The scale of the present work will not allow of more than a sketch of the development of the Library for the long period included in the chapter heading above. The chief treasures, more in detail, will be mentioned in Chapter V.

There was an ebb-tide in the Library affairs for some years after Bodley’s death on January 28, 1613—a kind of reaction. James was getting old (though he did not resign till 1620), and a set-back was experienced from the defalcations of Sir John Bennet, one of Bodley’s executors, who defrauded the nascent institution of at least £450. It must have been to some extent a doubtful time. The good ship had been well built, launched and equipped, but would it stand the open sea, when its designer and builder was no longer at hand and its capacity of enduring stress was as yet untried? Looking back on the development of the Bodleian, we can now see that the memory of Bodley’s personality, and the results of his practical wisdom as displayed in the Statutes, did carry on the Library tradition until the gathering clouds of the Civil War; that then it secured its position by being perhaps the only safe repository for literary collections during the Civil War and Commonwealth troubles; that throughout the ensuing century and a half it attracted immense donations; so that in fact until about 1850 it remained the premier library in the kingdom, though the British Museum had been founded in 1753. Since 1850 the great National Library has assumed clear pre-eminence, having the support of public funds and being acknowledged by all to be the chief library of the Empire.

In 1620 a new catalogue of the Library was published by Bodley’s Librarian, Dr. Thomas James, which is in the form to which we are all accustomed—that is to say it is an Author-catalogue, arranged by authors’ names in alphabetical order. English literature is still quite a subordinate feature in it, owing to the Founder’s principles; and under Shakespeare’s name no single entry is to be found. Another curious feature is that no English translations of Latin or Greek or even French or Italian books are allowed to appear. Those who knew no Greek or Latin, and needed “cribs” were not welcomed. James resigned his office in this year and was succeeded by John Rouse,[8] the friend of Milton. His puritanical tendencies undoubtedly helped him to save the Library from damage during the sieges of Oxford in the great war.

At last, in 1629, began the flow of Collections towards the Library, soon after Laud had become Bishop of London. In that year arrived “that famous library of Giacomo Barocci” (as Ussher calls it), consisting of 242 Greek MSS. The donor was the Chancellor of the University, the Earl of Pembroke, and twenty-four MSS. which were omitted came in 1654 through Oliver Cromwell. Sir Thomas Roe, the English ambassador to Turkey, also sent twenty-eight Greek MSS. The original manuscript of Leland’s Itinerary and Collectanea came in 1632 from William Burton, the historian of Leicestershire. They contain topographical and literary notes of the earliest survey of England (with the partial exception of William of Worcester, whose journeyings were chiefly in Somerset, including Bristol, and Norfolk), and with some later transcripts form the whole of the sources of the text. In 1634 came 238 MSS. forming the Digby collection, which is of special value for the early history of science in England, containing for instance the earliest meteorological observations known, by William de Merle, Fellow of Merton, taken from 1337 to 1344. Thirty-six more (Oriental) MSS. came from Sir Kenelm Digby among the Laudian MSS. in 1639.

But the great name of Archbishop Laud overshadows all the rest of this period. By great good-fortune the Western extension of the Old Reading Room (now called the Selden End, which balances the Eastern extension or Arts End, see frontispiece) was begun in 1634 and finished in 1640, and into the new room there poured the manuscript treasures acquired by the Archbishop to the number of 1242 volumes. It is a miscellaneous collection in at least twenty languages, Western and Oriental, partly acquired from Germany, especially Würzburg. The two outstanding volumes are Codex E of the Acts, an uncial Greek-Latin text of the seventh century, once owned by the Venerable Bede (S.C. 1119), and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, written at Peterborough and continued to 1154, three-quarters of a century later than any other copy of the famous Chronicle (S.C. 1003); others are mentioned in Chapter V.

The bequest of Robert Burton’s books in 1640 was especially valuable, because the author of the Anatomy of Melancholy read so discursively, and collected not only the graver works which Bodley loved, but especially the lighter literature of the day: it is satisfactory to note that all these were accepted by Rouse, as indeed they would have been by James.

