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Sir Henry Savile he even relaxed the rule against lending books from the Library, because, as he frankly admits to Dr. James, he had hopes (which proved well founded) that Sir Henry would not forget his obligations to the Bodleian.

The Library was formally opened on the 8th of November, 1602, and then contained some two thousand volumes. Two years later its founder was knighted by King James, who on the following June directed letters patent to be issued styling the Library by the founder's name and licensing the University to hold land in mortmain for its maintenance. The most learned and by no means the most foolish of our Kings, this same James I.

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librarians probably obstructed any such transfer of books.

Authors seem at once to have recognized the importance of the Library, and to have made presentation copies of their works, and in 1605 we find Bacon sending a copy of his "Advancement of Learning" to Bodley, with a letter in which he said: "In having built an ark to save learning from deluge, deserve propriety [ownership] in

any new instrument or engine whereby learning should be improved or advanced" (Macray, 35). The most remarkable letter Bodley ever wrote, now extant, is one to Bacon; but it has no reference to the Library, only to the Baconian philosophy. We do not get many glimpses of Bodley's habits of life or ways of thinking, but there is no difficulty in discerning a strenuous, determined, masterful figure, bent during his later years, perhaps tyrannously bent, on effecting his object. He was not, we learn from a correspondent, "hasty to write but when the posts do urge him, saying there need be no answer to your letters till more leisure breed him opportunity." "Words are women, deeds are men," is another saying of his, which I reprint without comment.

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SIR THOMAS BODLEY

not King James he would be an University man, and that were it his fate at any time to be a captive, he would wish to be shut up in the Bodleian and to be bound with its chains, consuming his days amongst its books as his fellows in captivity. Indeed, he was so carried away by the atmosphere of the place as to offer to present to the Bodleian whatever books Sir Thomas Bodley might think fit to lay hands upon in any of the Royal Libraries, and he kept this royal word so far as to confirm the gift under the Privy Seal. But there it seems to have stopped, for the Bodleian does not contain any volumes traceable to this source. The King's

By an indenture dated the 20th of April, 1609, Bodley, after reciting how he had, out of his zealous affection to the advancement of learning, lately erected upon the ruins of the old decayed Library of Oxford University "a most ample, commodious, and necessary building, as well for receipt and conveyance of books as for the use and ease of students, and had already furnished the same with excellent writers on all sorts of sciences, arts, and tongues, not only selected out of his own

study and store, but also of others that were freely conferred by many other men's gifts," proceeded to grant to trustees lands and hereditaments in Berkshire and in the city of London for the purpose of forming a permanent endowment of his Library; and so they, or the proceeds of sale thereof, have remained unto this day. Sir Thomas Bodley died on the 20th of January, 1613, his last days being soothed by a letter he received from the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University condoling his sickness and signifying how much the Heads of Houses, etc., prayed for his recovery. A cynical friend, not much of a friend as we shall see, called John Chamberlain, was surprised to observe what pleasure this assurance gave to the dying man. "Whereby," writes Chamberlain to Sir Ralph Winwood, "I perceive how much fair words work, as well upon wise men as upon others, for indeed it did affect him very much."

Bodley was rather put out in his last illness by the refusal of a Cambridge doctor, Batter, to come to see him; the doctor saying, "Words cannot cure him, and I can do nothing else for him." There is an occasional curtness about Cambridge

men that it is hard but not impossible to reconcile with good feeling.

Bodley's will gave great dissatisfaction to some of his friends, including this aforesaid John Chamberlain, and yet on reading it through it is not easy to see any cause for just complaint. Bodley's brother did not grumble, there were no children, Lady Bodley had died in 1611, and everybody who knew the testator must have known that the Library would be (as it was) the great object of his bounty. What annoyed Chamberlain seems to be that whilst he had (so he says, though I take leave to doubt it) put down Bodley for some trifle in his will, Bodley forgot to mention Chamberlain in his. There is always a good deal of human nature exhibited on these occasions. I will transcribe a bit of one of this gentleman's grumbling letters, written, one may be sure, with no view to publication, the day

after Bodley's death:

Mr. Gent came to me this morning as it were to bemoan himself of the little regard hath been had of him and others, and indeed for ought I hear there is scant anybody pleased, but for the rest it were no great matter if he had had more consideration or commiseration

where there was most need.

