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and of a certain Solomonic dissatisfaction? The two writers of modern times, both pre-eminently sympathetic towards the past, who have best described this somewhat melancholy and disillusioned frame of mind are both Americans: Washington Irving, in two essays in the "SketchBook"-The Art of Bookmaking and The Mutability of Literature, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, in many places, but notably in that famous chapter on The · Emptiness of Picture Galleries in "The Marble Faun."

It is perhaps best not to make too great demands upon our slender stock of deep emotions; not to rhapsodize too much; or vainly to pretend, as some travelers have done, that to them the collections of the Bodleian, its laden shelves and precious cases, are more attractive than wealth, fame, or family, and that stern Fate alone compelled them to leave Oxford by train after a visit rarely exceeding twenty-four hours in duration.

Sir Thomas Bodley's Library at Oxford is, all will admit, a great and glorious Institution, one of England's sacred places; and springing as it did out of the mind, heart, and head of one strong, efficient, and resolute man, it is matter for rejoicing with every honest gentleman to be able to observe how quickly the idea took root, how well it has thriven, by how great a tradition it has become consecrated, and how studiously the wishes of the founder in all their essentials are still observed and carried out.

Saith the Prophet Isaiah, "The liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things he shall stand." The name of Thomas Bodley still stands all the world over by the liberal thing he devised.

A few pages about this "second Ptolemy" will be grudged me by none but unlettered churls.

He was a West Countryman, an excellent thing to be in England if you want backing through thick and thin, and was born in Exeter on the 2d of March, 1544a most troublesome date. It seems our fate in the Old Home never to be for long quit of the religious difficulty-which is very hard upon us, for nobody, I suppose, would call us a "religious" people. Little Thomas Bodley opened his eyes in a land distracted with the religious difficulty. Listen to his own words; they are full of

the times: "My father, in the time of Queen Mary, being noted and known to be an enemy to Popery was so cruelly threatened and so narrowly observed by those that maliced his religion, that for the safeguard of himself and my mother who was wholly affected as my father, he knew no way so secure as to fly into Germany, where after a while he found means to call over my mother with all his children and family whom he settled for a time in Wesel in Cleveland. (For there, there were many English which had left their country for their conscience and with quietness enjoyed their meetings and preachings.) From thence he removed to the town of Frankfort where there was in like sort another English congregation. Howbeit we made no longer tarriance in either of these two towns for that my father had resolved to fix his abode in the city of Geneva."

Here the Bodleys remained until such time as our Nation was advertised of the death of Queen Mary and the succession of Elizabeth, with the change of religion which caused my father to hasten into England.

In Geneva young Bodley and his brothers enjoyed what now would be called

great educational advantages. Small creature though he was, he yet attended (so he says) the public lectures of Chevalerius in Hebrew, Bersaldus in Greek, and of Calvin and Beza in Divinity. He had also "domestical teachers," and was taught Homer by Robert Constantinus, who was the author of a Greek Lexicon, a luxury in those days.

On returning to England Bodley proceeded, not to Exeter, as by rights he should have done, but to Magdalen, where he became a "reading man" and graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1563. The next year he shifted his quarters to Merton, where he gave public lectures on Greek. In 1566 he became a Master of Arts, took to the study of Natural Philosophy, and three years later was Junior Proctor. He remained in residence until 1576, thus spending seventeen years in the University. In the lastmentioned year he obtained leave of absence to travel on the Continent, and for four years he pursued his studies abroad, mastering the French, Spanish, and Italian languages. Some short time

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after his return home he obtained an introduction to Court circles and became an Esquire to Queen Elizabeth, who seems to have entertained varying opinions about him, at one time greatly commending him and at another time wishing he were hanged an awkward wish on Tudor lips. In 1588 Bodley married a wealthy widow, a Mrs. Ball, the daughter of a Bristol man named Carew. He survived her, and, having no children, a good bit of her money remains in the Bodleian to this day. Blessed be her memory! Nor should the names of Carew and Ball be wholly for gotten in this connection. From 1588 to 1596 Bodley was in the diplomatic service, chiefly at The Hague, where he did good work in troublesome times. On being finally recalled from The Hague, Bodley had to make up his mind whether to pursue a public life. He suffered from having too many friends, for not only did Burleigh patronize him, but Essex must needs do the same.

