“Which is,” he remarks, “a great parcel, besides which my Lord hath got many other MSS. remaining at Wimpole . . . .  My Lord hath not only other MSS. in this room, written in almost all those [languages] above enumerated, but also in those that follow, which I call to mind on the sudden-viz., Chinese, Japanese, Sanscrit or Hanscrit, Malabaric, Syriac, in the Nestorian, as well as in the common characters (some few specimens of Coptic letters), Slavonian, Wallachian, Hungarian, Courlandish, Francic or old Teutonic, Biscayan, Portuguese.”  On another occasion, a person who had some books for sale, which he was anxious that Lord Oxford should buy, offered Wanley a douceur, in the hope that the librarian would press their purchase, “not knowing,” he says simply, “the kind of man I am.”  Wanley refused the bribe, but advised his patron to buy the books, which he did.

At another time—­

“A French sort of droll came to my lodging, saying he was sent to me by Mr. Bu-Pis, of Long Acre.  He pulled out a 40 paper Ms., dedicated to Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria, treating of Geomancy, and other like nonsense, being written mostly in German.  Monsieur stumped up the value of it, and often swore it was the finest thing in the world.  I asked him the price of it, and looked grum and gravely, which he saw with satisfaction; but as soon as his answer of fifty guineas was out, I replied that was the book mine he should have it for the hundredth part of a quart d’ecu.  The droll would, however, have made remonstrances, but I would hear none; il ne vaut rien being my word.  So I waited on him downstairs, which he took as a piece of ceremony; but indeed it was to see him out of the house without stealing something.”

One of the most important negotiations chronicled by Wanley relates to the purchase of the Graevius MSS. in 1724-25.  Johann Graevius was a German classical scholar, born in 1632, and chiefly known by his Thesaurus Antiquitatum Romanorum, and his Antiquitatum et Historianum Italia, in 45 volumes.  His library, one of the most remarkable in Europe, was sold at his death in 1703 to the elector, Johann Wilhelm, for 6000 Reichsthaler.  The elector presented all the printed books in this collection to the University of Heidelberg, but kept the manuscripts, 110 in number, in his own library at Dusseldorf They were accounted such treasures, that travellers, interested in antiquities, were taken to see them.  The German scholar Uffenbach, who visited the elector’s library in vi I, says of them: 

“Among the few MSS. that were shown to me, the most remarkable was a beautiful old quarto codex of Horace, which Graevius once lent to Mr. Bentley, who could not be prevailed on to restore it till forced into it by the threat that the elector would appeal to the Queen.  There were several volumes of autograph letters from learned men, collected by Graevius, and several very beautiful breviaries, among which was one in duodecimo, bound in silver, and containing as many beautiful figures as I have ever seen in such books.  Mr. Le Roy also showed me the ’Officia Ciceronis,’ printed by Scheffer in 1466—­namely the books De Amicitia et Senectute.”