A.D. 1814
The nomination of the Rev. Henry Cotton, M.A., then Student of Ch. Ch., now the venerable Archdeacon of Cashel, as Sub-librarian, was approved in Convocation on March 9. Of the interest which he took in his work, of his qualifications for it, and of the advantages which the bibliographical world has derived from it, his Typographical Gazetteer and List of Editions of the English Bible, afford abundant testimony286. He remained in the Library eight years, quitting it when his friend Dr. Laurence, on his appointment to the Archbishopric of Cashel, carried him with himself to Ireland.
During his continuance in the Library, a descriptive Catalogue of the Editiones principes and Incunabula was projected by him and Dr. Bandinel; but only one specimen page in octavo was printed, of which a copy has been preserved by Dr. Bliss, with his set of the annual catalogues.
Alex. Nicoll, M.A., of Balliol College (a native of Aberdeen), was appointed Sub-librarian at the early age of twenty-one; the nomination was approved in Convocation on April 27. He at once devoted himself to the study of Oriental languages, and became a proficient in Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Syriac, Æthiopic, and Sanscrit. His facility in acquiring languages must have been truly marvellous, for, in addition to these Eastern tongues, and although his death occurred at the early age of thirty-six, it is said that ‘he spoke and wrote with ease and accuracy, French, Italian, German, Danish, Swedish, and Romaic.’ In 1822 he was, much to his own surprise, appointed, at the age of twenty-nine, to the Regius Professorship of Hebrew, by Lord Liverpool, on the recommendation of Dr. Laurence, who vacated that post in consequence of his appointment to the see of Cashel. Nicoll held the Professorship for only seven years, dying on Sept. 24, 1828. The records of his labours in the Bodleian are found in the Catalogue of Clarke’s Oriental MSS. noticed under the year 1809, and in his second part of the General Catalogue of Oriental MSS., published in 1821, q. v.
The total receipts and expenditure of the Library were for the first time fully stated in the annual accounts. Hitherto the practice had been to omit the Bodley endowment and the Crewe benefaction, &c., which were devoted to salaries, repairs and other ordinary expenses (including also the occasional purchase of MSS.), and only to report the amount received from University fees and expended on printed books and incidental charges.
Notes
286 In a clever and amusing little squib of four pages, which he printed anonymously in 1819, and which is preserved in the Library-collection of University papers, professing to be a ‘Syllabus’ of treatises on academic matters, to be printed at the University Press in not more than thirty vols., elephant quarto, Mr. Cotton satirized himself and his colleagues, doubtless with the more readiness because with no reason. ’21. De Bibliothecario et ejus adjutoribus. Captain. What are you about, Dick? Dick. Nothing, sir. Captain. Tom, what are you doing? Tom. Helping Dick, sir.’ Treatise 24 has for its title the few but emphatic words, ‘De Dodd.’ Lest some future delver in Oxford antiquities should be lost in a maze of conjectures as to the personality and history of this worthy, so evidently then well known, let it here be told that Dodd was the Clerk of the Schools.