Among the purchases made in this year were the following: Card. Ximenes'
rare treatise entitled _Crestia_, printed at Valentia in 1483 (£25);
Court-Rolls of Tamworth, Solihull, and other neighbouring places,
obtained from Mr. Halliwell; and a collection, in three thick folio
volumes, of placards, hand-bills, &c., relating to the town of Coventry,
formed by Mr. W. Reader, a printer in that place.
Capt. Montagu Montagu, R.N., who died at Bath, on July 3 in this year,
bequeathed a collection of about 700 volumes, in various branches of
literature, which was received at the Library about the beginning of
1864. There are about ninety editions and versions of the Psalter, with
works on Psalmody, including a metrical version by Capt. Montagu
himself; a large number of editions of Anacreon, Horace, Juvenal,
Phædrus, Petrarch, Boileau, and Fontaine's _Fables_; a few MSS. of
Juvenal, Petrarch, &c. with a large series of autograph letters,
chiefly obtained at Upcott's sale. There are, besides, a number of
topographical and biographical works illustrated, _more Sutherlandico_,
with additional engravings, together with many parcels of separate
prints arranged for the same purpose. One item of particular interest
which accompanied the collection is a small sketch of Napoleon I, in
profile, admirably executed by the well-known Italian artist, Giuseppe
Longhi. It now hangs, framed and glazed, in the Library, together with a
letter from Longhi himself, in French, dated at Milan, June 4, 1828, in
which he narrates the occasion on which it was taken. He attended, in
1801, at Lyons, as a member of the 'Consulte Cisàlpine,' for the
settling the affairs of the Republic of Italy, under the presidency of
the First Consul. It happened that during the delivery of a long
harangue, full of tedious flattery, Napoleon sat _vis-à-vis_ with the
orator; and Longhi saw that an opportunity for exercising the cunning of
his pencil had come. The light, which streamed in through the great
window of the Church (!) where they were assembled, brought out the
profile very clearly; there was little fear of being cut short by the
speaker's suddenly ceasing his declamation, or of being interrupted by
movement on the part of the unconscious subject of the operation, for
the latter sat immersed in thought upon matters far away, while
regarding the speaker with a pensive air; and so, while Napoleon sat
pondering, Longhi sat sketching. And everybody, he declares with a
pardonable pride, at Lyons and Paris, pronounced the likeness to be
excellent. A small bust of Napoleon, now placed in the great window,
came to the Library at the same time. A catalogue of Capt. Montagu's
books, comprising forty octavo pages, was printed and circulated with
the Annual Statement for 1864.