The valuable collection of Oriental MSS. formed by the celebrated traveller, James Bruce, of Kinnaird, was purchased for £1000. It consists of ninety-six volumes, of which twenty-six are in Ethiopic, and seventy in Arabic; there is also one Coptic MS. on papyrus. Included in vol. iv. of an Ethiopic copy of the Old Testament is one of the three copies of the Book of Enoch, which were brought by Bruce from Abyssinia, and which were then (if they be not even still) the only manuscripts of the book to be found in Europe. One of the three had been given by Bruce himself to the University, in 1788, through the hands of Dr. Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury; it is written on forty leaves of vellum, in triple columns, and is now exhibited in the glass case near the entrance of the Library. It was from this MS. that Dr. Laurence, afterwards Archbishop of Cashel, first made the translation which he published in 1821, and then subsequently, in 1838, published the original text. The second copy ('elegantissimum et celeberrimum') was given by Bruce to Louis XVI, and is now in the Imperial Library at Paris. By the purchase of the third, the Bodleian is, therefore, the possessor of two out of the three. Two unsuccessful attempts had previously been made to dispose of the collection by auction. It was first announced for sale by Mr. Christie, for May 17, 1827, to be disposed of in one lot; and a list was issued, abridged from the catalogue made by Dr. Alex. Murray, the editor of Bruce's _Travels_. The issue of this proposed sale is recorded by Douce in the following MS. note on his copy of the auction catalogue: 'These MSS. were put in by the owner at £5500, and after an elaborate eulogium on them by Mr. Christie, no bidding or advance took place, and they were of course withdrawn. Had the owner offered them for £500, I should think the same result would have happened.' The second attempt was made in 1842, when the MSS. were offered for sale by Mr. George Robins, on May 30, but it appears that even all the eloquence of that most moving of auctioneers failed to elicit a bid corresponding to the expectation of the seller; and so the collection fortunately remained intact, to be disposed of to our Library in the year following. A catalogue of the Ethiopic MSS. of the collection was issued in a small quarto volume (eighty-seven pages), in 1848, as part vii. of the General Catalogue of MSS. It was compiled by a German scholar, well acquainted with this branch of Oriental literature, Dr. A. Dillmann, and contains, besides Bruce's books, three of Pococke's MSS., one of Laud's, one of Clarke's, and three others; in all thirty-five.