BODLEY--DIGBY--LAUD--SELDEN--ASHMOLE.
The University of Oxford still offers public thanks for Bodley's
generosity upon his calendar-day. The ancient library of Duke Humphrey
and his pious predecessors had, as we have seen, been plundered and
devastated. But Sir Thomas Bodley, when retiring from office in 1597,
conceived the idea of restoring it to prosperity again; 'and in a few
years so richly endowed it with books, revenues, and buildings, that it
became one of the most famous in the world.' Bodley has left us his own
account of the matter:--'I concluded at the last to set up my staff at
the library-door in Oxon. I found myself furnished with such four kinds
of aids as, unless I had them all, I had no hope of success. For without
some kind of knowledge, without some purse-ability to go through with the
charge, without good store of friends to further the design, and without
special good leisure to follow such a work, it could not but have proved
a vain attempt.' When Méric Casaubon visited Oxford a few years
afterwards he found the hall filled with books. 'Do not imagine,' he
wrote, 'that there are as many MSS. here as in the royal library at
Paris. There are a good many in England, though nothing to what our King
possesses; but the number of printed books is wonderful, and increasing
every year. During my visit to Oxford I passed whole days in this place.
The books cannot be taken away, but it is open to scholars for seven or
eight hours a day, and one may always see a number of them revelling at
their banquet, which gave me no small pleasure.' Bodley was not one of
those who like libraries to be open to all comers. 'A grant of such
scope,' said his statute, 'would but minister an occasion of pestering
all the room with their gazing; and the babbling and trampling up and
down may disturb out of measure the endeavours of those that are
studious. Admission, from the first, was granted only to graduates, and
every one on his entrance had to take the oath against 'razing, defacing,
cutting, noting, slurring, and mangling the books.'
Sir Thomas was ably seconded by 'good Mr. James,' his first librarian,
and by the bookseller John Bill, who collected for him at Frankfort and
Lyons and other likely places on the Continent. The most minute rules
were laid down for the protection of the books against embezzlement. The
volumes were chained to the desks, and readers were entreated to fasten
the clasps and strings, to untangle the chains, and to leave the books as
they found them. Bodley was always enquiring about the store of chains
and wires. 'I pray you write to John Smith,' he said to James, 'that I
may be furnished against Easter with a thousand chains'; he hopes to
bring enough for that number, 'if God send my books safe out of Italy.'
About the time of the King's visit he writes that he has sent a case of
wires and clips by the carrier, 'which I make no doubt but you may in
good time get fastened to your books.' His carefulness is shown by his
directions for cleaning the room: 'I do desire that, after the library is
well swept and the books cleansed from dust, you would cause the floor to
be well washed and dried, and after rubbed with a little rosemary, for a
stronger scent I should not like.' He often writes about his Continental
purchases. John Bill, he says, had been at Venice, Florence, and Rome,
and half a score other Italian cities, 'and hath bought us many books as
he knew I had not, amounting to the sum of at least £400.' With regard to
certain duplicates he says: 'the fault is mine and John Bill's, who
dealing with multitudes must perforce make many scapes.' 'Jo. Bill hath
gotten everywhere what the place would afford, for his commission was
large, his leisure very good, and his payment sure at home.' The agent
bought largely at Seville; 'but the people's usage towards all of our
nation is so cruel and malicious that he was utterly discouraged.'
[Illustration: SIR THOMAS BODLEY.]
Sir Thomas Bodley would accept a very small contribution or the gift of a
single volume of any respectable sort. But he would have no 'riff-raff,'
as he told Dr. James, and would certainly have scorned the almanacs and
play-books acquired after his death under a bequest from the melancholy
Burton, and the ships' logs and 'pickings of chandlers' and grocers'
papers' which were received long afterwards as part of Dr. Rawlinson's
great donation. He was always grateful for a well-meant present. He
writes to his librarian: 'Mr. Schoolmaster of Winton's gift of
Melanchthon and Huss I do greatly esteem, and will thank him, if you
will, by letter.' Some of the earliest gifts were of a splendid kind.
