[17] Reliquiæ Bodleianæ, p. 14.
[18] This letter (with the subsequent correspondence) is printed by Hearne, at the end of the Chronicle of John of Glastonbury, vol. ii. p. 612, from the Reg. of Convoc. Ma. f. 31a.
[19] Most probably intended to refer to the Apocalyptic book (Rev. v. 1.), and to signify the unsealing of Divine Revelation, the fountain of all wisdom, by our Blessed Lord. Sir J. Wake prefers to take the seven seals as representing the seven liberal arts.
[20] The motto appears to have varied. It is sometimes given in titles of books printed at Oxford about the time of James I, as 'Sapientiæ et Felicitatis;' and in an heraldic MS. of the seventeenth century as 'XX. Exod. Decem … Omnipotens mandata. Verbum Dei manet in eternum. Amen.' (Rawl. B. xl. f. 81.) Others [have] this, 'Veritas liberabit, Bonitas regnabit;' and others this, 'In principio erat Verbum,' &c. (Hearne, in Rawl. MS. C. 876, f. 51.)
[21] Wake notices it as a singular coincidence that the Library was first opened on the day of the 'Quatuor coronati Martyres,' Nov. 8, whom, by mistake, he calls 'Tres.'
[22] See Reliquiæ Bodleianæ, p. 158.
[23] One of the books given by Lord Lumley has the autograph of Cranmer, 'Thomas Cantuarien.,' on the title-page. The book, appositely enough, bears the title of Sicbardi Antidotum contra diversas omnium fere sæculorum bæreses, fol. Bas. 1528.
[24] Printed by Rev. J. Stevenson at the end of the Romance of Alexander, edited by him for the Roxburghe Club in 1849, from Ashmole MS. 44.
[25] Plenus-Amoris, or Fullalove, seems to have been the name of a family of scribes. But the expression seems often also to have been used for the mere sake of rhyme. In the colophon of a translation of Alan Chartier in Rawl. A. 338, are these lines:—
'Nomen scriptoris,
Dei gracia, Plenus Amoris:
Careat meroris
Deus det sibi omnibus horis.'
Peter Plenus-Amoris was the scribe of Fairfax 6; Thomas, of Univ. Coll. MS. 142; William, of All Souls' 51; Geoffrey, of Sloane 513 (Brit. Mus.) In the following instances the name appears to be used only rhythmically:—
'Nomen scriptoris est Jhon Wilde plenus amoris.'—(Rawlinson B. 214.)
'Nomen scriptoris Jon. semper plenus amoris,
Esteby cognomen, cui semper det Deus homen' (sic).—(Bodl. 643.)
[26] Probably this book is the 'large liure en fraunceis tresbien esluminez de le Rymance de Alexandre,' once in the library of Tho. of Woodstock, Duke of Glouc. See Mr. Coxe's pref. to Gower's Vox Clam. (Roxb. Club, 1850,) p. 50.
A.D. 1601.
It is from this date that our notes on the history of the Library can begin to assume an annalistic form. A gift of £20 from Herbert Westphaling, Bishop of Hereford, was expended in the purchase of books with great success; no fewer than thirty were obtained, and amongst them were, 'Evangelia quatuor Saxonica, lingua et charactere vetustiss.,' being the MS. from which John Foxe had taken the text of the Saxon Gospels in the edition published at the expense of Archbishop Parker in 1571, and which was subsequently re-edited by Junius. It is now numbered, Bodl. MS. 441. An early edition (qu. editio princeps?) of the Gospels in the Russian language (now placed among the Bodley MSS. 213) appears among some books given by Sir Henry Savile[27], whose brother-historian and antiquary, William Camden, is also registered as the donor of a few MSS. and printed books. Thomas Allen, M.A., of Gloucester Hall, the astrologer, gave twenty MSS[28]; the rest of his collection came subsequently to the Library, included in that of Sir Kenelm Digby, to whom Allen had bequeathed it. One of the twenty now given was an extremely curious volume, chiefly written in the ninth century (marked Auctarium F. iv. 32), including in its contents an original drawing (engraved in Hickes' Thesaurus, p. 144) by St. Dunstan of himself as prostrate at the feet of the throned Christ[29], a grammatical tract by Eutychius (or Eutex, as the scribe calls him, while professing doubt as to the right form), with Welsh glosses (noticed by Lhuyd in his Archæol. Brit. p. 226); the first book of Ovid De Arte amandi, with similar glosses[30]; and lections in Greek and Latin from the Prophets and Pentateuch, amongst which is one from Hosea containing, in the Latin version, a line or two unlike any known early version, (although faithful to the Hebrew), but found also in a quotation in Gildas[31]. Capt. Josias Bodley[32] gave an astronomical sphere and other instruments in brass, which now stand in the south window adjoining the entrance to the Library. But the great benefactor of the year was the newly-appointed Librarian, Thomas James, who gave various MSS., chiefly patristic (which, however, Wood says, 'he had taken out of several College libraries'), and sixty printed volumes. From the first preparation of the new foundation Bodley had fixed upon James, then a Fellow of New College, as his Library-Keeper. The volume of letters published by Hearne (from Bodl. MS. 699) in 1703, under the title of Reliquiæ Bodleianæ, consists chiefly of those which the Founder addressed to James while his collection of books was in process of formation, but unfortunately they have no dates of years, and Hearne printed them simply as they came into his hands, without any attempt to determine their order of sequence. We learn from these that James' salary at the outset was £5 13s. 4d. quarterly; but almost at once he threatened to 'strike' unless it were raised to an annual stipend of £30 or £40, while at the same time he demanded permission to marry. This latter requisition appeared particularly grievous to Bodley, who had made celibacy a stringent condition in his Statutes, and he forthwith expostulated strongly with his Librarian on these his 'unseasonable and unreasonable motions' (p. 52). The upshot, however, was that Bodley, very unwillingly, consented to become the 'first breaker' of his own institution, (which 'hereafter,' he says, 'I purpose to become inviolable,') and, for the love he bore to James, allowed him to marry[33]. But it was not until the year 1813 that the Statute was altered and the Librarian released from his obligation of perpetual celibacy, and even then, by a singular and unmeaning compromise, it was ordered that he, as well as the Under-Librarians, should be unmarried at the time of election. The whole restriction was, however, finally removed on the revision of the Statutes in 1856. But its infringement appears to have been again tolerated, in one instance, at least, during the last century, viz. in the case of Dr. Hudson. Hearne[34] enters the following 'memorandum'