heodore
Beza and Lord Bacon were afterwards among its most distinguished
benefactors. Bishop Hacket made a donation of nearly fifteen hundred
volumes: and in 1647 a large collection of Eastern MSS., brought home
from Italy by George Thomason, was added by an ordinance of the
Commonwealth. But, until the royal gift of the Bishop of Ely's books, the
University received no such extraordinary favour of fortune as came to
the sister institution through the splendid beneficence of Bodley.

CHAPTER XI.

BODLEY--DIGBY--LAUD--SELDEN--ASHMOLE.

The University of Oxford still offers public thanks for Bodley's
generosity upon his calendar-day. The ancient library of Duke Humphrey
and his pious predecessors had, as we have seen, been plundered and
devastated. But Sir Thomas Bodley, when retiring from office in 1597,
conceived the idea of restoring it to prosperity again; 'and in a few
years so richly endowed it with books, revenues, and buildings, that it
became one of the most famous in the world.' Bodley has left us his own
account of the matter:--'I concluded at the last to set up my staff at
the library-door in Oxon. I found myself furnished with such four kinds
of aids as, unless I had them all, I had no hope of success. For without
some kind of knowledge, without some purse-ability to go through with the
charge, without good store of friends to further the design, and without
special good leisure to follow such a work, it could not but have proved
a vain attempt.' When Meric Casaubon visited Oxford a few years
afterwards he found the hall filled with books. 'Do not imagine,' he
wrote, 'that there are as many MSS. here as in the royal library at
Paris. There are a good many in England, though nothing to what our King
possesses; but the number of printed books is wonderful, and increasing
every year. During my visit to Oxford I passed whole days in this place.
The books cannot be taken away, but it is open to scholars for seven or
eight hours a day, and one may always see a number of them revelling at
their banquet, which gave me no small pleasure.' Bodley was not one of
those who like libraries to be open to all comers. 'A grant of such
scope,' said his statute, 'would but minister an occasion of pestering
all the room with their gazing; and the babbling and trampling up and
down may disturb out of measure the endeavours of those that are
studious. Admission, from the first, was granted only to graduates, and
every o