A.D. 1834
Numerous purchases were made during the sale of Mr. Heber’s library. Amongst these were some rare English tracts of the Reformers, Bale, Becon, Tyndal, Knox, &c.; a large and valuable collection of booksellers’ catalogues and sale catalogues of books and coins between 1726 and 1814319; and a mass of some 1100 or 1200 plays, published in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries320. Numerous early Shakespeare editions were also obtained; inter alias, the first edition (1594) of the first part of the Contention betwixt the Houses of Yorke and Lancaster, for £64; Richard III, 1598, £17; fourth edit. of Henry IV, 1608, £12 12s.321, &c. The greater part of the collection of editions of Horace up to the year 1738, formed by Dr. Douglas, a collection which was used in the preparation of the edition published at London, by James Watson, in 1760, was bought for £20. It consists of twenty-seven vols. in folio, thirty-nine in quarto, and 248 in octavo and smaller sizes. Dibdin (Introd. to the Classics) says that the whole collection consisted of 450 editions. A Prayer-Book of 1707, with MSS. collations by Rev. John Lewis, of Margate, of alterations in editions between 1549 and 1637, was bought for £8 8s. One of the chief gems in the Picture Gallery was bequeathed by James Paine, Esq., being the portrait of his father, James Paine, the architect322, while instructing his son in drawing, by Sir Joshua Reynolds. This beautiful picture has retained its freshness of colour far more perfectly than most others of Sir Joshua’s paintings; and it has recently, under the direction of the present Librarian, been carefully cleaned, and protected with glass and a curtain, that its brilliancy may incur no risk of deterioration. But this year is chiefly distinguished in the Annals of the Library by the bequest of the
Douce Collection
Francis Douce, the donor of this magnificent library (who died on March 30, in this year), is said to have been induced to make this disposition of his treasures through the courteous reception afforded to him by Dr. Bandinel, upon the occasion of a visit to Oxford, in 1830. The gatherings of a lifetime with which the Bodleian was thus enriched, consist of 393 manuscripts, ninety-eight charters, about 16,480 printed volumes, a very large collection of early and valuable prints and drawings, and some coins323. For the most part, the books which thus came were of classes in which the Library was then deficient. Nearly all the finest specimens of Missal-painting which it now possesses are found among the Douce MSS., several of which are exhibited in a glass case at the further end of the Library. Chief among these are three volumes of Horæ, one executed, perhaps by G. da Libri, at the beginning of the sixteenth century for Leonora Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino, a second belonged to Mary de Medici, and the other was completed in 1527 for B. Sforza, second wife of Sigism. I of Poland. These are priceless gems, rivalled only by such as the Bedford Missal. In the same case is a Psalter on purple vellum, probably of the ninth century, which came from the old Royal Library of France, and which, from this circumstance and its age, has sometimes been called Charlemagne’s Psalter. The printed books are rich in history, biography, antiquities, manners and customs, and the fine arts[324]. In Bibles (English and French), Horæ, Primers, Books of Common Prayer and Psalters, the collection is very strong. Among the Psalters is a copy of Archbishop Parker’s rare metrical version. Early French literature is also a conspicuous feature, in which the Library had previously been very deficient. Of fifteenth-century typography there are no fewer than 311 specimens. The finest of these is a magnificent copy of Christoforo Landino’s Italian translation of Pliny’s Natural History, printed on vellum by Nic. Janson, at Venice, in 1476. It is enriched with exquisite illuminated borders at the commencement of each book, a specimen of which, together with a description of the volume, is given in Shaw’s Illuminated Ornaments, pl. xxxviii325. There are also a large number of fragments of works by early English printers, including two by Caxton, which are unique. One of these is a portion (two quarters of an octavo or duodecimo sheet) of an edition of the Horæ, conjecturally assigned by Mr. Blades to 1478, and the other is of an edition of the Booke of Curtesye, probably printed in 1491, consisting of two quarto pages. There is also one of the two known copies of a curious placard, issued by Caxton, inviting those who were disposed to buy ‘ony pyes of two and thre comemoracions of Salisburi vse’ to come to him at Westminster, and they should have them ‘good chepe326.’ The other copy is in the possession of Earl Spencer. A very different, but still very curious, item is a large collection of chap-books and children’s penny books of the last century and commencement of the present; and two folio volumes are filled with black-letter ballads. A catalogue of the library was published in one volume, in folio, in 1840; the part containing the printed books was the work of Mr. H. Symonds, of Magdalen Hall (B.A. 1840, M.A. 1842, now Precentor of Norwich), and that which describes the Fragments, the Charters and the Manuscripts was drawn up by Rev. H. O. Coxe. From the year 1839 until the commencement of 1842, Mr. Thomas Dodd, formerly a well-known London dealer in prints, and author of the Connoisseur’s Repertory, was employed in making a catalogue of the Douce prints and drawings. This catalogue still remains in MS. Four very grand studies of heads, drawn either by Raffaelle or Giulio Romano, have recently been framed and hung at the western end of the Library.
