But what of the collection of books and This catholicity of taste may be seen in his manuscripts which the library enshrines? library,— what is there indeed that more re The Inn possessed, it is said, some sort of a flects the man than his library? The earliest library in the reign of Henry VIII., but it catalogue of the Inn Library, compiled in must have been a very insignificant col 1 700 by Sir Bartholomew Shower, treasurer, lection. The library really began with the must represent substantially Ashley's library, bequest' of Robert Ashley, a member of the and it is instructive as a study. It is arranged society, who died in 1 64 1 . His picture hangs, in classes. History, Geography and Miscel as it should do, over the door of the library, lanea head the list, filling eighty-five pages of on the inside. It is three-quarter length, and the catalogue. Theology comes next with represents a Spanish-looking man of about fifty-eight pages. Then Biography, with thirty-five, with a dark, thin face, Vandyke twenty-seven pages. Then Medicine, with bearded, dressed in black and wearing a teen fifteen pages. pages. Then Then Canon Mathematics, and Civil Law, with four-' with small ruff. Born in 1565, he would be five years younger than Francis Bacon, two years ten pages. Then Law, with eight pages, — younger than Shakespeare, and it adds no what a falling off is here I — and finally Poli little interest to his personality to think that, tics, with five pages. All these are in various living as he did in the Temple, he must have tongues, Latin greatly predominating. A known both well. It was the afterglow of new catalogue was compiled in 1734, "auspicio chivalry, and Ashley had a strong tinge of et sumptu" Charles Worsley, the then treas romance in his temperament. " Guy of War urer. At that time, or to be exact, four years wick," " Valentine and Orson," and " Arthur later, the library numbered, according to the and the Knights of the Round Table " were " Gentleman's Magazine," 3,982 volumes.1 the delight of his boyhood : he had ideas and Some seventy-nine works were added be tastes, too, liberal beyond those of the or tween 1734 and 1766. This Worsley cata dinary lawyer. " Finding the practice of the logue, which is in quarto, shows an improve law," says Wood, the antiquary, "to have ment in being "ordine dictionarii dispositus "; ebbs and tides, he applied himself to the its demerit for finding purposes is that a learning of the languages of our neighbours number of different treatises are often bound to the end that he might be a partaker of the up in one volume. Some years ago a seeker wisdom of those nations, having been many of knowledge ranging the shelves found a years of this opinion, that as no one soil or volume lettered "Idem Liber." What could territory yielded all fruits alike, so no one this denote? At length he discovered that it climate or region affordeth all kind of knowl was the duplicate of another work in the edge in full measure." Among other places he library, and marked in the Worsley catalogue visited the " Escurial," and translated several as above, and the person intrusted with pre curious and interesting works from the Span paring books for binding had taken this for ish, French and Italian. — "Almansor the Vic the veritable title of the publication in ques torious King that Conquered Spain," " The tion. Apropos of this Worsley catalogue Interchangeable Course," " The Kingdom of there hangs a tale which has just come to Cochin China," and " David Persecuted." light in a letter published by the Historical 1 By the terms of the will the library was to be a " pub- Manuscript Commission, from among the lick " library, and the testator desired that no student 1 Among other benefactors to the library were the Irish might be excluded whether of our own or any foreign Lord Chief Justice Pepys, Elias Ashmole, Bartholomew nation. Shower, and William Petyte.
