LEAVES THEY HAVE TOUCHED. 601 



the original collection presented by Otho Nicholson to the library of 

 Christ Church, in the renovated Chapel of St. Lucia. Very pro- 

 bably Otho Nicholson himself has lovingly handled it, while yet its 

 exterior was smooth and glossy, fresh from the hands of the binder 

 and gilder ; while its leaves were yet crisp, its typography sharp, its 

 ink brilliant. But during its sojourn within the precincts of Christ 

 Church, who of the illustrious alumni of that body may not have 

 pored over its pages 1 I think, for one, Robert Burton, author of 

 the Anatomy of Melancholy, has done so. He was a member of 

 Christ Church in 1599, and, bookworm as he was, he would be a 

 frequenter of the library. The Italia Illustrata would be particu- 

 larly attractive to him, for he was, as he tells us, ever especially 

 delighted with the study of cosmography, although he never travelled, 

 he says, except " in map or card, in which his unconfined thoughts 

 freely expatiated." Eulogizing the founders of libraries, he names 

 Otho Nicholson, and speaks of him as a founder of " ours in Christ 

 Church." " How much," he exclaims, " &xe we all bound, who are 

 scholars, to those mimihcent Ptolemies, bountiful Maecenases, heroical 

 patrons, divine spiiits, that have provided for us so many well- 

 furnished libraries as well in our public academies in most cities as 

 in our private colleges." And in another place he actually names 

 Schottus, the compiler of our Italia Illustrata, classing him with 

 Bozius, . Pomponius Lsetus, Marlianus, Cavelerius, Ligonius, and 

 other writers on cosmography. Not without some reasonable ground, 

 then, we may please ourselves with the thought that in his day 

 Democritus junior, as Burton was pleased to call himself, turned 

 over the pages of our copy of the Italia Illustrata. Another man of 

 note who may have done so is Ben. Jonson, who was in 1619 and 

 previously an inmate of Christ Church, and from his scholai'ly predi- 

 lections likely to take a special interest in the subject matter of this 

 volume in the college library. 



I have now to pass per saltum from the days of King James to 

 our own era, not having in my collection at present any relic of 

 Oxford worthies of the intervening period. 



I show first two volumes from the library of the late Bishop 

 Wilberforce, who is perhaps more distinctly remembered as Bishop 

 of Oxford than as Bishop of Winchester, the title by which he was 

 known at the time of his death.- Both books — they are a copy of 

 Archbishop Potter's well-known Archeeological Grseca, or Antiquities 