No man can serve two masters, and though to be the victim of the rival ambitions of greater men than yourself is no uncommon fate, it is a currish one. Bodley determined to escape it, and to make for himself after a very different fashion a name, are perennius.

I resolved thereupon to possess my soul in peace all the residue of my days, to take my full farewell of state employments, to satisfy my mind with the mediocrity of worldly living that I had of mine own, and so to retire me from the Court.

But what was he to do?

Whereupon, examining exactly for the rest of my life what course I might take, and having sought all the ways to the wood to select the most proper, I concluded at the last to set up my staff at the Library door in Oxford, being thoroughly persuaded that in my soli

tude and surcease from the Commonwealth affairs I could not busy myself to better purpose than by reducing that place (which then in every part lay ruined waste) to the publick use of students.

It is pleasant to be admitted into the birth-chamber of a great idea destined to be translated into action. Bodley proceeds to state the four qualifications he felt himself to possess to do this great bit of work: first, the necessary knowledge of ancient and modern tongues and of "sundry other sorts of scholastical literature;" second, purse ability; third, a great store of honorable friends; and, fourth, leisure.

Bodley's description of the state of the old library as lying in every part ruined and in waste was but too true.

Richard of Bury, the book-loving Bishop of Durham, seems to have been the first donor of manuscripts on anything like a large scale to Oxford, but the library he founded was at Durham College, which stood where Trinity College now stands, and was in no sense a University library. The good Bishop, known to all bookhunters as the author of the " Philobiblon," died in 1345, but his collection remained intact, subject to rules he had himself laid down, until the dissolution of the monasteries, when Durham College, which was attached to a religious house, was put up for sale, and its library, like so much else of good learning at this sad period, was dispersed and for the most part destroyed.

Bodley's real predecessor, the first begetter of a University library, was Thomas Cobham, Bishop of Worcester, who in 1320 prepared a chamber above a vaulted room in the northeast corner of St. Mary's Church for the reception of the books he intended to bestow upon his University. When the Bishop of Worcester (as a matter of fact he had once been elected Archbishop of Canterbury-but that is another story, as Laurence Sterne has said) died in 1327, it was discovered that he had by his will bequeathed his library to Oxford, but he was insolvent! No rich relict of a defunct Ball was available for a Bishop in those days. The executors found themselves without sufficient estate to pay for their testator's funeral expenses, ever the first charge upon assets. They are not to be blamed for pawning the library. A good friend redeemed the pledge and despatched the books, all, of course, manuscripts, to Oxford. For some reason or another Oriel took them in, and, having become their bailee, refused to part with them, possibly and plausibly alleging that the University was not in a position to give a valid receipt. At Oriel they remained for ten years, when all of a sudden the scholars of the University, animated by their notorious affection for sound learning and a good "row," took Oriel by storm and carried off the books in triumph to Bishop Cobham's room, where they remained in chests unread for thirty years. In 1367 the University by statute ratified and confirmed its title to

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the books and published regulations for their use, but the quarrel with Oriel continued till 1409, when the Cobham Library was for the first time properly furnished and opened as a place for study and reference.

The Librarian of the old Cobham Library had an advantage over Mr. Nicholson, the Bodley Librarian of to-day. Being a clerk in holy orders before the days when, in Bodley's own phrase, already quoted, we "changed" our religion, he was authorized by the University to say masses for the souls of all dead donors of books, whether by gifts inter vivos or by bequest.

The first great benefactor of Cobham's Library was Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, the youngest son of Henry IV., and perhaps the most "pushful" youngest son in our royal annals. Though a dissipated and unprincipled fellow, he lives in history as the "good Duke Humphrey " because he had the sense to patronize learning, collect manuscripts, and enrich universities. He began his gifts to Oxford as early, so say some authorities, as 1411, and continued his donations of

manuscripts with such vivacity that the little room in St. Mary's could no longer contain its riches. Hence the resolution of the University in 1444 to build a new library over the Divinity School. This new room, which was completed in 1480, forms now the central portion of that great reading-room so affectionately remembered by thousands of still living students.

