r
days a shoemaker; and, for the many curiosities wherewith he
enriched the famous library of Dr. John Moore, Bishop of
Ely, his Lordship got him admitted into the Charter House.
He died in 1706, aged 65: after his death Lord Oxford
purchased all his collections and papers, for his library:
these are now in the Harleian collection in the British
Museum. In 1707 were published, in the Philosophical
Transactions, his Proposals for a General History of
Printing."--Bowyer and Nichols's _Origin of Printing_, p.
164, 189, note.

It has been my fortune (whether good or bad remains to be
proved) not only to transcribe the slender memorial of
Printing in the Philosophical Transactions, drawn up by
Wanley for Bagford, but to wade through _forty-two_ folio
volumes, in which Bagford's materials for a History of
Printing are incorporated, in the British Museum: and from
these, I think I have furnished myself with a pretty fair
idea of the said Bagford. He was the most hungry and
rapacious of all book and print collectors; and, in his
ravages, spared neither the most delicate nor costly
specimens. His eyes and his mouth seem to have been always
open to express his astonishment at, sometimes, the most
common and contemptible productions; and his paper in the
Philosophical Transactions betrays such simplicity and
ignorance that one is astonished how my Lord Oxford and the
learned Bishop of Ely could have employed so credulous a
bibliographical forager. A modern collector and lover of
_perfect_ copies will witness, with shuddering, among
Bagford's immense collection of Title Pages, in the Museum,
the frontispieces of the Complutensian Polyglot, and
Chauncy's History of Hertfordshire, torn out to illustrate a
History of Printing. His enthusiasm, however, carried him
through a great deal of laborious toil; and he supplied, in
some measure, by this qualification, the want of other
attainments. His whole mind was devoted to book-hunting; and
his integrity and diligence probably made his employers
overlook his many failings. His hand-writing is scarcely
legible, and his orthography is still more wretched; but if
he was ignorant, he was humble, zealous, and grateful; and
he has certainly done something towards the accomplishment
of that