But he was so

carried away with the vanity and vain-glory of his library, that he forgot all other respects and duties, almost of Conscience, Friendship, or Good-nature, and all he had was too little for that work. To say the truth I never did rely much upon his conscience, but I thought he had been more real and ingenuous. I cannot learn that he hath given anything, no, not a good word nor so much as named any old friend he had, but Mr. Gent and Thos Allen who like a couple of Almesmen must have his best and second gown, and his best and second cloak, but to cast a colour or shadow of something upon Mr. Gent, he says he forgives him all he owed him, which Mr. Gent protests is never a penny. I must intreat you to pardon me if I seem somewhat impatient on his [i. e. Gent's] behalf, who hath been so servile to him, and indeed such a perpetual servant, that he deserved a better reward. Neither can I

deny that I have a little indignation for myself that having been acquainted with him for almost 40 years, and observed and respected him so much I should not be remembered with the value of a spoon, or a mourning garment, whereas if I had gone before him (as poor a man as I am) he should not have found himself forgotten.'

is dated the 2d of January, 1613, and Bodley did no more by his will, which is all in his own handwriting, than he had promised to do in his lifetime, and I feel as certain as I can feel about anything

that happened nearly three hundred years

ago, that Mr. Gent, of Gloucester Hall, did owe Bodley money, though, as many another member of the University of Oxford has done with his debts, he forgot all about it.

The founder of the Bodleian was buried with proper pomp and circumstance in the chapel of Merton College, on the 29th of March, 1613. Two Latin orations were delivered over his remains, one, that of Mr. John Hales, a Fellow of Merton, being of no inconsiderable length. After all was over, those who had mourning weeds or blacks retired, with the Heads of Houses, to the Refectory of Merton and had a funeral dinner bestowed

upon them, " amounting to the sum of £100," as directed by the founder's will.

The great foundation of Sir Thomas Bodley has, happily for all of us, had bet

of the Bishops of Durham and Worcester. ter fortune than befell the generous gifts The Protestant layman has had the luck, not the large-minded prelates of the old religion. Even during the Civil War Bodley's books remained uninjured, at all

1" Winwood's Memorials," III., 429.

events by the Parliament men. "When Oxford was surrendered [24 June, 1646], the first thing General Fairfax did was to set a good guard of soldiers to preserve the Bodleian library. 'Tis said there was more hurt done by the Cavaliers [during their garrison] by way of embezzling and cutting of chains of books than there was since. He was a lover of learning, and had he not taken this special care, that noble library had been utterly destroyed, for there were ignorant senators enough who would have been contented to have it so" (see Macray, 101). Oliver Cromwell, while Lord Protector, presented to the Library twenty-two Greek MSS. he had purchased, and, what is more, when Bodley's librarian refused the Lord Protector's request to allow the Portugal Ambassador to borrow a MS., sending instead of the MS. a copy of the statutes forbidding loans, Oliver commended the prudence of the founder, and subsequently made the donation just mentioned.

A great wave of generosity towards this foundation was early noticeable. The Bodleian got hold of men's imaginations. In those days there were learned men in all walks of life, and many more that were not learned were endlessly curious. The great merchants of the city of London instructed their agents in far lands to be on the lookout for rare things, and transmit them home to find a resting-place in Bodley's buildings. All sorts of curiosities found their way there-crocodiles, whales, mummies, and black negro boys in spirits. The Ashmolean now holds most of them; the negro boy has been conveniently lost. In 1649 the total of 2,000 printed books had risen to more than 12,000; viz., folios, 5,889; quartos, 2,067; octavos, 4,918; whilst of MSS. there were 3,001.

One of the first gifts in money came from Sir Walter Raleigh, who in 1605 gave £50, whilst among the early benefactors of books and MSS. it were a sin not to name the Earl of Pembroke, Archbishop Laud (one of the Library's best friends), Robert Burton, of the "Anatomy of Melancholy," Sir Kenelm Digby, John Selden, Lord Fairfax, Colonel Vernon, and Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln. Space would be denied me to lengthen this meager list, or even in outline to characterize the chief treasures that have so well fulfilled and transcended the

hopes of the founder. I must be content to say, what all know, that no nobler library exists in the world than the Bodleian, unless it be in the Vatican at Rome. The foundation of Sir Thomas Bodley, though of no antiquity, shines with unrivaled splendor

"amidst the stars that own another birth"

in the galaxy of Oxford; for though I must not say, being myself a Cambridge man, that the Bodleian dominates Oxford, yet I may say that to many an English, American, and foreign traveler to that city, which, despite railway stations and trains and the never-ending villas of the Banbury Road, still breathes the charm of an earlier age, the Bodleian is the pulsing heart of the University. Colleges, like ancient homesteads, unless they are yours, never quite welcome you; though ready enough to receive with civility your tendered meed of admiration. You wander through their gardens and pace their quadrangles with no sense of co-ownership-not for you are their clustered memories. In the Bodleian every lettered heart feels itself at home.