Duke Humphrey's Library, as the new room was popularly called, continued to flourish and receive valuable accessions of manuscripts and printed books belonging to Divinity, Medicine, Natural Science, and Literature until the ill-omened year 1550. Oxford has never loved Commissioners revising her statutes and reforming her schools, but the Commissioners of 1550 were worse than prigs, worse even than Erastians, they were barbarians and wreckers. They were deputed by King Edward VI., " in the spirit of the Reformation," to make an end of the Popish superstition. Under their hands the Library totally disappeared; and for a long while the tailors and shoemakers and bookbinders of Oxford were well supplied with vellum which they found useful

in their respective callings. It was a hard fate for so splendid a collection. True it is that for the most part the contents of the Library had been rescued from miserable ill-usage in the Monasteries and ChapterHouses where they had their first habitations, but at last they had found shelter over the Divinity School of a great University. There at least they might hope to slumber. But our Reformers thought otherwise. The books and manuscripts being thus dispersed or destroyed, a prudent if unromantic Convocation exposed for sale the wooden shelves, desks, and seats of the old library, and so made a complete end of the whole concern; thus making room for Thomas Bodley.

On the 23d of February, 159, Thomas Bodley sat himself down in his London house and addressed to the Vice-Chan cellor of his University a certain famous letter:

Sir,-Altho' you know me not as I suppose, yet for the farthering of an offer of evident utilitie to your whole University I will not be too scrupulous in craving your assistance. I have been alwaies of a mind that if God of his goodness should make me able to do anything for the benefit of posteritie I would shew

some token of affiction that I have ever more borne to the studies of good learning. I know my portion is too slender to perform for the present any answerable act to my willing disposition, but yet to notify some part of my desire in that behalf I have resolved thus to deal. Where there hath been heretofore a public library in Oxford which you know is apparent by the room itself remaining and by your statute records, I will take the charge and cost upon me to reduce it again to its former use and to make it fit and handsome

with seats and shelves and desks and all that may be needful to stir up other mens benevolence to help to furnish it with books. And this I purpose to begin as soon as timber can be gotten to the intent that you may be of some speedy profit of my project. And where before as I conceive it was to be reputed but a store of books of divers benefactors because it never had any lasting allowance for augmentation of the number or supply of books decayed, whereby it came to pass that when those that were in being were either wasted or embezzled, the whole foundation came to ruin. To meet with that inconvenience, I will so provide hereafter (if God do not hinder my present design) as you shall be still assured of a standing annual rent to be disbursed every year in buying of books, or officers stipends and other pertinent occasions, with which provision and some order for the preservation of the place and the furniture of it from accustomed abuses, it may perhaps in time to come prove a notable treasure for the multitude of volumes, an excellent benefit

for the use and ease of students, and a singular ornament of the University.

The letter does not stop here, but my quotation has already probably wearied most of my readers, though for my own part I am not ashamed to confess that I seldom tire of retracing with my own hand the ipsissima verba whereby great and truly notable gifts have been bestowed upon nations or universities or even municipalities for the advancement of learning and the spread of science. Bodley's language is somewhat involved, but through it glows the plain intention of an honest

man.

Convocation, we are told, embraced the offer with wonderful alacrity, and lost no time in accepting it in good Latin.

From February, 1598, to January, 1613 (when he died), Bodley was happy with as glorious a hobby-horse as ever man rode astride upon. Though Bodley, in one of his letters, modestly calls himself a mere "smatterer," he was, as indeed he had the sense to recognize, excellently well fitted to be a collector of books, being both a good linguist and personally well acquainted with the chief cities of the Continent and with their booksellers. He was thus able to employ well-selected agents in different parts of Europe to buy books on his account, which it was his pleasure to receive, his rapture to unpack, his pride to despatch in what he calls "dry-fats"—that is, weather-tight chests-to Dr. James, the first Bodley Librarian. Despite growing and painful infirmities (stone, ague, dropsy), Bodley never even for a day dismounted his hobby, but rode it manfully to the last. Nor had he any mean taint of nature that might have grudged other men a hand in the great work. The more benefactors there were, the better pleased was Bodley. He could not, indeed-for had he not been educated at Geneva and attended the Divinity Lectures of Calvin and Beza?-direct Dr. James to say masses for the souls of such donors of money or books as should die, but he did all a poor Protestant can do to tempt generosityhe opened and kept in a very public place in the Library a great Register Book, containing the names and titles of all benefactors. Bodley was always on the lookout for gifts and bequests from his store of honorable friends; and in the case of

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