Lord Essex sent three hundred folios, including a fine Budæus from the
library of Jerome Osorio, captured at Faro in Portugal when the fleet was
returning from Cadiz. Bodley himself gave a magnificent _Romance of
Alexander_ that had belonged in 1466 to Richard Woodville, Lord Rivers.
The librarian contributed about a hundred volumes, including early MSS.
procured from Balliol and Merton by his persuasion. Merton College, for
its own part, sent nearly two-score volumes of 'singular good books in
folio.' Sir Henry Savile gave the 'Gospels' in Russian and the Greek
'Commentaries on St. Augustine,' and William Camden out of his poverty
brought a few manuscripts and ancient books. Lawrence Bodley, the
founder's brother, came with thirty-seven 'very fair and new-bought works
in folio, and Lord Lumley with forty volumes reserved out of the library
sold to the Prince. Lord Montacute contributed the works of the Fathers,
'in sixty-six costly great volumes, all bought of set purpose and fairly
bound with his arms,' Mr. Gent a number of medical treatises, Sir John
Fortescue five good Greek MSS. and forty other books. We only mention a
few of the choicer specimens or note the reappearance of old friends
described in earlier chapters. In 1602 there arrived from Exeter Bishop
Leofric's vellum service-book, with several others that had lodged in its
company since the days of Edward the Confessor. Next year came one of the
exquisite 'Gospels' which Pope Gregory, as men said, had given to the
missionary Augustine; the other had been included in Parker's gift to
Corpus Christi. Sir Henry Wotton contributed a valuable Koran, to which
in later years he added Tycho Brahés 'Astronomy' with the author's MS.
notes. Thomas Allen gave a relic of St. Dunstan, containing the Saint's
portrait drawn by himself, and one of Grostête's books that had been
given by the Friars to Dr. Gascoigne. Mr. Allen gave in all twelve rare
MSS. besides printed books, 'with a purpose to do more'; and Bodley
commends him as a most careful provoker and solicitor of benefactions. He
was the mathematician, or rather the cabalistical astrologer, who taught
Sir Kenelm Digby, introducing that romantic giant to the art of ruling
the stars, and how to melt and puff 'until the green dragon becomes the
golden goose,' and all the other _arcana_ of alchemy.
Digby was a good friend to the Bodleian. When quite a youth he cut down
fifty great oaks to purchase a building-site near Exeter College. The
laying of the foundation-stone in 1634 was amusingly described by Wood.
The Heads of Houses were all assembled, and the University musicians 'had
sounded a lesson on their wind-music,' standing on the leads at the west
end of the library; but while the Vice-Chancellor was placing a piece of
gold on the first stone, the earth fell in, and the scaffold broke, 'so
that all those who were thereon, the Proctors, Principals of Halls, etc.,
fell down all together one upon another, among whom the under-butler of
Exeter College had his shoulder broken or put out of joint, and a
scholar's arm bruised.' It was at this time that Digby made a generous
gift of books, all tall copies in good bindings with his initials on the
panels at the back. Among them were early works on science by Grostête
and Roger Bacon, besides histories and chronicles. Many of these books
had belonged to Thomas Allen, who gave them to Digby as a token of
regard. Sir Kenelm wrote about them to Sir Robert Cotton, who was to
thank Allen for his kindness: 'in my hands they will not be with less
honourable memory of him than in any man's else.' He felt sure that Allen
would have wished them to be freely used: 'all good things are the better
the more they are communicated'; but the University was to be the
absolute mistress, 'to dispose of them as she pleaseth.' Mr. Macray
quotes another passage about two trunks of Arabic MSS. Digby had given
them to Laud for St. John's College or the Bodleian, as he might prefer,
but nothing had been heard about their arrival. He promised more books
from his own library, which had been taken over to France after the Civil
War broke out. The books, however, remained abroad, and were confiscated
on Digby's death as being the chattels of an alien resident; but either
by favour or purchase they soon became the property of the Earl of
Bristol, and were afterwards sold by auction in London. Two volumes were
purchased for the Bodleian in 1825 which must be regarded with the
deepest interest. The 'Bacon' and 'Proclus' had belonged to the Oxford
Friars, to Gascoigne, to the astrologer secluded in Gloucester Hall.
