tify some part of my desire in that behalf I have resolved thus
to deal. Where there hath been heretofore a public library in
Oxford which you know is apparent by the room itself remaining and
by your statute records, I will take the charge and cost upon me to
reduce it again to its former use and to make it fit and handsome
with seats and shelves and desks and all that may be needful to
stir up other mens benevolence to help to furnish it with books.
And this I purpose to begin as soon as timber can be gotten to the
intent that you may be of some speedy profit of my project. And
where before as I conceive it was to be reputed but a store of
books of divers benefactors because it never had any lasting
allowance for augmentation of the number or supply of books
decayed, whereby it came to pass that when those that were in being
were either wasted or embezzled, the whole foundation came to ruin.
To meet with that inconvenience, I will so provide hereafter (if
God do not hinder my present design) as you shall be still assured
of a standing annual rent to be disbursed every year in buying of
books, or officers stipends and other pertinent occasions, with
which provision and some order for the preservation of the place
and the furniture of it from accustomed abuses, it may perhaps in
time to come prove a notable treasure for the multitude of volumes,
an excellent benefit for the use and ease of students, and a
singular ornament of the University.'

The letter does not stop here, but my quotation has already probably
wearied most of my readers, though for my own part I am not ashamed to
confess that I seldom tire of retracing with my own hand the
_ipsissima verba_ whereby great and truly notable gifts have been
bestowed upon nations or Universities or even municipalities for the
advancement of learning and the spread of science. Bodley's language
is somewhat involved, but through it glows the plain intention of an
honest man.

Convocation, we are told, embraced the offer with wonderful alacrity,
and lost no time in accepting it in good Latin.

From February, 1598, to January, 1613 (when he died), Bodley was happy
with as glorious a hobby-horse as ever man rode astride upon. Though
Bodley, in one of his letters, modestly calls himself a mere
'smatterer,' he was, as indeed he had the sense to recognise,
excellently well fitted to be a collector of books, being