Volume 1

A summary catalogue of Western manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

  • Bodleian Library
Date:
1895-1953
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A summary catalogue of Western manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    think I may do it lawfully.) Mr. Pocock intends shortly to publish some pieces of Maimonides in Arabick, with his translation. For myself, I have engaged a matter of a score of our ablest men in that kind, to undertake a thorough Survey of our Publick Library, intending to make a perfect Catalogue of all the books according to their Severall Subjects in severall kinds; and when that’s done to incorporate in it all the Authors in any of our private College Libraries, which are wanting in the Public, so as he that desires to know, may see at one view, what we have upon any subject. Dr. James made some beginnings in this kind; but none yet has ventur’d either to perfect his or begin anew. His Successor Mr. Rouse, I fear, and so doe his Physicians, will not be long liv’d. Sir Thomas Bodley requires a single man for the place; and my thoughts have run much upon Mr. Young. If the elec- tion be left to the University, I presume, he might with ease (if he would be willing to accept of it) obtain the place. But I find him not inclinable. . . . Your most humble servant Ger: Langbaine Queen’s Coll. Oxon i6. March 1651 This scheme only mentions a catalogue of printed books, but it undoubtedly gave an impetus to his work on manuscripts. In this field he does not appear to have found any collaborators. For though the names of the ‘score of our ablest men in that kind’ are known and the sections of the printed books of the Bodleian which were assigned to them,^ in the corresponding division of the manuscripts^ no names are entered. The only date of cataloguing in Langbaine’s notebooks is on the revision of his description of MS. Th., which are dated 1654.^ But it is clear that Langbaine had already been long at work. He could not in three or four years have achieved the detailed knowledge of the Bodleian collections which is displayed in his notebooks. Fortunately we have the evidence of the Library accounts that he was helping with Greek manuscripts in 1643,^ and it is probable that Greek manuscripts were his first concern. There is a further source of evidence in the format of his notebooks which are quartos and octavos. He used the quartos for all his work of known later date: it appears that the octavos are earlier.^ * Wheeler, B.Q.R. iii. 193-4. ^ Printed above, pp. xiii f. ^ MS. Langbaine, 5, p. 624 ‘Cum hosce libros denuo reviserem 14^0 Sept. 1654 offendi codicem hunc [S.C. 2772] in alium locum scil: in hac classe translatum’. See above, p. xii. 5 The most important of these are MSS. Langbaine 18, 19, Wood donat. 7.