Editing Radcliffe Camera (section)

==Reception==
The 1744 work ''The Present State of the Universities'' by [[Thomas Salmon (historian)|Thomas Salmon]] described the new Radcliffe library as "the most magnificent Structure in Oxford... I find a great many People of Opinion that he intended to perpetuate his Memory by it, and therefore give it the name of 'Radcliffe's Mausoleum'".<ref>{{harvnb|Gillam|1958|p=xix}}</ref> This was echoed by ''The Gentleman and the Lady's Pocket Companion for Oxford'' (1747) which said that "the most magnificent structure in Oxford is the new public Library".<ref name="gillamxx"/> In 1773, however, Edward Tatham was not so complimentary: "The writer... cannot help expressing his disapprobation of the situation of the Radclivian Library. Whatever merit this edifice reflects on the architect, and splendor on the University, it certainly destroys the regularity of the area, and intercepts the view of every building in it." He regarded the north side of [[Broad Street, Oxford|Broad Street]], south of the gardens of [[Trinity College, Oxford|Trinity College]], to have been a more suitable site and the chosen site left largely open "as we pronounce in general that the areas in a town should be free, open, and without obstruction".<ref name="gillamxx"/> 

Gibbs later said of the Trustees: "I never observed a trust discharged with greater unanimity, integrity and candor, during the whole time I had the honour of serving you, from the laying of the first stone of this fabric to its finishing."<ref name="gillamxxi"/> Contemporaries found great irony in the fact that the iconoclast Radcliffe, who scorned book-learning, should bequeath a substantial sum for the founding of the Radcliffe Library. [[Samuel Garth|Sir Samuel Garth]] quipped that the endowment was "about as logical as if a eunuch should found a [[seraglio]]".<ref>Otto L. Bettmann, ''A Pictorial History of Medicine'' (Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 1956), 192.</ref>