Ninety specimens of the Aldine press, together with other volumes
chiefly printed at Venice by A. de Asula, were purchased at the sale of
the library of Dr. Samuel Butler, Bishop of Lichfield. From the same
library was purchased, in the following year, a collection of portions
of more than twenty of the very earliest editions of Donatus' _De Octo
Partibus Orationis_, many of which were unknown; these had previously
come from the library of Dr. Kloss. A ninth-century MS. of St. Gregory's
_Sacramentary_ was purchased for £63; and early MSS. of Juvenal, Lucan,
&c. A fine and perfect copy of Caxton's _Dictes and Sayinges of the
Philosophres_, printed in 1477, was purchased for £50. It had previously
been sold, at Dr. Vincent's sale in 1816, for £99 15_s._; this sum,
which is marked in pencil on a fly-leaf, having been altered by some
practical joker, by the insertion of a figure, to £199 15_s._, Mr.
Blades has in consequence recorded that as being the price at which the
Library secured the volume[340].
The Rev. Rob. J. M'Ghee, Rector of Holywell, Hunts, deposited in the
Bodleian (as also in the University Library, Cambridge, and in that of
Trinity College, Dublin,) a collection of thirty-one volumes relating to
the controversy with the Church of Rome, and to the Moral Theology
taught at Maynooth. The volumes consist of editions of the Douay and
Rheims versions, of some Irish diocesan Statutes, of Bailly's _Theologia
Moralis_, and Delahogue's Dogmatic Treatises, and of various Irish
polemical pamphlets; and they are enclosed in a mahogany case, with
glass door. In consequence of reference having been made to this
collection by the donor, at a County Meeting held at Huntingdon, Dec.
28, 1850, upon the occasion of the 'Papal Aggression,' some slight
degree of public attention was called to it; and a controversial volume
was in consequence published by Mr. M'Ghee, in 1852, entitled, _The
Church of Rome; a Report on the Books and Documents on the Papacy,
deposited in the University Library, Cambridge_, &c.
_Shakespeare_; _Richard III_ and _Hamlet_. See 1834.
The first non-academic _minister_ was appointed in Mr. H. S. Harper
(_vice_ Mr. Firth), of whose valuable services and acquaintance with
details the Library still enjoys the benefit. Mr. Harper had acted for
three years previously as an under-assistant.
[340] As Mr. Blades' valuable work on _The Life and Typography of
Caxton_, 1863, gives most accurate descriptions of all the copies and
fragments of our great printer's works which are preserved in the
Library, it is only necessary to refer the reader to it for detailed
information. A notice of two, however, which were unknown to be Caxtons
at the time of Mr. Blades' investigations, will be found in the account
of Bishop Tanner's books, p. 155; and two fragments, among Douce's
books, are mentioned at p. 250.