Of Edward, second Earl of Oxford, much praise and very little blame have been recorded.  He has been quaintly described as " indeed rich but thankful, charitable without ostentation, and that in so good-natured a way as never to give pain to the person whom he obliged in that respect.”  He was, in truth, indolent and extravagant, faults which did not, however, detract from his popularity.  He was the prey of adventurers, and the providence of impecunious poets such as Pope and Swift.  All the literati of the day were allowed access to his library.  Oldys drew therefrom the materials for his Life of Sir Walter Raleigh; Joseph Ames and Samuel Palmer had recourse to it in their black-letter studies.  Pope was his adored friend and kept up a lively correspondence with him; Swift was always welcome at his table.  He had many tastes, of which book-collecting was not the least expensive, and of the fortune of 500,000 pounds which his wife brought him, the greater part is said to have been sacrificed to “indolence, good-nature, and want of worldly wisdom.”

In 1740 he was obliged to sell his estate of Wimpole, in order to clear off a debt of 100,000 pounds, a sacrifice which failed to appease his creditors, and a prey to carking care, he found the downward path from conviviality to inebriety a rapid one.

It was during the lifetime of the second Lord Oxford that the Rev. Thomas Baker bequeathed his works in manuscript to the Harleian library.  A memorandum prefixed to these papers states that, in consideration of one guinea (to satisfy an original copy of Baston’s verses on the battle of Bannockburn; a fine one of the Chronicle of Mailros; the Life of King David, written by the Abbot of Rievaulx; copies of charters between Scottish and French kings; and transcripts overlooked by Rymer and John Harding touching the lordship of England over Scotland.  A contemporaneous document relates to the marriage of Mary Queen of Scots to the Dauphin, and there are various letters from the same queen.  We also notice Papal Bulls, enjoining the Scottish bishops to render obedience to the Archbishop of York as their metropolitan, and the king’s recognition of that archbishop’s rights; besides many other important papers too numerous to mention.  Wales and Ireland are also well represented.

But like the Cottonian, the Harleian library spread its borders far beyond the limits of British history.  As early as 1697 it had been Wanley’s opinion that it would conduce very much to the welfare of learning in this country if some fit person or persons were sent abroad to make it their business to visit the libraries of France, Italy, and Germany, and to give a good account of the most valued manuscripts in them.  “The Papists,” he adds in his memorandum to this effect, “are communicative enough, for love or money, of any book that does not immediately concern their controversies with Protestants,"* a somewhat cryptic utterance which Wanley does not concern himself to explain, controversy not being one of the sciences to which his attention was turned.  But his letter of instructions to Mr. Andrew Hay, who was commissioned by Lord Oxford 1720 to proceed to France and Italy in order to purchase MSS. for him, shows such an intimate knowledge of the contents of the great continental libraries, that long as it is we cannot forbear transcribing the whole:—­