The fourth Catalogue of the printed books appeared this year in two
volumes, folio, of 611 and 714 pp. respectively. It is still a Catalogue
of great use and value, from its remarkable accuracy, and from the
abundance and minuteness of its cross-references. The secret history of
this Catalogue, however, as of the preceding one, is related by Hearne.
By him, as he himself frequently tells us[206], the greater portion of
it was virtually prepared soon after his appointment as Sub-librarian,
in 1712 (although no mention of his name is made in Fysher's preface),
and to him, therefore, its accuracy is most probably in a great measure
due[207]. He compared every book in the Library with Hyde's Catalogue,
and corrected many mistakes, adding notes here and there about anonymous
and synonymous authors, and, as the Vice-Chancellor (Dr. Maunder, of
Balliol) was anxious to have an Appendix issued, he transcribed for this
purpose all his corrections and additions into two folio volumes,
'which' (to take up now Hearne's own account in his _Diary_, vol. lxii.
p. 58, under date 1717) 'now lye and are to be seen in the Library....
But at last Dr. Hudson thought it more convenient with respect to
himself that both Dr. Hyde's Catalogue and my Appendix should come out
together as one intire work, so that he might have the honour of all.
Upon which he employed one Moses Williams, his servitour[208] (the Dr.
being then Fellow of University College), to transcribe it, the said
Williams being in the Dr.'s debt. When Williams had done, he demanded
the remaining part of his money, which was about ten or twelve pounds,
the rest having been stopped by the Dr. for the debt just now mentioned.
The whole was fifty lbs. which he bargained for with the Dr. But when
Williams desired the said ten or twelve pounds, of which he had
immediate occasion to discharge the fees and charges for the degree of
Bachelor of Arts, the Dr. was in a very great passion, and refused to
pay it. Upon which Williams moved the matter so far that the Catalogue
was laid before the Delegates of the Press, and the Dr. was called
before them to his very great mortification, and they told him that
'twas highly unreasonable to stop the poor lad's money. Upon which the
Dr. in a great rage and fury paid him; otherwise Williams had most
certainly put him into the Court. This Catalogue was last summer ordered
to be printed, and the Dr. was refunded his money; but 'tis not yet put
to the press, the Dr. being unwilling it should be printed till such
time as he hath done Josephus.' But Hudson died before his Josephus was
finished, and the proposed new Catalogue was consequently begun, and
only begun, by his successor, Bowles. The latter printed as far as p.
244 of vol. i. and p. 292 of vol. ii. His successor, Fysher, upon his
appointment, engaged the assistance of his friend, Emmanuel Langford,
M.A., Vice-Principal of Hart Hall, who completed the second volume,
while Fysher himself finished the first. At the end of the second volume
appeared an announcement of a supplemental Catalogue, as being ready for
the press, containing the books existing in College Libraries but
wanting in the Bodleian. This, however, never appeared, and nothing is
known of the MS. from which it was to have been printed. Fysher's
Catalogue appears, from the University Accounts, to have occupied from
1735 in preparation, for which, and for transcribing it for the press,
£194 5_s._ were paid to him.
Alexander Pope gave, together with copies of his _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_,
a curious volume, containing a series of 178 Portraits of East Indian
Rajahs and Great Moguls, down to Aurung-Zebe. It is now numbered Bodl.
MS. Sansk. 14.
The names of various persons (all, probably, undergraduates) employed in
the Library about this time are learned from the Accounts:--1738, Mr.
Hall; 1740-1, Mr. Allen; 1740, Mr. Toynbee (Ball. Coll., B.A., 1743);
1743, Mr. Jessett (All Souls', B.A., 1745); 1747, Mr. Thomas Winbolt
(All Souls', B.A. 1748).
[206] Pref. to _Chron. de Dunstaple_, p. xii. _Autobiogr._ p. 11, &c.
[207] It is fair to say that Fysher remarks in his preface that
experience proved how entirely vain and foolish were the reports which
had been spread abroad of the little or the nothing which, after the
labours of their predecessors, would remain for the then editors to do.
[208] Moses Williams took his degree as B.A. in 1708. One John Williams
(probably the one of that name who is entered in the Register of
Graduates as having taken the degree of B.A. at Oriel in 1704) appears
to have been a colleague of Hearne's in employment in the Library, about
1704. For in a letter written to Hearne, March 20, 1705/6, one year and
a-half after he had quitted Oxford, in which he mentions his having been
appointed to the Head-mastership of Ruthin School in November, 1705, he
refers to 'our dear friends that are in irons at the Bodleian Library,
there being several, I suppose, that have been manacled in that pleasing
prison since my being there.' (_Rawlinson Letters_, vol. xii. f. 1.)