The Civil War was an anxious time for the Library, from the difficulty of safeguarding it from irruption and violence. The care with which the Library has always guarded its contents from the risk of loss by lending out is well exemplified by Rouse’s action when the King, on December 30, 1645, demanded the Histoire Universelle of Aubignè. Rouse went to him and read out the Statute against lending, and the King with a very good grace gave way.[9] The original order, countersigned by the Vice-Chancellor (“His Majestyes use is in command to us. S. Fell, Vice Can.”) is still preserved in the Library. The second siege of the city was followed by its capitulation on June 20, 1646, and “the first thing Generall Fairfax did was to set a good guard of soldiers to preserve the Bodleian Library.... Had he not taken this special care, that noble library had been utterly destroyed.” The register of books given out to readers shows a fair number of students, but Dr. John Allibond (Rustica Academiæ descriptio, 1648) records a different condition:

Rouse was tactful enough to entertain Fairfax and Cromwell with a complimentary speech when the University gave them a banquet in the Library on May 19, 1649, and on the whole the Cromwellian visitation left the place alone, even when the learned Dr. Thomas Barlow[10] succeeded to Rouse’s place in April, 1652.

In 1659 the library of the “Learned Selden” arrived by bequest, after five years’ delay, and comprised about 360 MSS. with about eight thousand printed volumes, chiefly classics, theology and history; but among them are several unique early printed English tales and romances, such as Dan Hew of Leicestre, the Battayle of Egyngecourt, the Mylner of Abyngton. The Latin MSS. not sent perished in a fire at the Temple, in London, in 1680. The arrangement of the new acquisition in what is now called the Selden End fell to Thomas Lockey,[11] who succeeded Barlow in September, 1660, but resigned in 1665, when Thomas Hyde[12] succeeded. In the next year came the first Sanskrit MS. (in “Gentoo,” now S.C. 2862), presented by an East India merchant.

The Adversaria of Isaac Casaubon (largely the notes of that great scholar on Greek writers) were bequeathed by his son and arrived in 1673, together with the invaluable papers of Roger Dodsworth, whose name deserved to be on the title-page of “Dugdale’s” Monasticon Anglicanum. Dodsworth copied enormous masses of Yorkshire and North of England deeds and pedigrees just before the Civil War, in which very many of the originals perished. Fairfax had helped Dodsworth with an annuity, and bequeathed Dodsworth’s and some other valuable MSS. to the Library which he had guarded from harm in 1646.

The third Catalogue of the Library, which came out in 1674, was a folio of imposing dimensions, and though the MSS. are no longer included, was probably the largest which had till then appeared anywhere. It was of such general utility in the learned world that, for instance, Convocation deemed it worthy of presentation to Cosmo de Medici, and an interleaved copy of it was the only one used in the Mazarine Library at Paris till as late as 1761. It took nine years to prepare, and is attributed to Dr. Hyde, the Librarian. The period which ended with Hyde’s resignation in 1701 wound up with a large accession of Old and Middle English MSS. which came partly by the purchase of 112 Hatton MSS. in 1671 (including the copy of the English translation of Gregory’s De cura pastorali made by Alfred, which the king presented to Worcester Cathedral, and also a translation of the same author’s Dialogi, with a preface by King Alfred), and partly by the extensive collections of Franciscus Junius (François Du Jon), a pioneer of Anglo-Saxon studies, which arrived (after purchase) in 1677. The chief treasures (the Cædmon and Ormulum) are described in Chapter V. The Oriental collections were also more than doubled by the purchase of the 420 Pococke MSS. in 1692 (chiefly Hebrew and Arabic), and of the six hundred Huntington MSS. (of the same general character) in the next year. And probably these judicious and valuable purchases led to the bequest by Archbishop Narcissus Marsh of about seven hundred additional Oriental MSS. in 1713.

In 1681 a historic incident took place in what is now three of the Oriental Rooms of the Bodleian, but was then the Geometry School. The Parliament was held in Oxford on March 21-28 in that year, and King Charles II, having a secret promise of pecuniary aid from the French King, felt strong enough to do without consulting Parliament on a matter of the Protestant succession, and determined to put a sudden and dramatic end to the Session. The House of Lords was in the Geometry School, which stretches North from the great Tower, on the first floor. It had a broad staircase to itself. The House of Commons was summoned to the same School on Monday, March 28, to hear the King’s speech, about the subject of which nothing was known. To avoid confusion, the Commons were not allowed to use the broad staircase, but were hustled up a narrow winding stone staircase in the Tower itself, and when at the level of the first floor were precipitated into a room, and at last down five steps into the House of Lords. They arrived in a panting and dishevelled condition, only to hear a sudden and curt Royal Message, read by the King himself, announcing an immediate Dissolution of Parliament! The comedy then took a new turn, in which the King was protagonist. He bolted in great haste, scuttled across the quadrangle as fast as dignity and robes would allow, bundled into his coach, and was at Shotover, on the way to London, before the city in general became aware that the Parliament, which thought it had the King in its power from his want of supplies, was dissolved. The scene would have been broadly humorous, but for its sinister political significance.

