A.D. 1833
Some precious Shakespearian volumes, consisting of the Venus and Adonis of 1594 and 1617, the Lucrece of 1594 and 1616, with a subsequent edition of 1655, and the Sonnets of 1609, were presented by the well-known collector, Mr. Thomas Caldecott, who had been formerly a Fellow of New College. They are now incorporated with the Malone collection. Several MSS. of Sir William Jones were presented by the brothers Augustus and Julius C. Hare. An interesting and large collection of tracts on the Roman Catholic disabilities, affairs in Ireland, &c., in forty-five volumes, was purchased at the sale of the library of Charles Butler, of Lincoln’s Inn.
An anonymous pamphlet, entitled, A Few Words on the Bodleian Library, appeared in this year; its author was Sir Edmund Head, M.A., Merton College. The object was to urge the desirableness of allowing books to be borrowed from the Library, after the example of Cambridge. One of the arguments by which the author supported the proposal, viz. that College tutors were unable to visit the Library in term time during the hours at which it is open, has since been entirely removed by the attachment of the Radcliffe Library as a Reading-room, which remains open until ten o’clock at night. The pamphlet was reprinted in the Report of the University Commission in 1852.