Digby had written a note in each that it was the book of the University
Library, as witnessed by his initials; but it had taken them many
generations to make the last stage of their journey from his book-shelf
to their acknowledged home at Oxford.
It was chiefly through the generosity of Laud that the Bodleian obtained
its wealth of Oriental learning. But it was not only in the East that the
Archbishop devoted himself to book-collecting. Like Dr. Dee, he saw the
value of Ireland as a hunting-ground, and employed his emissaries to
procure painted service-books, the records of native princes, and the
archives of the Anglo-Norman nobility. Among his most precious
acquisitions was an Irish MS. containing the _Psalter of Cashel_,
Cormac's still unpublished _Glossary_, and some of the poems ascribed to
St. Patrick and St. Columba. On the Continent the armies of Gustavus
Adolphus were ravaging the cities of Germany; and Laud's agents were
always at hand to rescue the fair books and vellums from the Swedish
pikemen. In this way he obtained the printed Missal of 1481 and a number
of Latin MSS. from the College of Würzburg, and other valuable books from
monasteries near Mainz and Eberbach in the Duchy of Baden. It appears by
Mr. Macray's Annals that his gifts to the University between 1635 and
1640 amounted to about thirteen hundred volumes, in more than twenty
languages. To our minds the most attractive will always be the very copy
of the 'Acts' perused by the Venerable Bede, and the 'Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle' compiled in the Abbey of Peterborough. The men of Laud's age
would perhaps have attached greater importance to the Eastern MSS.
acquired by the Archbishop through Robert Huntingdon, the consul at
Aleppo, or the Greek library of Francesco Barocci, which he persuaded
William Earl of Pembroke to present to the University. In describing the
Persian MSS. of his last gift, Laud specially mentioned one as containing
a history of the world from the Creation to the end of the Saracen
Empire, and as being of a very great value. He shows the greatest anxiety
for the safety of the volumes: 'I would to God the place for them were
ready, that they might be set up safe, and chained as the other books
are.' He gave many books to St. John's College; and he retained a large
collection in his Palace at Lambeth, which was bestowed on Hugh Peters
after his death; it is satisfactory, however, to remember that 'the study
of books' was recovered at the Restoration, and that Mr. Ashmole was
appointed to examine the accounts of the fanatic.
Laud was not the first to seek for the treasures of the East. Before his
gifts began Sir Thomas Roe, who sat for Oxford with Selden, had presented
to the Bodleian a number of MSS. acquired during his embassy to
Constantinople. Joseph Scaliger, the restorer of Arabic learning in the
West, had been especially interested in Samaritan literature, and had
corresponded about a copy of the Pentateuch with one Rabbi Eleazar, 'who
dwelt in Sichem'; and, though the papers fell into the hands of robbers,
they were afterwards delivered to Peiresc. The traveller Minutius had
returned with Coptic service-books, and Peiresc, captivated with a new
branch of learning, established an agency for Eastern books at Smyrna.
The Capucin Gilles de Loche averred that he had seen 8000 volumes in a
monastery of the Nitrian Desert,'many of which seemed to be of the age of
St. Anthony': he had pushed into Abyssinia and had heard the 'uncouth
chaunts and clashing cymbals,' as Mr. Curzon heard them in a later age;
and he had even cast his eyes on the _Book of Enoch_ with pallid figures
and a shining black text; and Peiresc was so inflamed with a desire to
buy it at any price that in the end he acquired it. The books seen by the
Capucin in the Convent of the Syrians, stored 'in the vault beyond the
oil-cellar,'have become our national property; and if there are not many
of the age of St. Anthony we have at least the volume, completed by the
help of a monk's note of the eleventh century, and originally written in
the year 411 'at Ur of the Chaldees by the hand of a man named Jacob.'
