A.D. 1746
Trott’s Clavis Linguæ Sanctæ. See 1686.
A.D. 1747
Dr. Fysher, the Librarian, died on Nov. 4, at Mr. Warneford’s, of Sevenhampton, Wilts, and was buried, on Nov. 7, in Adam de Brome’s chapel in St. Mary’s Church, Oxford. And on Nov. 10, Rev. Humphrey Owen, B.D., Fellow of Jesus College (afterwards D.D., and chosen Principal of his College in 1763), was unanimously elected his successor210. Rawlinson mentions, in a letter to Owen of April 15, 1751, that he had heard a complaint that in Fysher’s time ‘there was a great neglect in the entry of books into the Benefactors’ Catalogue, and into the interleaved one of the Library; as to these objections, my answers were as ready as true, at least I hope so, that Dr. Fysher’s indisposition disabled him much from the duty of his office, and that I did not think every small benefaction ought to load the velom register211.’
Notes
210 Memorandum by Owen himself, in reply to a question from Rawlinson, Rawl. MS. C. 989, f. 142. This volume contains a collection of letters to Owen, chiefly from Browne Willis and Rawlinson, between the years 1748-1756. It affords proof that Owen was what his correspondents would call an ‘honest’ man, i.e. a Jacobite. In one letter, Willis sends him a Latin inscription in praise of Flora Macdonald, which he says is ‘on a fair lady’s picture, in an honest gentl. seat in the province of St. David’s;’ in another, Rawlinson sends him, as a contribution to the Oxford collection of verses on the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales, this Jacobite epitaph:—
‘Here lies Fred., Down among the dead;
Had it been his Father, Most had much rather;
Had it been his Brother, Better than any other;
Had it been a Sister, More would have mist her;
Wer’t the whole generation, Happy for the nation;
But since it is only Fred., There is no more to be said.’
211 Rawl. MS. C. 989.