Bodley drafted with his own hand the first statutes or rules to be observed in his Library. Speaking generally, they are wise rules. One mistake, indeed, he made-a great mistake, but a natural one. Let him give his own reasons: "I can see no good reason to alter my rule for excluding such books as Almanacks, Plays, and an infinite number that are daily printed of very unworthy matters-handling such books as one thinks both the Keeper and Under-Keeper should disdain to seek out, to deliver to any man. Haply some plays may be worthy the keeping-but hardly one in forty. . . . This is my opinion, wherein if I err I shall err with infinite others; and the more I think upon it, the more it doth distaste me that such kinds of books should be vouchsafed room in so noble a library."1

"Baggage-books" was the contemptuous expression elsewhere employed to describe this "light infantry" of literature —Belles Lettres, as it is now more politely designated.

One play in forty is liberal measure, but who is to say out of the forty plays which is the one worthy to be housed in

1 See correspondence in "Reliquiæ Bodleianæ," London, 1703.

a noble library? The taste of Vice-Chancellors and Heads of Houses, of Keepers and Under-Keepers of libraries-can anybody trust it? The Bodleian is entitled by Imperial statutes to receive copies of all books published within the realm, yet it appears on the face of a Parliamentary Return made in 1818 that this "noble library" refused to find room for Ossian, the favorite poet of Goethe and Napoleon, and labeled Miss Edgeworth's "Parent's Assistant" and Miss Hannah More's "Sacred Dramas" "rubbish." The sister university, home though she be of nearly every English poet worth reading, rejected the "Siege of Corinth," though the work of a Trinity man, would not take in the Thanksgiving Ode" of Mr. Wordsworth, of St. John's College, declined Leigh Hunt's Story of Rimini," vetoed the "Headlong Hall" of the inimitable Peacock, and, most wonderful of all, would have nothing to say to Scott's "Antiquary," being probably disgusted to find. that a book with so promising a title was only a novel.

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Now all this is altered, and everything is collected in the Bodleian, including, so I am told, Christmas cards and dinner

menus.

Bodley's rule has proved an expensive one, for the Library has been forced to buy at latter-day prices "baggage-books" it could have got for nothing.

Another ill-advised regulation got rid of duplicates. Thus, when the third Shakespeare Folio appeared in 1664, the Bodleian disposed of its copy of the First Folio. However, this wrong was righted in 1821, when, under the terms of Edmund Malone's bequest, the Library once again became the possessor of the edition of 1623.

Against lending books Bodley was adamant, and here his rule prevails. It is pre-eminently a wise one. The stealing of books, as well as the losing of books, from public libraries is a melancholy and ancient chapter in the histories of such institutions. Indeed, there is too much reason to believe that not a few books in the Bodleian itself were stolen to start with. But the long possession by such a foundation has doubtless purged the original offense. In the National Library in Paris is at least one precious MS. which was stolen from the Escurial. There are

volumes in the British Museum on which the Bodleian looks with suspicion, and vice versa. But let sleeping dogs lie. Bodley would not even give the divines who were engaged upon a bigger bit of work even than his Library-the translation of the Bible into that matchless English which makes King James's Version our greatest literary possession-permission to borrow" the one or two books they wished to see.

Bodley's Library has sheltered through three centuries many queer things besides books and strangely written manuscripts in old tongues; queerer things even than crocodiles, whales, and mummies. I mean the librarians and sub-librarians, janitors, and servants. Oddities many of them have been. Honest old Jacobites, nonjurors, primitive thinkers-as well as scandalously lazy drunkards and illiterate dogs. An old foundation can afford to have a varied experience in these matters.

