He shows the greatest anxiety
for the safety of the volumes: 'I would to God the place for them were
ready, that they might be set up safe, and chained as the other books
are.' He gave many books to St. John's College; and he retained a large
collection in his Palace at Lambeth, which was bestowed on Hugh Peters
after his death; it is satisfactory, however, to remember that 'the study
of books' was recovered at the Restoration, and that Mr. Ashmole was
appointed to examine the accounts of the fanatic.
Laud was not the first to seek for the treasures of the East. Before his
gifts began Sir Thomas Roe, who sat for Oxford with Selden, had presented
to the Bodleian a number of MSS. acquired during his embassy to
Constantinople. Joseph Scaliger, the restorer of Arabic learning in the
West, had been especially interested in Samaritan literature, and had
corresponded about a copy of the Pentateuch with one Rabbi Eleazar, 'who
dwelt in Sichem'; and, though the papers fell into the hands of robbers,
they were afterwards delivered to Peiresc. The traveller Minutius had
returned with Coptic service-books, and Peiresc, captivated with a new
branch of learning, established an agency for Eastern books at Smyrna.
The Capucin Gilles de Loche averred that he had seen 8000 volumes in a
monastery of the Nitrian Desert,'many of which seemed to be of the age of
St. Anthony': he had pushed into Abyssinia and had heard the 'uncouth
chaunts and clashing cymbals,' as Mr.
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