In March, the Prince Regent forwarded to the University four rolls of
papyrus, brought from Herculaneum, burned to a state resembling
charcoal, together with engravings of rolls hitherto deciphered, and
many facsimile copies, in pencil, of inedited rolls. A committee was
appointed from the Curators of the Library and the Delegates of the
Press, at the beginning of the year 1811, to have the charge of this
gift, and £500 were granted towards publication. Two volumes of
lithographed facsimiles were in consequence published at the Clarendon
Press, in 1824-5. Some further selections from these papers have
recently been published by a German scholar, Dr. Th. Gompertz.
On Nov. 15, it was resolved in Convocation to restore to the Chancery at
Durham, on the application of the Bishop of Durham, the MS. Register of
Richard Kellow, Bishop of Durham, 1310-16, containing also a portion of
the Register of Rich. Bury, 1338-42, which had come to the Library among
Rawlinson's collections, and was the only volume wanting at Durham in an
unbroken series of Episcopal Registers, of which this was the first. It
was borrowed in 1639/40, as it appeared, by an agent of the Marquis of
Newcastle, for the purpose of production in some law-suit affecting his
property; remained through the Civil War in his hands; fell subsequently
into those of the Earl of Oxford, and was bought by Rawlinson from
Osborne the bookseller, in whose sale-catalogue of the Harleian Library
in 1743 it was numbered 20734.
In this year Dr. Philip Bliss, the editor of Wood's _Athenæ_, appears to
have entered the Library as an assistant, the entries in the register of
books received from Stationers' Hall being partly made by him, in his
very clear and neat hand. In 1812 he drew up short catalogues of the St.
Amand MSS. and of a portion of the Rawlinson collection (the _Poetry_,
the _Letters_, and the commencement of the _Miscell._) for which a
payment was made to him of £21. He afterwards quitted the Library for
the British Museum, but returned in 1822, as Sub-librarian, for a short
time.
His life-long friend, Dr. Bandinel, entered the Library also in this
year. To him, for a list of a further portion of the Rawlinson MSS., £26
5_s._ were paid in 1812.