presented by George the Third, but these are compendiously entered in the said catalogue under a single title, headed Anglia. They claimed considerable space, and so did the valuable benefaction of the Garrick plays; but on the whole, if there was room to spare for the library at the beginning of the century, there probably was also at the end. Early in the new century, however, a great engine of extension came into operation. The enforcement of the Copyright Act, passed in Anne's reign, and extended in 1774, had been neglected both by the Museum and the Universities. In 1805 Mr. Basil Montagu, the distinguished biographer of Bacon, at that time a resident at Cambridge, finding that he could not obtain the books he required for his studies otherwise than by purchase, moved the University authorities to put the Act into effect. They did so; the Museum authorities were obliged to follow suit; the publishers protested, and the controversy resulted in the enactment of a new Copyright Act in 1814, which endured until 1842. Although the Museum authorities had scarcely risen to the conception of the national library as a universal repertory of the national literature, they were by no means averse to obtain gratuitously books which they esteemed valuable; and it appears from a contemporary article in the Quarterly that their proceedings were considered, by Mr. Murray at all events, to savour of undue harshness. The resulting accumulation of books pressed upon the resources of Montague House, which had already given way in another department the archaeological collections. These,
