so carried away by the atmosphere
of the place as to offer to present to the Bodleian whatever books Sir
Thomas Bodley might think fit to lay hands upon in any of the royal
libraries, and he kept this royal word so far as to confirm the gift
under the Privy Seal. But there it seems to have stopped, for the
Bodleian does not contain any volumes traceable to this source. The
King's librarians probably obstructed any such transfer of books.

Authors seem at once to have recognised the importance of the library,
and to have made presentation copies of their works, and in 1605 we
find Bacon sending a copy of his _Advancement of Learning_ to Bodley,
with a letter in which he said: 'You, having built an ark to save
learning from deluge, deserve propriety [ownership] in any new
instrument or engine whereby learning should be improved or advanced.'
The most remarkable letter Bodley ever wrote, now extant, is one to
Bacon; but it has no reference to the library, only to the Baconian
philosophy. We do not get many glimpses of Bodley's habits of life or
ways of thinking, but there is no difficulty in discerning a
strenuous, determined, masterful figure, bent during his later years,
perhaps tyrannously bent, on effecting his object. He was not, we
learn from a correspondent, 'hasty to write but when the posts do urge
him, saying there need be no answer to your letters till more leisure
breed him opportunity.' 'Words are women, deeds are men,' is another
saying of his which I reprint without comment.

By an indenture dated April 20, 1609, Bodley, after reciting how he
had, out of his zealous affection to the advancement of learning,
lately erected upon the ruins of the old decayed library of Oxford
University 'a most ample, commodious, and necessary building, as well
for receipt and conveyance of books as for the use and ease of
students, and had already furnished the same with excellent writers on
all sorts of sciences, arts, and tongues, not only selected out of his
own study and store, but also of others that were freely conferred by
many other men's gifts,' proceeded to grant to trustees lands and
hereditaments in Berkshire and in the city of London for the purpose
of forming a permanent endowment of his library; and so they, or the
proceeds of sale thereof, have remained unto this day.

Sir Thomas Bodley died on January 20, 1613, his last days being
soothed by a letter he received from the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford
Universit