The first century of the Library was worthily concluded with a useful and laborious Catalogue of all the known and accessible collections of MSS. in Great Britain, which is known as Bernard’s or the Old Catalogue, and is due to the labours of Dr. Edward Bernard, Professor of Astronomy at Oxford. It was published in 1697, and shows that Oxford (in the Bodleian and the Colleges) possessed more than half of the whole number. The printed books at this time may be estimated at about twenty-five thousand and the MSS. at about seven thousand. The century itself is cut deeply into two parts by the Civil War. Before it the Library prospered through its Founder and those who knew and remembered him. After it a considerable number of small collections found their way by donation or bequest, chiefly (as has been noted above) from a feeling of the insecurity of private ownership; and some large purchases were made. On the whole the Library easily maintained its reputation as the largest and most valuable in the kingdom.

In 1696-7 the income was £341, and the expenditure £125, the chief items being £51 only to the three officers (Librarian, Under-Librarian, Janitor), £19 for establishment, £17 for the Curators’ dinner, £8 for binding and—six shillings for books! The last detail was a consequence of the money required in the next year for the purchase of the Bernard printed books. The average expenditure on books was about £30 a year.

The eighteenth century in the Universities, and indeed in the country at large, is usually described as one of general torpor, with a low standard of taste, but brightened by many examples of conspicuous individual merit. This may be true, and the annals of the Oxford Press seem to bear it out. But it is true also that literature has much to say for itself during this period, and that one study at least was strongly developing itself—the study of English antiquities. The Bodleian itself may be said to have languished, in a sense, until about 1750, and then to have waked up, under the astonishing series of large gifts of which it was the recipient. In fact the hundred years from 1735 to 1835 may be called the Century of Great Donations.

When Dr. John Hudson[13] succeeded Hyde, and Hearne entered the Library as (Janitor and) Assistant, both in 1701, a good deal of activity was exhibited. In 1704 Dr. Charlett testified that “Our Public Library, which for some years had stood still, is now in a thriving condition by the active diligence and curiosity of Dr. Hudson, who spares no author, no bookseller, but solicits all to augment that vast treasure.” But in 1716, after bickerings on other grounds, Hearne was turned out of his place, as a Nonjuror, and Hudson became careless before his death, in 1719. Joseph Bowles[14], who succeeded Hudson, and died at the age of thirty-four in 1729, seems to have been unequal to the position he obtained, though our chief testimony comes from Hearne who cordially hated him. Robert Fysher,[15] the next Librarian, was not a man of mark, and appears to have been disabled by ill-health from fully performing his duties.

The growth of the printed books had up to this point been much more normal than the acquisition of MSS. The only printed collections of any notable size since Robert Burton’s, in 1640, had been those of Selden (see p. 000), Marshall (1685) and Barlow (1693). The right to every published book no doubt gave an impression that little help was needed, especially when such was the lack of bibliographical principle that, for instance, the original first two editions of Shakespeare’s Plays (the First and Second Folios) were cleared out and sold as duplicates or “doubles,” when the Third Folio came out with seven additional plays. The First Folio thus turned out was bought back for £3000 in 1905 (see page 46). The tide began to turn towards the middle of the eighteenth century, partly perhaps from the example of the munificent gift of Bishop Moore’s books to the University Library, at Cambridge, made by George I in 1715, whereby besides 1790 MSS. nearly twenty-nine thousand printed books were acquired by it.

Dr. Thomas Tanner, Bishop of St. Asaph, formerly Archdeacon of Norfolk, died in 1735 and left to the Bodleian his collection, consisting of a large number of Civil War papers, Norwich collections and ecclesiastical, literary, and historical MSS., including the papers of Archbishop Sancroft. The printed books were also of value and extent. These all arrived in 1736, and the Library seems to have responded to this stimulus by issuing its fourth Catalogue in 1738, a careful edition in two folio volumes based on actual inspection of the books and not on former catalogues. Much of the work shows Hearne’s accurate hand.

