Some precious Shakespearian volumes, consisting of the _Venus and
Adonis_ of 1594 and 1617, the _Lucrece_ of 1594 and 1616, with a
subsequent edition of 1655, and the _Sonnets_ of 1609, were presented by
the well-known collector, Mr. Thomas Caldecott, who had been formerly a
Fellow of New College. They are now incorporated with the Malone
collection. Several MSS. of Sir William Jones were presented by the
brothers Augustus and Julius C. Hare. An interesting and large
collection of tracts on the Roman Catholic disabilities, affairs in
Ireland, &c., in forty-five volumes, was purchased at the sale of the
library of Charles Butler, of Lincoln's Inn.
An anonymous pamphlet, entitled, _A Few Words on the Bodleian Library_,
appeared in this year; its author was Sir Edmund Head, M.A., Merton
College. The object was to urge the desirableness of allowing books to
be borrowed from the Library, after the example of Cambridge. One of the
arguments by which the author supported the proposal, viz. that College
tutors were unable to visit the Library in term time during the hours at
which it is open, has since been entirely removed by the attachment of
the Radcliffe Library as a Reading-room, which remains open until ten
o'clock at night. The pamphlet was reprinted in the Report of the
University Commission in 1852.