DEPARTMENT OF MSS. 31 



Secretary at War (with a seat in the Cabinet) 1794-1801, and 

 Secretary of State for War 1806-7 (d. 1810), now bound in 

 ninety-four volumes. It includes highly interesting letters 

 of Burke, Fox, Pitt, Canning, the Duke of Portland, Earl 

 Spencer, Lord Grenville, William Cobbett and other leading 

 politicians ; an extensive correspondence (18 volumes) with 

 French Eoyalists, negotiations with whom were entrusted to 

 Windham's management ; eighteen volumes of general political 

 and military correspondence ; diaries and drafts of speeches in 

 Parliament and elsewhere ; and a large mass of public and 

 private papers of all kinds. The collection was handed over by 

 Windham's executors first to George Ellis and later to Thomas 

 Amyot with a view to a biography, but neither of them com- 

 pleted the task. It was catalogued and advertised for public 

 sale in June last, but private negotiations resulted in its 

 previous purchase for the Museum intact. 



The donations, in addition to those mentioned below, 

 included a MS. copy of Edward Fitzgerald's translation of the 

 Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, beautifully written by the late 

 William Morris in 1872, and decorated by him with finely illu- 

 minated borders, the figures in which were partly designed by 

 him and partly by Sir E. Burne-Jones, and were painted in by 

 Mr. C. Fairfax Murray. This exquisite little volume wa» 

 presented by Georgiana, Lady Burne-Jones. Special interest 

 also attaches to the autographs of the late Oscar Wilde's plays, 

 " Lady Windermere's Fan," "A Woman of no linportance," 

 " An Ideal Husband" and " The Importance of being Earnest " 

 and of his poem " The Sphinx," which were presented by 

 Robert Ross, Esq. 



Among public sales during the year, the most important was- 

 that of the second portion of Lord Amherst's library, which 

 however, consisted chiefly of printed books. The MSS. pur- 

 chased from it are noted in the list of acquisitions, other than 

 those already noticed, which here follows : — 



Leaf of a large Bible in Latin of St. Jerome's version,, 

 written in a fine uncial hand ; probably from one of the two 

 Bibles which Abbot Ceolfrid caused to be written at the same 

 time as the Codex Amiatinus {circ. 700-715) and presented to 

 his monasteries at Wearmouth and Jarrow. Presented by the 

 Rev. W. Greemuell, D.C.L.., F.R.S., of Durham. 



S. Isidore de Summo Bono, and Alcuin de Sapientia, with 

 four leaves, in an Irish hand, of biblical questions and answers ; 

 12th cent. Belonged to Haughmond Abbey, co. Salop, and 

 recently in the Amherst collection. 



A collection of meditations and prayers in Latin and 

 English, partly in verse, much of the English portion being 

 also found in the well-known Vernon MS. at Oxford ; early 

 15th cent. Originally belonged to John North wode, a monk of 

 Bordesley Abbey. From the Amherst collection. 



Herbal of the Pseudo-Macer, translated into English, with 

 an appendix and notes ; first half of the 15th cent. From the 

 Amherst collection. 