In 1747 Fysher died and Humphrey Owen[16] succeeded, who in his twenty-one years of office saw the Library doubled in size in the department of MSS. First came, in 1753, the MSS. of Thomas Carte, which arrived by gift (and subsequently bequest) from the collector. The seventeenth century Irish papers in this collection are of enormous extent (largely Ormonde papers from Kilkenny), and many volumes are materials for Carte’s History of England. Next came, in 1756, the whole of the papers on which John Walker based his Sufferings of the Clergy in 1640-60 (printed in 1714), comprising hundreds of autograph accounts of the lives of dispossessed ministers under the Commonwealth.

In this year arrived 5206 volumes of MSS., with a large printed collection, by the bequest of Dr. Richard Rawlinson, Bishop among the Nonjurors, who died in 1755. The extent of the gift entirely overwhelmed the Library staff, and it remained almost undescribed till 1862. Rawlinson picked up everything from everywhere, like Sir Thomas Phillipps, but while the ghost of the latter sees all that he lived for in process of dispersal, the Rawlinson collection is absolutely intact and worthily honoured. History and topography are the chief subjects, but Classics, English poetry, Service books, Oxford authors since Wood’s death, and the whole of Thomas Hearne, the Oxford antiquary’s papers, are among the rest. The Thurloe State Papers in sixty-seven volumes, Samuel Pepys’s Admiralty and other papers in twenty-eight volumes are here, and some most valuable ancient Irish MSS. worthy of a place by the side of Laud’s, with numerous volumes of literary correspondence, which in conjunction with the Ballard collection received in the same year (1756) contain perhaps one-half of the literary letters of 1660-1750.

In 1759 came the series of Clarendon State Papers, presented by the grand-daughters of the author of the History of the Rebellion, in fulfilment of their brother’s wish. They may be described as the bulk of the original Royalist sources for the history of the Civil War. Many additional parts of the Clarendon collections have been gathered to the rest in later years and from various sources. The original gift, by its condition that the profits of any Clarendon publication should belong to the University, has resulted, not only in the University Press being called by Clarendon’s name, but also in the building of the Clarendon Laboratory in 1869, and in the creation of that rare privilege, a perpetual copyright in the History of the Rebellion. It may be said that the history of the period 1640-1700 in Great Britain and Ireland cannot be written without reference to the Clarendon, Carte, Walker and Rawlinson collections.

The minor acquisitions of the rest of the eighteenth century (the Dawkins and Hunt Oriental MSS. in 1759 and 1774, the Browne Willis (Buckinghamshire, and English Cathedral) MSS. in 1760, and the Bridge’s Northamptonshire papers in 1795) were all by gift and bequest, and of the nineteen large collections received between 1700 and 1800 not one was purchased. When Dr. Owen died in 1768, Dr. John Price[17] succeeded. He had been Janitor from some time before 1757, and Sub-Librarian from 1761. His long reign ended in 1813, and his successor, Dr. Bulkeley Bandinel, held the office still longer, dying in 1860 (see p. 34).

A great effort was made from 1766 to 1787 to accomplish a catalogue of the Oriental MSS. which were a notable feature of the Library, thanks to the Laud, Marshall, Pococke, Huntington, Marsh and Hunt collections. The Catalogue of 1787, containing the Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Ethiopic, Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Coptic MSS., was the work of Johann Uri, a Hungarian, who resided at Oxford for this purpose, and died there in 1796. The Arabic catalogue was continued by a second part undertaken by Alexander Nicoll and E. B. Pusey, and issued in 1835. Other parts have been continued by volumes in the Quarto series.

In 1789 the first, modern extension of the Library began. How it managed to contain the accessions of the eighteenth century within the compass of the Old Reading Room, Arts End and Selden End, which it possessed in 1640, it is difficult to imagine; but no doubt much uncatalogued matter was stacked in the Picture Gallery and adjacent rooms. At last the pressure became so great that the books simply burst into the Anatomy School, thenceforward known as the Auctarium, on the first floor of the Schools Quadrangle. The gradual annexation of the whole of the Quadrangle, 1789-1882, is too much a matter of detail to be narrated here.[18] The whole of the first floor was annexed by 1835, and the loan of the Radcliffe Camera, in 1860, greatly eased the situation. The first ground floor-room acquired was the Logic School in 1845. The progress of bibliography can be traced in the large purchases made in 1789 at the Pinelli sale and in 1780 at the Crevenna sale, in Florence and Amsterdam respectively. The books bought were chiefly Editiones Principes and other early printed books, and £1550 was borrowed from the Colleges for the purpose, all faithfully repaid by 1795. The Mazarine Bible, a copy of which fetched £5800 in 1911, was bought for £100 in 1793.

