Numerous purchases were made during the sale of Mr. Heber's library.
Amongst these were some rare English tracts of the Reformers, Bale,
Becon, Tyndal, Knox, &c; a large and valuable collection of booksellers'
catalogues and sale catalogues of books and coins between 1726 and
1814[319]; and a mass of some 1100 or 1200 plays, published in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries[320]. Numerous early Shakespeare
editions were also obtained; _inter alias_, the first edition (1594) of
the first part of the _Contention betwixt the Houses of Yorke and
Lancaster_, for £64; _Richard III_, 1598, £17; fourth edit. of _Henry
IV_, 1608, £12 12_s._[321], &c. The greater part of the collection of
editions of Horace up to the year 1738, formed by Dr. Douglas, a
collection which was used in the preparation of the edition published at
London, by James Watson, in 1760, was bought for £20. It consists of
twenty-seven vols. in folio, thirty-nine in quarto, and 248 in octavo
and smaller sizes. Dibdin (_Introd. to the Classics_) says that the
whole collection consisted of 450 editions. A Prayer-Book of 1707, with
MSS. collations by Rev. John Lewis, of Margate, of alterations in
editions between 1549 and 1637, was bought for £8 8_s._ One of the
chief gems in the Picture Gallery was bequeathed by James Paine, Esq.,
being the portrait of his father, James Paine, the architect[322], while
instructing his son in drawing, by Sir Joshua Reynolds. This beautiful
picture has retained its freshness of colour far more perfectly than
most others of Sir Joshua's paintings; and it has recently, under the
direction of the present Librarian, been carefully cleaned, and
protected with glass and a curtain, that its brilliancy may incur no
risk of deterioration. But this year is chiefly distinguished in the
Annals of the Library by the bequest of the