The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-07-14
THE BopLEIAN E.IRE. R.Y.
'ecuIfarftaes of Ancient Book lovers
 Who Get the Book at Amy Cost
(I.ondon Grap hie 5

The appeal for f50sD00 which has. just been issued by the trustees cf he Oxford university endowment fund on behalf of the Bodleian library is in. no wise g. premature one This famous possession of the university is among the priceless things of our nations treasures, but unless we in our gem eration do our best to make it more generally aNailalb1ei and. adaptable to the needs of modern students we shall be quite as chargeabIe as the servant of old who h i'd his talent in a nap kim
 Al it is. the stan of the library has for some time proved quite insuf1- cient; more room is badly needed for books, which have completely over flowed it's linnitss the catalog1ng is in adequate, and more accommodation is required for readers These are some of the objects for which the present urgent appeal is being made, and 1t is not likely to be made in vain,
 Naturally it has already given rise to much awakened interest in the great Sir Thomas Bodley It is erro- neous to refer to him as the founder as this had been i'm existence for 200 years before his time But he re stored and enlarged the original H- orary out of all recognition. and, what is mora endowed it Evf tn his own. fine collection of volumes and manuscri pts i u w as an EbCLs or KllnlnCSnc9 WHICH mas very justly preserved his name for Ell time in connection with the university of Oxford and it's learning.
 We undoubtedly owe very much to the great collectors Of books and man. usciapks in the past, but there is plen= ty of interesting secret history con- tafned in old letters and memoirs which cast some extraordinary. re- decuons upon the prociyities of these learned book-Iovers- The benefactor of the Bodleian has by no means es- capped. There is epistolarly evidence ed to other qualities than the virtues of the good Sir Thomas" as he has been called, for some of the treasures of which she is able to boast today.
 Some amusing evidence of this kind appears in a letter from Sir Robert Sa- vile to Sir Robert Cotton, the we'll known collector of the Cottoniaq man uscrtpts This letter was written to arrange an interview for Bodley with Sir Robert Cotton. and the writer eau boke so dear as that you would be loath to lose it, you should not let Sir Thomas out of your sight, but set the poke aside beforehand
 We do not doubt that Sir Robert ] took the hint In any case he was probably well able to take care of his treasures, seeing that he was a dis tinguished purIoiner himself For we have 1t in he manuscript notebook Of Sir Nicholas Hyde. who was chief jus tice of the Kings Bench from the sec ond to the seventh year of Charles [, that Sir Robert Cotton had in his I- brary records. evidences, ledger books, original letters and many other state papers belonging to the king. In deed. in order to prove this the at torney-genera1 of that time showed a copy of the pardon which Sir Robert had obtained from King James for embedding records, etcl
 Another of these determined coIIec- tors-at-aIl-costs was More, Bishop of Ely. He has been accused of forming his library by pIundering the libraries of his clergy. That he had not only ca3oled them out of their treasures, but did not hesitate to lay violent hands on the objects of his literary envy, there is an amusing story to show
 A friend of the bishop was one day discovered by visitor to be busi1y en- gagged in his library removing and hid ing away his rarest and most valuable books On being asked for an explana- ton of this strange occupation, the btbliophile sententiousiy made answer as follows: The bishop of Ely dimes