One of the most original of these originals was the famous Thomas Hearne—

an

"honest gentleman" and a Jacobite, and one whose collections and diaries have given pleasure to thousands. He was appointed Janitor in 1701, and SubLibrarian in 1712, but in 1716, when an Act of Parliament came into operation which imposed a fine of £500 upon any one who held any public office without taking the oath of allegiance to the Hanoverians, Hearne's office was taken away from him; but he shared with his King over the water the satisfaction of accounting himself still de jure, and though he lived till 1735, he never failed each halfyear to enter his salary and fees as SubLibrarian as being still unpaid. He was perhaps a little spiteful and vindictive, but none the less a fine.old fellow. I will write down as specimens of his humor a prayer of his and an apology, and then leave him alone. His prayer ran as follows:

O most gracious and merciful Lord God. wonderful in thy Providence, I return all pos sible thanks to thee for the care thou hast always taken of me. I continually meet with most signal instances of this thy Providence, and one act yesterday, when I unexpectedly met with three old manuscripts, for which in a particular manner I return my thanks, beseeching thee to continue the same protection to me a poor, helpless sinner, and that for Jesus Christ his sake. (Aubrey's Letters, I., 118.)

His apology, which I do not think was actually published, though kept in draft, was after this fashion:

1, Thomas Hearne, A.M. of the University of Oxford, having ever since my matriculation followed my studies with as much application as I have been capable of, and having pub

lished several books for the honour and credit

of learning, and particularly for the reputation of the foresaid University, am very sorry that by my declining to say anything but what I knew to be true in any of my writings, and especially in the last book I published entituled &c., I should incur the displeasure of any of the Heads of Houses, and as a token of my sorrow for their being offended at truth, I subscribe my name to this paper and permit them to make what use of it they please. (Macray, 188.)

Leaping a hundred and forty years, an odd tale is thus lovingly recorded of another Sub-Librarian, the Rev. A. Hackman, who died in 1874:

During all the time of his service in the Library (thirty-six years) he had used as a cushion in his plain wooden armchair a certain vellum-bound folio, which by its indented side, worn down by continual pressure, bore testimony to the use to which it had been put. No one had ever the curiosity to examine what the book might be, but when, after Hackman's departure from the Library, it was removed from its resting-place of years, some amusement was caused by finding that the chief compiler of the last printed catalogue had omitted from his catalogue the volume on which he sat, of which, too, though of no special value, there was no other copy in the Library. (Macray, 388a.)

The spectacle in the mind's eye of this devoted Sub-Librarian and sound divine sitting on the vellum-bound folio for six and thirty years, so absorbed in his work as to be oblivious of the fact that he had failed to include in his magnum opus, the great Catalogue, the very book he was sitting upon, tickles the midriff.

Here I must bring these prolonged but wholly insufficient observations to a very necessary conclusion. Not a word has been said of the great collection of Bibles, or of the unique copies of the Koran and the Talmud and the Arabian Nights, or

of the Dante MSS., or of Bishop Tanner's books (many bought on the dispersion of Archbishop Sancroft's great library), all of which in course of removal by water from Norwich to Oxford fell into the river and remained submerged for twenty hours, nor of many other splendid benefactions of a later date.

One thing only remains, not to be said but to be sent round-I mean the Hat. Ignominious to relate, this glorious foundation stands in need of money. Shade of Sir Thomas Bodley, I invoke thy aid to loosen the purse- strings of the wealthy! The age of learned and curious Merchants, of high-spirited and learning-loving Nobles, of book-collecting Bishops, of Antiquarians, is over. The Bodleian cannot condescend to beg. It is too majestical. But I, an unauthorized stranger, have no need to be ashamed.

Especially rich is this great library in Americana, and America suggests multimillionaires. The rich men of the United States have been patriotically alive to the first claims of their own famous universities, and long may they so continue; but if by any happy chance any one of them should accidentally stumble across an odd million or even half a million of dollars hidden away in some casual investment he had forgotten, what better thing could he do with it than send it to this, the most famous foundation of his Old Home? It would be acknowledged by return of post in English and in Latin, and the donor's name would be inscribed, not indeed (and this is a regrettable lapse) in that famous old Register which Bodley provided should always be in a prominent place in his Library, but in the Annual Statements of Accounts now regularly issued. To be associated with the Bodleian is to share its fame and partake of the blessing it has inherited. "The liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things he shall stand."

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