Much less attention seems to have been paid to the collection of Hebrew
books than to those in Coptic and Arabic. Selden, it is true, gave to
the University Library 'such of his Talmudical and Rabbinical books as
were not already to be found there,' and purchases were made at the
Crevenna sale in Amsterdam and at a sale during the present century of
the MSS. of Matheo Canonici at Venice. The chief source from which the
Bodleian was supplied was the collection formed before 1735 by David
Oppenheimer, the Chief Rabbi at Prague. In the British Museum are the
Hebrew books presented by Solomon da Costa in 1759. The donor's letter
contained a few interesting details. There were three Biblical MSS. and a
hundred and eighty printed books, all in very old editions: 'They were
bound by order of King Charles II., and marked with his cypher, and were
purchased by me in the days of my youth, and the particulars are they not
written in the book that is found therewith?' They had been collected
under the Commonwealth, and had afterwards been sent to the binder by
King Charles; but as the bill was never paid they lay in the shop until
the reign of George I., when they were sold to pay expenses, and so came
into the possession of the excellent Solomon da Costa.
The best antiquarian collections were those given to Oxford by Dr.
Rawlinson in the last century, by Richard Gough in 1809, and by Mr. Douce
in 1834. Mr. Macray has enumerated nearly thirty libraries which Richard
Rawlinson had laid under contribution, and his list includes such
headings as the Miscellaneous Papers of Samuel Pepys, the Thurloe State
Papers, the remains of Thomas Hearne, and documents belonging to Gale and
Michael Maittaire, Sir Joseph Jekyll, and Walter Clavell of the Temple.
He cites a letter written by Rawlinson in 1741, as showing the curious
accidents by which some of these documents were preserved: 'My agent last
week met with some papers of Archbishop Wake at a chandler's shop: this
is unpardonable in his executors, as all his MSS. were left to Christ
Church; but _quære_ whether these did not fall into some servant's hands,
who was ordered to burn them, and Mr. Martin Folkes ought to have seen
that done.'
Mr. Gough's collection related chiefly to English topography, Anglo-Saxon
and Northern literature, and printed service-books; it is stated to
contain more than 3700 volumes, all given by a generous bequest to form
'an Antiquary's Closet.' Mr. Douce's large library contained a number of
Missals and _Livres d'Heures_. Some of these are described as 'priceless
gems rivalled only by the Bedford Missal,' especially one prayer-book
illuminated for Leonora, Duchess of Urbino, another that belonged to
Marie de Médici, and 'a Psalter on purple vellum, probably of the ninth
century, which came from the old Royal Library of France.' Among the most
important of the earlier benefactions was the gift of the Dodsworth
Papers by Thomas Lord Fairfax. The archives of the Northern monasteries
had been kept for a time in eight chests in St. Mary's Tower at York.
Roger Dodsworth, Sir William Dugdale's colleague in the preparation of
the Monasticon, made copies of many of these documents; and when the
tower was blown up in the siege of 1644 he was one of the zealous
antiquarians who saved the mouldering fragments on the breach. His whole
store of archæological records became the property of Fairfax at his
death. They are of great historical importance, but at one time they were
strangely neglected. Wood says that all the papers were nearly spoiled in
a damp season, when he obtained leave to dry them on the leads near the
schools; but though it cost him a month's labour he undertook it with
pleasure 'out of respect to the memory of Mr. Dodsworth.'
