Volume 1

Munimenta Academica, or, Documents illustrative of academical life and studies at Oxford / by Henry Anstey ; published by the authority of the lords commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, under the direction of the master of the rolls.

  • Anstey, Henry, 1827-
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Munimenta Academica, or, Documents illustrative of academical life and studies at Oxford / by Henry Anstey ; published by the authority of the lords commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, under the direction of the master of the rolls. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    ]ii Number of books given. the UiiivevHity at the time, which are set out in MS. V, ali-eady desci-ibed, we iiave the outpouring of the grati- Thcir value. tude of their liearts. No epithets of praise and adula- tion are too high or too low for vestra, lminiilhii.(i, oratrix, coems Mar/idrorwm regentiutm Oxonicti, (such in the almost invarial)le style,) to use in addressing the executors. There was, it seems from the correspondence, a very considerable difficulty and delay in obtaining possession of some of the books, and when they actually came to hand, the general joy knew no bounds. He had made many valuable presents of books during his lifetime, which are gratefully remembeied in the statutes for the library (pp. 2G1, 2GG, 326), the whole number being certainly more than 800, if we include the smaller do- nations (p. 327) which he gave from time to time, besides the two of which catalogues wiU be found in this work, (p. 758), and after his death there Avas a further very large addition. Of all these books, a donation of which it may with truth be said, that it did more for the University than any other benefaction before or after it has done, only one is supposed to be now remaining in the Bodleian library! It is not a little instructive, as exhibiting the tastes and studies of the period, to inspect these catalogues. The contents would hardly be thought valuable, except as curiosities, by a student of the present day. A very large proportion are theological works, with a less number of mathematical, medical, Summary of. and astronomical. Not a few copies of parts of Aris- totle (translations it would appear), but of other classical authors only a few. We find, however, copies of Cicero, Seneca, Cato moralizatus, Pliny, Quintilian ; one copy of Plato, one of Suetonius, one of ^Eschines, one of Livy, one of Ovid; of Greek classics none beside ^schines, unless we except the portions of Aristotle and the copy of Plato, and these were probably Latin translations. , It is surprising to find that English chronicles are ' almost unrepresented (Capgrave and the Polychronicon