A large collection of British Essayists and Periodicals was presented by
the late Rev. F. W. Hope, D.C.L., the munificent benefactor to the
University Museum, the founder of the Professorship of Zoology, and the
donor also of a large collection of engraved portraits and other
prints[361]. The collection was one which had been formed by John Thomas
Hope, Esq., the donor's father. It contains some 760 specimens of its
class of literature, belonging chiefly to the eighteenth century.
Special thanks for the gift were returned by Convocation, on Feb. 20. A
catalogue, which had been drawn up for Mr. Hope by Mr. Jacob Henry Burn,
containing notices in detail of the various publications, was printed at
the University Press, in 1865, in an octavo volume.
A Hebrew MS. of the Pentateuch, probably of the thirteenth century, was
bought for £32 10_s._ Some tracts relating to the period of the Great
Rebellion were bought at the sale of Dr. Bandinel's extensive Caroline
collection.
On March 4, the Curators accepted the gift of a bust of Rev. F. W.
Robertson, late incumbent of Trinity Chapel, Brighton, which had been
purchased by subscription. It is now placed in the Picture Gallery.
A large number of purchase-duplicates, which had accumulated during the
course of many years, were removed from the Library and sold by auction,
in London, by Messrs. Sotheby and Wilkinson, in May. Among them were
some of great rarity. The sale, which lasted five days, produced £766
2_s._ 6_d._; of which £110 5_s._ were given for a specimen of the St.
Alban's press, the _Rhetorica Nova_ of Gul. de Saona, printed in 1489.
A second and smaller sale, containing many English works of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, took place on April 12, 1865, at
which a copy of Chettle's _Kind-Harts Dreame_ (1593), produced £101, and
Decker's _Guls Horne-Booke_, 1609, £81. The proceeds of the whole sale
amounted to £750 18_s._ 6_d._
The Rev. Alfred Hackman, M.A., Chaplain and Precentor of Ch. Ch., and P.
C. of St. Paul's, Oxford, and an Assistant in the Library of twenty-five
years' standing, was approved by Convocation, on April 12, as Mr. Coxe's
successor in the Sub-librarianship; after a discussion, which led to the
abrogation by Convocation, in February, of a provision in the Statutes
forbidding the holding cure of souls in connection with that office or
that of Head-librarian without special licence from the Curators.
[361] These engravings are deposited in the gallery of the Radcliffe,
under the charge of a separate Keeper, the Rev. J. Treacher, M.A. They
do not belong to the Bodleian.