r nineteen hundred and fifty pounds, at the
sale of the Earl of Jersey's books in 1885, by Mr. Quaritch for a New
York collector.

The volumes in the library were all handsomely bound; mostly in red
morocco, and tooled with a distinctive kind of ornamentation, which has
since been known as the Harleian Style. This commonly consisted of a
centrepiece, generally of a lozenge form, surrounded by a broad and
elegant border. Eliot and Chapman were the binders of the greater
portion of the books, at a cost, it is said, of upwards of eighteen
thousand pounds.

Humphrey Wanley was for several years librarian to both the first and
the second Earls, and he commenced the compilation of the catalogue of
the manuscripts, which was finally completed by the Rev. Thomas Hartwell
Horne in 1812. Among the Lansdowne manuscripts in the British Museum is
a diary,[61] kept by Wanley, which contains much interesting information
respecting the library. Some time after Wanley's decease, William Oldys
was appointed librarian at a salary of two hundred pounds per annum.

The second Earl of Oxford had a passion for building and landscape
gardening, as well as for collecting books, paintings and curiosities,
and some years before his death these expensive tastes involved him in
pecuniary difficulties. George Vertue, the eminent engraver, in one of
his commonplace-books, now preserved in the British Museum,[62] thus
feelingly refers to the embarrassed circumstances of the Earl:--'My good
Lord, lately growing heavy and pensive in his affairs, which for some
late years have mortify'd his mind.... This lately manifestly appeared
in his change of complexion; his face fallen less; his colour and eyes
turned yellow to a great degree; his stomach wasted and gone; and a dead
weight presses continually, without sign of relief, on his mind.'

A fortnight after this was written Vertue had to lament his loss.

Lord Oxford died in Dover Street, London, on the 16th of June 1741, and
on his decease the library became the property of Margaret, Duchess of
Portland, the only daughter and heiress of the Earl, who sold the
printed books to Mr. Thomas Osborne, the bookseller of Gray's Inn, for
about thirteen thousand pounds. The manuscripts were purchased by
Parliament in 1753 for the sum of ten thousand pounds, and were placed
in the library of the British Museum four years later. The portraits,
coins, and miscellaneous curiosities were sold by auction in March 174