Above forty Syriac, Greek and Arabic MSS. are recorded in the Registers
to have been presented by Henry Dawkins, Esq., of Standlynch, Wilts,
who had collected them while travelling in the East with Robert Wood,
whose works on Baalbec and Palmyra he presented at the same time. There
are now _sixty_ MSS. in Syriac alone which pass under the name of
Dawkins, some of which are of great age and value. They are described in
Dr. R. Payne Smith's Catalogue of the Syriac MSS. Mr. Dawkins died in
London, June 19, 1814, aged eighty-six.
Swedenborg's _Arcana Cœlestia_, published anonymously, in 8 vols.
were sent 'by the author, unknown.' The same donor, still unknown, sent
in 1766 _Selecti Dionys. Halicarn. tractatus_.
In this year and in 1761 published music began to be received from
Stationers' Hall, and to be entered in the Register. It remained piled
up in cupboards until about twenty-three years ago, when it was all
disinterred and carefully arranged by Rev. H. E. Havergal, M.A., then
Chaplain of New Coll. and Ch. Ch., and an assistant in the Library (now
Vicar of Cople, Beds.), and bound in some 300 or 400 volumes. Since that
time two further series of musical volumes have been arranged and bound.
A meagre list of the pictures, &c., in the Picture Gallery and Library
was printed by the Janitor (or Under-janitor), N. Bull, and 'sold by him
at the Picture Gallery.' It fills twelve duodecimo pages. A new edition,
'with additions and amendments,' including the pictures in the Ashmolean
Museum, was issued by him in 1762, in sixteen octavo pages. This was, as
it seems, the first list that had been issued since Hearne printed his
original Catalogue in his _Letter containing an Account of some
Antiquities between Windsor and Oxford_. A list, equally meagre with
Bull's, was published by W. Cowderoy, Janitor, in 1806. He was succeeded
in office (before 1825) by ---- Lenthall; on whom followed the present
Janitor, J. Norris, appointed in 1835. By him a new Catalogue, enlarged
with biographical notices, was issued, filling sixty pages; which was
reissued, with a few alterations, in 1847, when such of the pictures as
were not portraits had been removed to the new Randolph Gallery. As all
the portraits were a few years ago distinctly labelled, but few copies
of the Catalogue have, consequently, been since sold, and no new edition
has appeared.