There was a further delay of nearly a fortnight, and then Wanley wrote to the rogue Zamboni to the effect that Lord Oxford had at last seen many of his manuscripts, which he was not unwilling to buy at a reasonable price, and that he would willingly forego the two volumes of letters, the Saxon Spieghel and Sultan Solyman’s Prayerbook, “if held up too dear.”  He asked for the Greek Ms. of Hesiod which he formerly saw among them, but which had since been withdrawn.  Ultimately he sent back some of the books for which “this most greedy Signor” asked “the most horrible price.”  Wanley’s hope that they might subsequently come to the library for less money was fulfilled as far as the letters were concerned; these are now to be found in volumes 4933 4934 4935 and 4936.  Among them are a few other letters which were already in the Harleian library when the Dusseldorf manuscripts were purchased.  Wanley had them all bound up together.

The manuscripts bought by Wanley from Zamboni number eighty-four, and comprise nearly all the important books mentioned in the Graevius catalogue.  The Hesiod is the only valuable Greek Ms. missing, and the principal Latin Ms. of this collection, which did not pass into the Harleian library, is a Terence.  It is also to be regretted that Wanley did not secure the prayers of Solyman and the celebrated Saxon Spieghel.  Of the eighty-four other MSS., two have a special historical interest:  the Cicero (2682) and the Quintilian (2664), both of which can be traced to the Cathedral library at Cologne.

Graevius borrowed the Cicero in 1663 from the authorities, but never returned it.  The elector, Johann Wilhelm, bought it among other books which were sold at his death.  It consists of a folio of 192 leaves of coarse vellum written in a German hand of the latter part of the eleventh century, and has been the subject of much learned criticism.  It was collated by Mr. A. C. Clark, but until he identified it as one of the books that had formed part of the Graevius collection, very little attention had been paid to it.  There is no trace of it before the sixteenth century, beyond the fact that its first collator was Modius of Cologne, who was allowed to use the Cathedral library, to which the Cicero then belonged.  The acquisition of these manuscripts was the last important purchase made by Wanley; he died a few months later, aged fifty-three.

Besides the above-mentioned treasures from the Dusseldorf library the Harleian possesses, among other Greek classical manuscripts, some that are unique in character.  Sir Edward Thompson, in his “Catalogue of Ancient Greek MSS. in the British Museum,” calls attention to three in the Harleian collection which appear to him to be of superior merit.  These are:  (1) The Greek-Latin glossary of the seventh century.  This manuscript is of singular interest both for language and palaeography, and consists of 277 leaves of vellum varying in thickness, some of it being very coarse.