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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    logue itself, where the names of the authors are given at the head of the classis. Pritchard’s name nowhere occurs. But this explana- tion cannot be true, for the first two ascriptions in it to Edmund Chilmead are grossly inaccurate. As we have already seen,^ he only made an alphabetical index. The catalogue here used is Peter Turner’s, supplemented from the notes and descriptions of Gerard Langbaine. Again, while it is true that Langbaine cata- logued the Cromwell manuscripts, the descriptions printed give only a much abbreviated version. The same holds true of the descriptions of NE and Super Art. In the 1697 Catalogue the authorship is ascribed to T. Barlow, G. Langbaine, T. Hyde. As we have seen, Barlow’s catalogue only covered Super Art. The work is Langbaine’s—much abbreviated. The only possible place for Hyde here is as the editor of Langbaine’s material, but one would rather not attribute the work to a scholar of the calibre of Hyde. It was done mechanically and without much intelligence. The dates of the manuscripts and the notes on the script are almost all cut out, the initia of the treatises are also omitted, with few exceptions. In short, two of the features which distinguished Langbaine’s work were removed. It is much more the kind of work one would expect from a conscientious clerk like Emmanuel Pritchard ‘a very industrious useful man’, as Hearne called him.^ There is, further, another set of Bodleian catalogues, very similar in content, which can be dated a few years earlier (1680-3). They are part, apparently, of a collection of catalogues of manuscripts in English Libraries, but unfortunately the per- son for whom they were made is not known. A system of number- ing the volumes by letters allows us to reconstruct the greater part of the series, which is as follows: A. MS. Ch. Ch. 455* Barocci Roe Digby NE Fairfax (1673) Selden [- 1-246] [= 247-75] [= 1602-1839] [- 1840-2494] [= 3881-3909] [= 3134-490] * My attention was drawn to these three volumes from Christ Church by Mr. N. R. Ker. It is not known how they came into the possession of the College. MSS. 455 and 467 were apparently received between 1717 and c. 1770. * Above, p. xvii. ^ Quoted by Macray, Annals^ p. 141.