ars, some amusement was
caused by finding that the chief compiler of the last printed
catalogue had omitted from his catalogue the volume on which he
sat, of which, too, though of no special value, there was no other
copy in the library' (Macray, p. 388A).

The spectacle in the mind's eye of this devoted sub-librarian and
sound divine sitting on the vellum-bound folio for six-and-thirty
years, so absorbed in his work as to be oblivious of the fact that he
had failed to include in what was his _magnum opus_, the Great
Catalogue, the very book he was sitting upon, tickles the midriff.

Here I must bring these prolonged but wholly insufficient observations
to a very necessary conclusion. Not a word has been said of the great
collection of bibles, or of the unique copies of the Koran and the
Talmud and the _Arabian Nights_, or of the Dante manuscripts, or of
Bishop Tanner's books (many bought on the dispersion of Archbishop
Sancroft's great library), which in course of removal by water from
Norwich to Oxford fell into the river and remained submerged for
twenty hours, nor of many other splendid benefactions of a later date.

One thing only remains, not to be said, but to be sent round--I mean
the hat. Ignominious to relate, this glorious foundation stands in
need of money. Shade of Sir Thomas Bodley, I invoke thy aid to loosen
the purse-strings of the wealthy! The age of learned and curious
merchants, of high-spirited and learning-loving nobles, of
book-collecting bishops, of antiquaries, is over. The Bodleian cannot
condescend to beg. It is too majestical. But I, an unauthorized
stranger, have no need to be ashamed.

Especially rich is this great library in _Americana_, and America
suggests multi-millionaires. The rich men of the United States have
been patriotically alive to the first claims of their own richly
endowed universities, and long may they so continue; but if by any
happy chance any one of them should accidentally stumble across an odd
million or even half a million of dollars hidden away in some casual
investment he had forgotten, what better thing could he do with it
than send it to this, the most famous foundation of his Old Home? It
would be acknowledged by return of post in English and in Latin, and
the donor's name would be inscribed, not indeed (and this is a
regrettable lapse) in that famous old register which Bodley provided
should always be in a prominent place in his library, but in t