On the 22nd December 1721,

“Mr. Bowles, the Bodleian library-keeper, came, and I spent most of the time showing him some of the rarities here, to his great wonder and satisfaction.”

And on the 28th

“Mr. Bowles came and saw more of the rarities here.”

Two more visits from Mr. Bowles are chronicled, when he saw “yet more of the curious books, papers, and parchments here”; and shortly after Wanley wrote, “many come and tarry long.”  A visit from David Casley, keeper of the Cottonian and Royal libraries, on the 4th November 1725, is suggestive of a certain amount of friction between the two rival librarians.  It is nearly the last entry in Wanley’s record:—­

“Mr. Casley came to collate my Lord’s MSS. of Titus Livius for Mr. D’Orville, by my Lord’s order.  I am civil to him, but when just now he offered me a South Sea bond as security to let him carry one of the said MSS. home to collate it there, I would by no means hearken to such a proposal.”

Perhaps Wanley would have regarded him with still greater suspicion if he had known that Casley was to be his successor in cataloguing the MSS. which he kept with so jealous a care.  The talents of the two men were very different, as the catalogue itself shows.  That part of it for which Wanley was responsible contains a description and an abstract of each manuscript.  Casley, whose knowledge of the age of manuscripts has never been surpassed, contented himself with fixing their dates without any reference to their contents.

The work of building up the library does not seem to have flagged or deteriorated after Wanley’s death.  The search for precious MSS. was still actively carried on, and copies of a large collection of original, royal, and other letters and State Papers in the Lansdowne library furnish us with an example of Lord Oxford’s unabated zeal in the pursuit of books.  Appended to these papers is a note written on the first leaf by Mr. J. West, and dated 2nd May 1742:—­

“Mem.  I went with Edward, Earl of Oxford, to view these MSS. at a barber’s shop next door to the Bull Head Tavern, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, when we were carried up two pair of stairs, and an old woman asked 300 pounds for the MSS., which was thought exorbitant, but which would have been given, if she would have declared any lawful title to us as owner of them.”

After Casley, Hocker, deputy-keeper of the records in the Tower, undertook to continue the catalogue, but only completed it as far as the number 7355.  When the collection was brought to the British Museum, after the death of the second Lord Oxford, Dr. Brown, Professor of Arabic at Oxford, and Dr. Kennicott, Fellow of Exeter College, added titles to such of the Arabic and Hebrew MSS. as needed them.  Gomez, a learned Jew, was employed to do the same for the rabbinical books that were without titles.  In 1800 the Rev. Robert Nares was appointed to continue and revise the catalogue.  In a letter to Bishop Percy, dated British Museum, 19th January 1801, Nares wrote:—­