'Bowers of Paradise!' Thus it was that an enthusiastic Hebrew student, writing of the Bodleian but a few years ago, apostrophized the little cells and curtained cages wherein readers sit, while hedged in and canopied with all the wisdom and learning of bygone generations, which here bloom their blossoms and yield up their fruits. And, as if answering in actual living type to the parable which the Eastern metaphor suggests, these cells from year to year have been and (though of late more infrequently) still are, the resort of grand and grave old bees, majestic in size and deportment, of sonorous sound, and covered with the dust, as it were, of ages. Just as a solemn rookery befits an ancestral mansion, so these Bees of the Bodleian form a fitting accompaniment to the place of their choice. And while the Metaphor well describes the character of that place whither men resort for refreshment amidst the work of the world and for the recruiting of mental strength for the doing of such work, so the Type well describes those who from the bowers gather sweetness and wealth, first for their own enriching and next for the enriching of others. Long then in these bowers may there be found busy hives of men; above all, those that gather thence, abundantly, such Wisdom as is præ melle ori.
Bodleian Library,
May 30, 1868.
ANNALS
OF THE
BODLEIAN LIBRARY.
In the north-east corner of St. Mary's Church, a church full of nooks little known to ordinary visitors, is a dark vaulted chamber (dark, because its windows have been built up), whose doors, when opened, only now reveal the abiding-place of the University fire-engines. Here of old sat the Chancellor of the University, surrounded by the Doctors and Masters of the Great Congregation, in a fashion which was formerly depicted in the great west window of St. Mary's Church, and is still represented on the University seal, and which, in the early part of the last century, was adopted by Dr. Richard Rawlinson as his book-plate, being engraved from the impression attached to his own diploma in Civil Law. Above this chamber there is another, lighted by four windows, containing forty-five feet in length and twenty in breadth, and now assigned as the lecture-room of the Professor of Law. Here was begun about 1367, and finally established and furnished in 1409, the first actual University Library, called after Bishop Thomas Cobham, of Worcester, who about 1320 (seven years before his death) had commenced preparations for the building of the room and the making provision for its contents[1]. Wood tells us that before this time there were indeed some books kept in chests in St. Mary's Church, which were to be lent out under pledges, as well as some chained to desks, which were only to be read in situ; but this University chest soon gave way to the formal Library, as, at a later period, another University chest was lost in funded investments and a banker's balance[2]. Another precursor of the general Library was found in the collection bequeathed to Durham College (on the site of which now stands Trinity College) in 1345 by one of its founders, the earnest lover and preserver of books, Philip of Bury; he of that charming book, that 'tractatus vere pulcherrimus,' the Philobiblion. He—who apostrophizes books as the masters who teach without flogging or fleecing, without punishment or payment; as ears of corn, full of grain, to be rubbed only by apostolic hands; as golden pots of manna; as Noah's ark and Jacob's ladder, and Joshua's stones of testimony and Gideon's lamps and David's scrip, and who says that in the noblest monasteries of England he found precious volumes defiled and injured by mice and worms, and abandoned to moths—gave strict injunctions for the care of the large collection, gathered from all quarters, with which he enriched his College[3]. It was to be free for purposes of study to all scholars, who might have the loan of any work of which there was a duplicate, provided they left a pledge exceeding it in value, but for purposes of transcription no volume was to go beyond the walls of the house. A register was to be kept, and a yearly visitation was to be held[4]. Some of these books, on the dissolution of the College by Henry VIII, are said to have been transferred to Duke Humphrey's Library, and some to Balliol College.
The Librarian of Cobham's Library was also entitled Chaplain to the University, and as such was ordered, in 1412, to offer masses yearly for those who were benefactors of the University and Library, and was endowed with half a mark yearly, as well as with £5 issuing from the assize of bread and ale, which had been granted to the University by King Henry IV, who was also a principal contributor to the completion of the Library, and is therefore to this day duly remembered in the Bidding-Prayer at all the academic 'Commemorationes Solenniores.' But no trace remains of the devotional and sacred duties once attaching to the office, and laymen have been eligible to it from the time of Bodley's re-foundation. The old regal stipend, however, amounting at last to £6 13s. 4d., continued to be paid to the Librarian, until in 1856, by the revised code of statutes, various small payments were consolidated; it is found entered in the annual printed accounts up to that year.
But not a score of years had passed after Cobham's Library had been actually completed and opened before the building of a room more worthy of the University was commenced. In 1426 the University began to erect the present noble Divinity School for the exercises in that faculty; but as their own means soon failed they betook themselves to all likely quarters to procure help. And Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, the patron of all learning[5], and the fosterer of the New School of theological thought, the protector of Pecock, responded so liberally to the petition of the University for aid to the fabric of their Material School, that he is styled (says Wood) in the Bedell's Book its Founder, while the roof to this day perpetuates his memory among the shields of arms of benefactors with which its graceful pendants terminate. His gifts of money for the School were quickly followed by still larger gifts of books for the Library. Between the years 1439 and 1446 he appears to have forwarded about 600 MSS, which were for the time deposited in chests in Cobham's Library. The first donation, consisting of 129 volumes, was forwarded in November, 1439. The letter of thanks from Convocation is dated the 25th of that month, and on the same day a letter was sent to the House of Commons, to the 'ryght worshypfull syres, the Speker, knyghtes, and burges (sic) of the worshepfull parlament,' informing them that the Duke had magnified the University 'with a thousand pounds worth and more of preciose bokes,' and therefore beseeching their 'sage discrecions to considere the gloriose gifts of the graciose prince … for the comyn profyte and worshyp of the Reme, to thanke hym hertyly, and also prey Godde to thanke hym in tyme comyng wher goode dedys ben rewarded.' Statutes for the regulation of the gift were made on the same day, prayers appointed, and provision made for the observance of the Duke's obit[6]. A catalogue of 364 of the MSS. is printed, from the lists preserved in the University Register, p. 758, vol. ii. of Rev. H. Anstey's Documents Illustrative of Social and Academic Life at Oxford, published in the series of Chronicles issued by the Master of the Rolls. The extent of these gifts rendered the room at St. Mary's quite insufficient for the purpose to which it was assigned, and the University therefore, in a letter to the Duke, dated July 14, 1444, informed him of their intention to erect a more suitable building, of which (as a delicate way, probably, of bespeaking his aid towards the cost, as well as of testifying their gratitude for past benefactions) they formally offered him the title of Founder. In the subjoined note is given an extract from this letter (copied from the Register of Convocation), which is interesting from its description of the inconveniences of the old room, and the advantages of the new site[7]. And this new building, first contemplated in A.D. 1444 and finished about 1480, forms now the central portion of the great Reading-Room, still retaining its old advantages of convenience and of seclusion 'a strepitu sæculari.'
The Duke's MSS. were, as became the object of his gift, very varied in character. With works in Divinity