A.D. 1787
On May 31, the Reader in Chemistry, Thomas Beddoes, M.D., of Pembroke College, issued a printed Memorial to the Curators ‘concerning the state of the Bodleian Library, and the conduct of the Principal Librarian.’ The utmost laxity appears from this statement to have prevailed with regard to attendance, and to the hours of opening the Library; the Librarian was always absent on Saturdays and Mondays, as on those days he was occupied in journeys to and from a curacy eleven miles distant, which he held together with a living more remote; and the Library which should then in summer have been opened at eight was found unopened between nine and ten, and unopened also after University sermons. The Librarian is charged besides with having discouraged readers by neglect and incivility, with being very careless in regard to the value and condition of books purchased by the Library264, and with having but little knowledge of foreign publications. An anecdote is related (amongst others) of his lending Cook’s Voyages, which had been presented by King Geo. III, to the Rector of Lincoln College, and telling him that the longer he kept it the better, ‘for if it was known to be in the Library, he (Mr. Price) should be perpetually plagued with enquiries after it265.’ In consequence of these complaints, the Curators, in 1788, prepared on their part a new form of Statute, while the Heads of Houses prepared another. This separate action led to a paper war between the two bodies, in which the Regius Professors of Divinity, Law, Medicine, Hebrew and Greek, (Randolph, Vansittart, Vivian, Blayney and Jackson) appeared on the Curators’ side of the question, and, as the Hebdomadal Board persisted in pressing their own scheme, they at length (with the exception of Blayney) adopted the strong step, on the day when the rival plan was proposed in Convocation (June 23, 1788), of formally protesting before a notary public against this violation of their privileges. The consequence was that the Statute was withdrawn, and the proposal for a new code abandoned by both parties. The chief points of difference were, that the Curators objected to the proposal being put forward as ‘cum consensu Curatorum’ instead of ‘ex relatione Curatorum,’ to the increase of the Librarian’s stipend to £150, to the appointment of two Sub-librarians instead of one, and to the leaving the appointment of these in the hands of the Librarian (in accordance with Bodley’s own Statute) instead of assigning it to the Curators.
Eleven Arabic and Persian MSS. were given by Turner Camac, Esq., co. Down.
A first part of a Catalogue of the Oriental MSS., comprehending those in Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Æthiopic, Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Coptic, was issued in this year, in folio. It was compiled by John Uri, a Hungarian, who had studied Oriental literature under Schultens, at Leyden, and who was recommended for this purpose to Archbp. Secker, by Sir Joseph Yorke, then Ambassador in the Netherlands. Many years were occupied in the preparation of this volume, as Uri appears to have commenced his work in 1766, his signature occurring in the ‘Registrum admissorum’ under Feb. 17, in that year266. Sixty closely-printed folio pages of corrections and additions are, however, supplied by Dr. Pusey, in the second part of the Catalogue, which he completed after Dr. Nicoll’s death and published in 1835. In his preface to this part, Dr. Pusey remarks that Uri frequently copied with carelessness; and that the whole series of Arabic MSS. was found to need re-examination from the discovery that all kinds of cheats and impositions had been played upon all the purchasers of Eastern MSS., Pococke alone excepted, by the cunning sellers with whom they dealt, particularly in the passing off of supposititious works for genuine267. And upon carrying out this re-examination, the following was found to be the result:—
‘Varias errorum formas deprehendi, titulis nunc charta coopertis, nunc atramento oblitis, nunc cultro pæne abrasis; auctorum porro nominibus paullulum immutatis quo notiora quædam referrent; numeris etiam, quibus singula volumina signata sunt, permutatis, quo quis opus imperfectum pro integro habeat, paginis denique pauculis operi alieno a fronte assutis.’
Notes
264 Among other instances the purchase (in 1784) of Sir John Hill’s Vegetable System, at the cost of £140, is mentioned.
265 It appears incidentally, from this pamphlet, that three o’clock was the dinner-hour at almost every College at that time.
266 He died suddenly at his lodgings in Oxford, Oct. 18, 1796, aged upwards of seventy (Gent. Magaz., vol. lxvi. p. 884.)
267 The late Dr. Simonides was evidently by no means the first in his art, although probably facile princeps.