A.D. 1714
An evidence of the increased intercourse which sprang up between Denmark and England, in consequence of the marriage of Queen Anne, is probably to be found in the number of Danish readers who frequented the Library in the interval between her marriage and her death. Between the years 1683 and 1714, forty-nine Danes are entered in the Liber Admissorum, besides many from Sweden, Norway, and the North of Germany. The total number of foreigners admitted within the same period was no less than 244.
‘In the year 1714 were in the Bodleian Library:—
| 30169 | pr. vols. | |
| 05916 | MSS. vols. | |
| In all | 36085.’ |
(Hearne’s MS. Diary, vol. xci. p. 256.)
It is strange that, notwithstanding Selden’s and Laud’s large additions, the Library had therefore very little more than doubled since 1620.
It is recorded in vol. li. of the same Diary (p. 187) that the old series of portraits which were painted on the wall of the Picture Gallery was renewed in November of this year. These portraits, amounting in number to about 222, ran round the gallery, immediately under the roof; many of them were fancy-heads of ancient philosophers and writers, but besides these there were some real portraits of English writers and divines, up to the time of James I. A list of the whole series, as well as of the oil paintings in the Gallery, was printed by Hearne together with his Letter containing an Account of some Antiquities between Windsor and Oxford. Of the renovation of the wall-paintings he thus speaks in his preface to Rossi Historia Regum Angliæ (1716): ‘Non possim quin bibliothecæ Bodleianæ Curatores laudem, qui pictori Academico [i.e. Wildgoose] in mandatis dederunt, ut veteres effigies renovet nitorique pristino restituat: quippe quas eo pluris æstimendas esse censeo, quod eas in galeria depingendas jusserit ipse Bodleius, Loci Genius.’ When the Gallery was re-roofed in 1831, all these paintings were, however, removed [see p. 15].
About the end of this year the Arundel Marbles, which, strange to say, had been exposed to the open air within the quadrangle of the Schools ever since they were given to the University, were removed into one of the rooms on the ground-floor, where they still remain. It was said that they had suffered more ‘since they were exposed to our air, than they did in many hundred years before they came into it185.’ But the influence of the air was not all they had to contend against, for Hearne tells us that the defacing of the Marble Chronicle (of which there are portions that were read by Selden, which now can no longer be read at all) and some others, was owing not merely to exposure to the weather, but ‘to the abuses of children who are continually playing in the area, and of other ignorant persons186.’
Notes
185 Letters by Eminent Persons, 1813, vol. i. p. 297.
186 Letters by Eminent Persons, 1813, vol. i. p. 204.