A.D. 1810
In March, the Prince Regent forwarded to the University four rolls of papyrus, brought from Herculaneum, burned to a state resembling charcoal, together with engravings of rolls hitherto deciphered, and many facsimile copies, in pencil, of inedited rolls. A committee was appointed from the Curators of the Library and the Delegates of the Press, at the beginning of the year 1811, to have the charge of this gift, and £500 were granted towards publication. Two volumes of lithographed facsimiles were in consequence published at the Clarendon Press, in 1824-5. Some further selections from these papers have recently been published by a German scholar, Dr. Th. Gompertz.
On Nov. 15, it was resolved in Convocation to restore to the Chancery at Durham, on the application of the Bishop of Durham, the MS. Register of Richard Kellow, Bishop of Durham, 1310-16, containing also a portion of the Register of Rich. Bury, 1338-42, which had come to the Library among Rawlinson’s collections, and was the only volume wanting at Durham in an unbroken series of Episcopal Registers, of which this was the first. It was borrowed in 1639/40, as it appeared, by an agent of the Marquis of Newcastle, for the purpose of production in some law-suit affecting his property; remained through the Civil War in his hands; fell subsequently into those of the Earl of Oxford, and was bought by Rawlinson from Osborne the bookseller, in whose sale-catalogue of the Harleian Library in 1743 it was numbered 20734.
In this year Dr. Philip Bliss, the editor of Wood’s Athenæ, appears to have entered the Library as an assistant, the entries in the register of books received from Stationers’ Hall being partly made by him, in his very clear and neat hand. In 1812 he drew up short catalogues of the St. Amand MSS. and of a portion of the Rawlinson collection (the Poetry, the Letters, and the commencement of the Miscell.) for which a payment was made to him of £21. He afterwards quitted the Library for the British Museum, but returned in 1822, as Sub-librarian, for a short time.
His life-long friend, Dr. Bandinel, entered the Library also in this year. To him, for a list of a further portion of the Rawlinson MSS., £26 5s. were paid in 1812.