The Hebrew collection was still further increased in this year by the
purchase of sixty-two MSS., of which fifty-seven had been brought from
Italy; and in 1851, by the purchase of some printed books collected by
Dr. Isaac L. Auerbach, of Berlin, who had recently deceased. Every year
about this time[347] saw additions to this branch of the Library, made
chiefly through the agency of the late Mr. Asher, the well-known Jewish
bookseller of Berlin, and also through the late Hirsch Edelmann, a
learned Rabbi, who was for years a frequent reader in the Bodleian, from
whence he commenced the publication of a series of extracts (see under
the year 1693). Mr. Edelmann died a few years since in Germany. A series
of works illustrating the history, civil and ecclesiastical, the
geography, &c. of Hungary, Transylvania, Croatia, and other neighbouring
provinces of the Austrian Empire, amounting to 400 volumes, was
purchased for £78; and a similar but much larger collection, relating to
the history of Poland, numbering no fewer than 1200 volumes, was
purchased for £366. Three hundred and twenty volumes of early printed
works, some of which were fine specimens of _incunabula_, were obtained
at the sale of the duplicates from the Royal Library at Munich. It was
announced at the end of the Annual Catalogue that a special list of
these, together with a catalogue of the Hebrew MSS. noticed above, and
of the Hungarian and Polish collections, would be printed and circulated
in the following year; this, however, was not done.
A series of 600 English sermons, printed between 1600 and 1720, bound
separately, was purchased for £59.
Various specimens of the first beginning of printing in one of the
Friendly Islands, Vavau, consisting of the Bible in the Tonga language,
and of several elementary books, were presented by Capt. Sir Jas.
Everard Home, R.N. as also some elementary books printed at Apea by the
natives, under the direction of the Missionaries, for the use of the
natives of the Navigators' Islands.
_Dukes' Shropshire Collections._ See 1841.
[347] In 1845, about 320 printed volumes were purchased from a catalogue
issued at Berlin by A. Rebenstein, or Bernstein, and D. Cassel.