The Ashmolean books were some years ago transferred to the Bodleian, but
for several generations there was a strange assortment of antiquarian
libraries gathered together in the Museum which Ashmole developed out of
Madam Tradescant's 'closet of curiosities.' Here were the books of the
shiftless John Aubrey, described by Wood as 'sometimes little better than
crazed': and here, according to Wood's dying wish, lay his own books,
'and papers and notes about two bushels full,' side by side with
Dugdale's manuscripts. Dibdin quotes several extracts from Elias
Ashmole's diary, to show the old book-hunter's prowess in the chase. He
buys on one day Mr. Milbourn's books, and on the next all that Mr.
Hawkins left; he sees Mrs. Backhouse of London about the purchase of her
late husband's library. In 1667 he writes: 'I bought Mr. John Booker's
study of books, and gave £140.' Being somewhat of an alchemist, he was
glad to become the owner of Lilly's volumes on magic, and most of Dr.
Dee's collection came into his hands through the kindness of his friend
Mr. Wale. When Ashmole brought out his book upon the Order of the Garter
he became the associate of the nobility; and we will leave him feasting
at his house in South Lambeth, clad in a velvet gown, and wearing his
great chain 'of philagreen links in great knobs,' with ninety loops of
gold.
In noticing the lawyers who have been eminent for their devotion to books
we might go back to very early times. We ought at least to mention
Sergeant William Fletewode, Recorder of London in the reign of Elizabeth,
who bought a library out of Missenden Abbey, consisting mainly of the
romances of chivalry; it was sold with its later additions in 1774 under
the title of _Bibliotheca Monastico-Fletewodiana_. The Lord Chancellor
Ellesmere in the same reign formed a collection of old English poetry,
which became the foundation of a celebrated library belonging to the
Dukes of Bridgewater and afterwards to the Marquis of Stafford. Sir
Julius Cæsar, who was Master of the Rolls under James I., was 'often
reflected upon' for his want of legal knowledge; but he collected a
quantity of good MSS. which passed into the library of Mr. Carteret-Webb,
after a narrow escape of being sold for £10 to a cheesemonger. They are
now in the British Museum together with a box of exquisite miniature
classics, with which he used to solace himself on a journey. Arthur, Earl
of Anglesea, was another distinguished lawyer, who was famous for having
acquired the finest specimens of books in 'all faculties, arts, and
languages.'
The great bulk of Selden's books were given by his executors to the
Bodleian; but several chests of monastic manuscripts were sent to the
Inner Temple, and perished in a fire. He passed his whole life as a
scholar; and yet, it is said, he deplored the loss of his time, and
wished that he had neglected what the world calls learning, and had
rather 'executed the office of a justice of the peace.' Sir Matthew Hale
should be remembered for his gift of MSS. to Lincoln's Inn. He made it a
condition that they should never be printed; and the language of his will
shows a certain dread of dealing lightly with the secrets of tenure and
prerogative. 'My desire is that they be kept safe and all together in
remembrance of me. They were fit to be bound in leather, and chained and
kept in archives: they are a treasure not fit for every man's view, nor
is every man capable of making use of them.'
We shall close our account of the century with a few words about Dr.
Bernard, a stiff, hard, and straightforward reader, whose library of
medicine and general literature was sold by auction in 1698. 'Being a
person who collected his books not for ostentation or ornament he seemed
no more solicitous about their dress than his own'; and therefore, says
the compiler of his catalogue, 'you'll find that a gilt back or a large
margin was very seldom any inducement to him to buy. It was sufficient to
him that he had the book.' 'The garniture of a book,' he would
observe,'was apt to recommend it to a great part of our modern
collectors'; he himself was not a mere nomenclator, and versed only in
title-pages, 'but had made that just and laudable use of his books which
would become all those that set up for collectors.' He was the possessor
of thirteen fine Caxtons, which fetched altogether less than two guineas
at his sale; the biddings seem to have been by the penny; and Mr. Clarke
in his _Repertorium Bibliographicum_ observed that the penny at that time
seems to have been more than the equivalent of our pound sterling in the
purchase of black-letter rarities.