In 1789 a lazy and incompetent Librarian, John Price, is said to have lent the Rector of Lincoln a copy of Cook's Voyages, presented to the Library by George III, telling him that the longer he kept it the better, 'for if it was known to be in the Library, he (Price) should be perpetually plagued with enquiries after it[13].' What the Curators were about to permit such irregularities it is difficult to imagine; at any rate here you had eight picked men--Dr. Joseph Chapman, President of Trinity, Vice-Chancellor; the two Proctors; Dr. Randolph, Professor of Divinity, and afterwards successively Bishop of Oxford and of Bangor; Dr. Vansittart, Professor of Civil Law; Dr. Vivian, Professor of Medicine; Dr. Blayney, Professor of Hebrew; William Jackson, Professor of Greek and afterwards Bishop of Oxford:--they are men, citizens, members of a learned corporation, trustees; they have solemnly sworn by everything which they profess to hold sacred, that they will faithfully observe the statutes; and what was required of them? As much sense of duty as you expect and commonly find in a watcher or a gamekeeper; yet, till they were roused by the public protest of Dr. Beddowes, they seem to have shewed no trace or feeling of responsibility at all. [13] Macray, Annals, p. 198. Down to the year 1856 the Bodleian Curators were eight in number, namely, the Vice-Chancellor, the two Proctors, and the Regius Professors of Divinity, Hebrew, Greek, Medicine, and Civil Law. Eight is rather a large number, and the larger any board is the weaker becomes the sense of personal responsibility. No man feels that he is answerable for anything, because he is sunk and extinguished in a majority or a minority; and yet, without a keen sense of personal responsibility, all business is laxly and badly done, even when it is done at all. The artificial privacy of our proceedings is also an evil. In theory all our meetings are public, so far at least as Convocation is concerned; in fact, they are private; yet, if the University always knew not only what is done, but who it is that does it; if our acts were duly published, as they ought to be, in the University Gazette, probably both board and University would be the better for it, and it is certain that the affairs of the Library would be none the worse.