On June 25, Convocation sanctioned the transfer to the Library of the room immediately over the entrance in the gateway-tower of the Schools, (now called the Mason Room) which had been hitherto assigned as the ‘Savile Study,’ on condition that a small room in the adjoining south-east angle of the quadrangle should be prepared at the expense of the Bodleian for the reception of the MSS. and printed books, instruments, &c., which were given to the University by Sir Henry Savile for the use of his Professors. This is the room in which the Savile library (which includes also some books given by Dr. Wallis and Sir Christopher Wren) is still preserved, under the charge of the Savilian Professors of Geometry and Astronomy.
On July 5, Convocation confirmed the nomination of Rev. William Cureton, M.A., of Ch. Ch. (afterwards so well known for his Syriac studies, which gained him the patronage of the Prince Consort and a Canonry at Westminster), to the Sub-librarianship vacated by Rev. E. Hawkins.
Mr. Edmund Grove, of Magdalen College (who never graduated), was appointed Assistant in April, vice Mr. Stephen Exup. Wentworth, of Balliol (B.A. 1833, M.A. 1835). Mr. Wentworth appears to have succeeded Mr. Forster in 1832.
Notes
319 Another collection of sale catalogues in forty-five vols. was purchased in 1836.
320 Another collection, in twenty-eight vols., of plays chiefly dating from 1630 to 1707, was bought, in 1842, for £6 17s.
321 In 1837 Romeo and Juliet, printed by Smethwicke, n. d., was bought for £9 10s.; in 1840, Richard III, 1605, for £21, and Hamlet, 1611, for £10 10s.; and in 1841 the first edit. 1595, of part iii. of Henry VI. was bought at Chalmers’ sale for £131!
322 Mr. Paine died in France in 1789, aged 73 years. The picture was painted by Reynolds in June, 1764. Among the buildings erected by Paine were Brocket Hall, Herts; Wardour Castle, Wilts; and Richmond Bridge.
323 To the British Museum Mr. Douce bequeathed his own Diaries and Notebooks, to remain sealed up until Jan. 1, 1900, in order that all of his own and the succeeding generation may have passed away before the personal histories which they undoubtedly contain are brought to light.
324 In the majority of instances the books bear MS. notes by Douce, which often are valuable for the references they afford to other works and sources of further information. A few specimens of some of the fuller notes of this kind were contributed by the present writer to the early volumes of the second series of Notes and Queries. One book, viz. John Weever’s Epigrammes, 1599, containing notes by Douce, which had somehow escaped from his library before it came to Oxford, was purchased in 1838, for £24 10s. A letter written by Douce in 1804, dated from the British Museum, where he was for a short time Keeper of the MSS., was bought in 1864, and a few other papers in 1866.
325 In the same beautiful volume are facsimiles from three of Douce’s MS. Horæ.
326 A facsimile of this advertisement is given in the catalogue of the Douce library.