The Wight Musical MSS., bequeathed in 1801, were the foundation of the musical collection, and were rich in English music between the Restoration and 1800. Not till 1885 was the old University collection, founded by Dr. William Heather in 1626, and kept in the Music School, transferred to the Bodleian. Four considerable classical collections of MSS. were purchased at this period, the D’Orville (1804), E. D. Clarke (1809), Canonici (1817) and Meerman (1824). The Canonici MSS. were amassed by a Venetian Jesuit and abound in liturgical and Italian MSS. as well as in classics. They number 2047, and were purchased for £5444. These were accompanied by two very large mixed collections of MSS. and printed books, both bequeathed—the Gough British Topographical collection in 1809, and the Douce collection, in 1834. About 3700 volumes came in the former, including a vast series of topographical prints and maps. Among the latter are some large fragments of tapestry maps of England from the first English loom, established by Sheldon in Elizabeth’s reign. Richard Gough (d. 1809) had been for many years Director of the Society of Antiquaries, and possessed almost every book on British Topography. Francis Douce’s interests lay in illuminated and other MSS. and in English literature, and he bequeathed about five hundred of the former class and seventeen thousand printed books, with charters and coins. These two great gifts greatly enhanced the value of the Bodleian in their different kinds.

An incident on Saturday, April 19, 1806, occasioned a singularly apt quotation, and shows that modern smartness had not at that time penetrated the Bodleian. A would-be reader came that morning soon after 8 a.m., the hour of opening (8-2 and 3-5 were the hours enjoined since 1769), and found no one there, and the door still locked. Before departing he affixed a paper (still preserved) bearing the Greek of the following passage (Luke xi. 52), “Woe unto you, for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves and them that were entering in ye hindered.”

The Shakespearean Folios and Quartos in the Library were comparatively few until the year 1821. The number of entries under the name were in the 1605 catalogue, 0; in 1620, 0; in 1635, 1; in 1674, 3; in 1738, 6. Fortunately the great and famous dramatic collections of Edmund Malone brought in the above year a complete set of the Folios and some fifty early Quartos or Poems, including the only copy of the first edition of Shakespeare’s first publication, the Venus and Adonis of 1593. Thanks to these and other accessions the Bodleian now possesses 70 out of the 101 Quartos issued before 1700, and more than five thousand volumes of Shakespearean literature.

Not till about 1818 was it recognized that a temperature of 25°-30° Fahrenheit was inimical to the comfort of readers, and not till 1821 were two pipes for introducing hot air inserted, and it is recorded that even this was “wholly ineffectual.” In 1845 steam warming was attempted, but that too “did not give satisfaction.” In 1861 the hot-water system was introduced, which with various improvements is still in use.

In view of the trend of Oxford studies in the past, it is not surprising that Classical MSS. and printed books, whether texts or commentaries, are a feature of the University library, and it probably contains in addition more academical dissertations than are to be found elsewhere. Each dissertation, it should be remembered, has its particular justification for the degree gained by it, however minute the point discussed may be.[19] The foundation of this department was laid in 1827 when about 43,400 foreign dissertations were purchased at Altona, and large additions were made in 1828, 1836-7 and 1846, as well as by systematic exchange in more recent years. In 1828 the Hebrew MSS., which had hitherto been inferior in value and number to the Arabic, received a great augmentation by the purchase en bloc of the Oppenheimer Collection of both manuscript and printed Hebrew literature. It is noticeable how large donations tend to produce further accessions in the same line. The Uri Catalogue of Oriental MSS. with its Second Part, noticed above, and the purchase of the Oppenheimer library seem to have called attention to this department, and from 1837 on a stream of minor donations and purchases set in. These were the Hodgson Sanskrit MSS. (1837), Wilson Sanskrit (1842, bought), Bruce Arabic and Ethiopic (1843, bought), Ouseley Persian (1844, bought), Walker (1847), Michael Hebrew (1848, bought), Mill Sanskrit (1849, bought), Elliott Persian (1859).

The period closes with the last of the printed Catalogues of the Printed Books. This was a great undertaking, but had its reward in being the largest presentation of printed literature which had ever been issued. It is contained in four folio volumes, issued between 1843 and 1851, the last recording the accessions of 1835-47. At the same time the Quarto Series of detailed Catalogues of Manuscripts was started (in 1845), which has now extended to some twenty volumes. The gaps left in this monumental series are filled up by the shorter but not inadequate descriptions of the Summary Catalogue in octavo form, which was instituted in 1890, and fulfils a useful purpose.