Annals of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, A.D. 1598-A.D. 1867: With a Preliminary Notice of the earlier Library founded in the Fourteenth CenturyMacray, William Dunn
History
Annals of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, A.D. 1598-A.D. 1867: With a Preliminary Notice of the earlier Library founded in the Fourteenth Century
Macray, William Dunn
Bodleian Library
The name of John Locke appears in the Register, as the donor of his own
works (which he gave at Hudson's request), together with some others,
including, with an honourable fairness, those of Bishop Stillingfleet
written in controversy with himself. As Locke's expulsion from Ch. Ch.,
in 1684, by royal mandate, for political reasons, is sometimes, with an
injustice which he himself would doubtless have warmly repudiated,
represented as if it had been the act of Oxford itself, it is worth
while to quote the language in which this gift from him, twenty years
afterwards, is recorded, and recorded, too, by the pen of the earnest
and conscientious Jacobite, Thomas Hearne: 'Joannes Lock, generosus, et
hujus Academiæ olim alumnus, præter Opera ab ipso edita, ob ingenii
elegantiam, doctrinæ varietatem, et philosophicam subtilitatem, omnibus
suspicienda (_here follow the titles of his own works_), insuper ex suo
in optimas artes amore, animoque ad supellectilem literariam augendam
propenso, Bibliothecæ huic dono dedit libros sequentes;' _scil._
Churchill's _Voyages and Travels_, 4 vols., 1704, Stillingfleet's
_Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity_, Stillingfleet's _Answer to
Locke_, and Rob. Boyle's _History of the Air_. Locke desired, in a
codicil to his will, that in compliance with a second request from
Hudson, all his anonymous works should also be sent to the Library[163].
William Ray, formerly consul at Smyrna, presented about 600 coins,
chiefly Greek, which E. Lhwyd (who reported their number to be about
2000) said he had been told had been collected at Smyrna by his
cook[164]. But the Benefaction Register records that they were obtained
by Ray from the widow of one 'domini Dan. Patridge,' who had himself
intended to present them to the University. They were put in order, and
a Catalogue made of them, some years afterwards, by Hearne, who intended
to have given the Catalogue to the Library, 'had not,' he says, 'the ill
usage he afterwards met with there obliged him to alter his mind[165].'
Ray also gave a Turkish almanac.
[163] Lord King's _Life of Locke_, edit. 1830, vol. ii. p. 51.
[164] Walker's _Letters by Eminent Persons_, i. 137.
[165] _Life_, p. 13, in _Lives of Leland, Hearne, and Wood_, 1772.
A.D. 1706.
The supposed original MS. of _The Causes of the Decay of Christian
Piety_, by the author of _The Whole Duty of Man_, was given by Mr.
Keble, the London bookseller. It is now numbered Bodl. MS. 21. Dr.
Aldrich was of opinion that it is not in the author's own hand, but
copied in a disguised hand by Bishop Fell. Hearne thought it to be in a
disguised hand of Sancroft's; but the resemblance is very slight
indeed[166].
[166] See _Letters by Eminent Persons_, vol. ii. pp. 133-4.
A.D. 1707.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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