A very large collection of Academic Dissertations published in Germany,
amounting to about 43,400, was bought at Altona for £332 16_s._ Of these
a folio catalogue was published in 1834, which, by a singular error,
bears on its title the date 1832, as the year in which this accession
came to the Library. In 1828, 160 volumes of the same character were
added, and other large additions were made in 1836 and 1837, but
particularly in 1846, when no fewer than 7000 were purchased[312].
Mr. Henry Forster, New College (B.A. 1832, M.A. 1834; Esquire Bedel of
Divinity; deceased 1857), succeeded Mr. Bailey, in March, as Assistant.
[312] There is scarcely an imaginable subject in law, theology, or
history, on which something may not be found in this vast collection.
The _something_ may often be meagre and superficial, but it is still
oftener curious, and even in the former case it may be useful as
pointing to sources of further information. In days of Ritual
controversy, one party or another may be glad to know that in 1725,
George Henry Goetz, D.D., wrote on the interesting question whether a
clergyman might do duty in his dressing-gown,--_Num Verbi ministro toga
cubicularia_ (Schlaffpeltze) _induto officio sacro defungi liceat?_
Those who know what curses were invoked of old upon the heads of
stealers of books, may be interested in hearing what one Pipping had to
say on the subject in 1721, in his _Diss. de Imprecationibus libris
ascriptis_; while the title of Sam. Schelging's discourse in 1729, _De
Apparitionibus mortuorum vivis ex pacto factis_, will have attraction
for not a few. Sometimes the dryest subjects were lightened up at the
close with ponderous jokes, or unexpected turns were given to the matter
in hand; _e.g._ those worthy Germans who had gone to sleep at Jena, in
1660, during the reading of a dissertation _De Jure et Potestate
Parlamenti Britannici_, by one J. A. Gerhard, (who must have taken
unusual interest in the history of the English Rebellion,) were wakened
up at the end by the discussion of the following novel questions in
law:--'Casus ex jure privato.
'I. Titius ducit uxorem Caiam. Caia, elapso uno vel altero anno,
transmutatur in virum. Q. an Caia hæc, soluto per hanc metamorphosin
matrimonio, possit repetere dotem? Dist.
'II. Sempronia, defuncto marito Mævio, nubit Titio. Mævius divinâ
potentiâ in vitam resuscitatur mortalem. Q. an Mævius hic, secundum
vivus, uxorem Semproniam et bona sua repetere possit? Aff.'
It was usual for the friends of the candidate who defended the thesis of
the Dissertation (generally written for him by the _Præses_) to attach
some complimentary letters or verses. In the case of those published at
Upsal, the zeal of the encomiasts frequently breaks out into wild
compositions in Hebrew, Greek, French, German and English, affording in
the latter instance (and it may be in others) very curious specimens of
the language. A laborious trifler, named P. Wettersten, compliments a
friend, who had read at Upsal, in 1742, a dissertation by Prof. Peter
Ekerman on the antiquities of a small town called Norkoping, with a kind
of acrostic in twenty-five lines on the verse, 'Nunc erit et seclis
Norcopia clara futuris,' which, starting from the centre of the page,
may be read upwards, downwards, and in every form of mazy irregularity;
every way, in short, except the right.