Was the Latin sermon, which I could not be at, though invited, being taken up at All Souls, where we had music, voices, and theorbos, performed by some ingenious scholars. After dinner, I visited that miracle of a youth, Mr. Christopher Wren, nephew to the Bishop of Ely. Then Mr. Barlow (since Bishop of Lincoln), bibliothecarius of the Bodleian Library, my most learned friend. He showed us the rarities of that most famous place, manuscripts, medals, and other curiosities. Among the MSS. an old English Bible, wherein[Pg 288] the Eunuch mentioned to be baptized by Philip, is called the Gelding: "and Philip and the Gelding went down into the water," etc. The original Acts of the Council of Basil 900 years since, with the bulla, or leaden affix, which has a silken cord passing through every parchment; a MS. of Venerable Bede of 800 years antiquity; the old Ritual secundum usum Sarum exceeding voluminous; then, among the nicer curiosities, the "Proverbs of Solomon," written in French by a lady, every chapter of a several character, or hand, the most exquisite imaginable; an hieroglyphical table, or carta, folded up like a map, I suppose it painted on asses' hide, extremely rare; but, what is most illustrious, there were no less than 1,000 MSS. in nineteen languages, especially Oriental, furnishing that new part of the library built by Archbishop Laud, from a design of Sir Kenelm Digby and the Earl of Pembroke. In the closet of the tower, they show some Indian weapons, urns, lamps, etc., but the rarest is the whole Alcoran, written on one large sheet of calico, made up in a priest's vesture, or cope, after the Turkish and Arabic character, so exquisitely written, as no printed letter comes near it; also, a roll of magical charms, divers talismans, and some medals.
Then, I led my wife into the Convocation House, finely wainscoted; the Divinity School, and Gothic carved roof; the Physic, or Anatomy School, adorned with some rarities of natural things; but nothing extraordinary save the skin of a jackal, a rarely-colored jackatoo, or prodigious large parrot, two humming birds, not much bigger than our bumblebee, which indeed I had not seen before, that I remember.