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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    in this volume and in MS. Cant. L 70, i.e. Laud misc. 463, with the folio references. Langbaine was far ahead of his contemporaries in England as a cataloguer of manuscripts.* We have only to compare his work with that of Thomas Barlow (no mean scholar), who made a catalogue of MSS. Super D i Art (= Med), Super A, B, &c. Art. [= Art.], and Super N 2 (olim M 4) Art. [= Th.].^ Here is his description of MS. Art. 72, of which we have already quoted Langbaine’s description: Codex 72 An English Legend in old hoblinge verse beginninge with St Brandan ye Holy Monck and St Patrick and endinge with St Pernel and St Botolfe. Continet fob 307. (iv) The Catalogue of l6gj To pass straight from the work of Langbaine to the Catalogue of 1697 may seem a long step, but for twenty years after his death no serious work was done on a general catalogue of manuscripts. The work of the next twenty years finally resulted in the Cata- logue of 1697. At first the main causes of delay were the para- mount need of producing a new catalogue of printed books, and, when that had appeared in 1674, the personality and interests of Thomas Hyde (Librarian, 1665-1701). The fragments of a catalogue of NE (i.e. manuscripts kept in the New End)^ made by Hyde’s predecessor, Thomas Lockey (Librarian, 1660-5), which is bound up with the specimen of a catalogue of printed books he was not allowed to print,^ is not impressive. It is a mere hand-list, in which no use appears to have been made of Lang- baine’s detailed descriptions. It should, however, be set down to the credit of Lockey that he arranged the Selden collection and listed the manuscripts. ^ L. Traube (Vorlesungen und Abhandlungen, Munich, 1909, i. 38) does not refer to any examples of cataloguing on such an ample scale at this date. “ In Library records, lettered MSS: Bodleiani extra classem super AB Sfc: Art. Barlow did not have access to the descriptions of Langbaine, as may be seen from his occasional references to titles written by Langbaine in front of MSS. Art. (see above, p. x). Thus Barlow begins his description of MS. Art. 73 (= S.C. 2568): ‘Bernardi Sermones varii (ita inscribitur manu D. Dr is Langbaine. Quaere an eius sint) verbi gr. 1. In die Pentecostes. . . Langbaine wrote a full and careful descrip- tion of the manuscript ending with the following note: ‘Totus hie codex sive manum qua scriptus sive materiam spectemus, vix dignus videatur cuius contenta tarn speciatim describerentur; sed quia nec unius auctoris erant, et baud ita facilia distinctu utcunque, non sine stomacho laborem hunc decoximus’ (MS. 6, p. 50). ^ See above, p. xii. B.Q.R. ii. 264-5.