam, Bodlæe, et intelligis optime litteras Hebræas, et amas unice earum peritos.' The same volume contains also one letter to his brothers, Laurence, Miles, and Josias, on the Pastor of Hermas.

[17] Reliquiæ Bodleianæ, p. 14.

[18] This letter (with the subsequent correspondence) is printed by Hearne, at the end of the Chronicle of John of Glastonbury, vol. ii. p. 612, from the Reg. of Convoc. M^a. f. 31^a.

[19] Most probably intended to refer to the Apocalyptic book (Rev. v. 1.), and to signify the unsealing of Divine Revelation, the fountain of all wisdom, by our Blessed Lord. Sir J. Wake prefers to take the seven seals as representing the seven liberal arts.

[20] The motto appears to have varied. It is sometimes given in titles of books printed at Oxford about the time of James I, as 'Sapientiæ et Felicitatis;' and in an heraldic MS. of the seventeenth century as 'XX. Exod. Decem ... Omnipotens mandata. Verbum Dei manet in eternum. Amen.' (Rawl. B. xl. f. 81.) Others [have] this, 'Veritas liberabit, Bonitas regnabit;' and others this, 'In principio erat Verbum,' &c. (Hearne, in Rawl. MS. C. 876, f. 51.)

[21] Wake notices it as a singular coincidence that the Library was first opened on the day of the 'Quatuor coronati Martyres,' Nov. 8, whom, by mistake, he calls 'Tres.'

[22] See Reliquiæ Bodleianæ, p. 158.

[23] One of the books given by Lord Lumley has the autograph of Cranmer, 'Thomas Cantuarien.,' on the title-page. The book, appositely enough, bears the title of Sicbardi Antidotum contra diversas omnium fere sæculorum bæreses, fol. Bas. 1528.

[24] Printed by Rev. J. Stevenson at the end of the Romance of Alexander, edited by him for the Roxburghe Club in 1849, from Ashmole MS. 44.