Michael Wodhull, the translator of the tragedies of Euripides, was born at Thenford, Northamptonshire, on the 15th of August 1740. His father was John Wodhull, a descendant of Walter Flandrensis, who held the estates of Pateshull and Thenford in the time of William I. He received his early education under the Rev. William Cleaver of Twyford, Bucks. He was afterwards sent to Winchester, and at the age of seventeen proceeded to the University of Oxford, matriculating from Brazenose College. While still young Wodhull inherited a considerable fortune from his father, and he built a fine mansion on the family estate at Thenford, in which he kept his library. He was High Sheriff of Northamptonshire in 1783. Wodhull married a daughter of the Rev. J. Ingram of Wolford, Warwickshire, by whom he had three children, who all predeceased him. He died on the 10th of November 1816. In addition to his translations of the tragedies of Euripides, Wodhull was the author of several poems. From 1764 to his death Wodhull was an indefatigable collector of rare and curious books, and Dibdin says of him that 'a better informed or more finished bibliographer existed not either in France or England.'

His splendid library, which was a great consolation and pleasure to him in the solitude of the last years of his life, was particularly rich in early editions of the Greek and Latin classics, and in works printed in the fifteenth century. All the books—many of which were bound by Roger Payne—were in fine condition, and some of them had once formed part of the libraries of Francis I., Grolier, Henry II. and Diana of Poitiers, Longepierre, and other famous French collectors, and were bound by such fine craftsmen as Boyet, Derome, Monnier, etc. The covers of the volumes bound for Wodhull are mostly impressed with a stamp of his arms, impaled with those of his wife. A portion of Wodhull's books, principally duplicates, was sold by Leigh, Sotheby and Son, of York Street, Covent Garden, at two sales in 1801 and 1803. The first sale consisted of a thousand and fifty-nine lots, which realised three hundred and sixty-one pounds, ten shillings; and the second of one thousand six hundred and thirty-nine lots, for which the sum of eight hundred and fifteen pounds was obtained. The remainder of the library appears to have been kept at Thenford until 1886, when Mr. J.E. Severne, M.P., to whom it had descended, determined to part with it, and it was sold by Wilkinson, Sotheby and Hodge on January 11th, 1886, and nine following days. There were two thousand eight hundred and four lots in the sale, which produced the large sum of eleven thousand nine hundred and seventy-two pounds, fourteen shillings and sixpence.

The following are a few of the rarest and most interesting books in this splendid collection, with the prices they fetched:—the Catholicon of Joannes Balbus, printed at Mentz in 1460, three hundred and ten pounds; Cicero de Officiis, printed at Mentz in 1466, seventy-one pounds; Tullius de Senectute et Amicitia, printed by Caxton in 1481, two hundred and fifty pounds; (a perfect copy of Caxton's Mirrour of the World was sold in the 1803 sale for thirty-eight pounds, seventeen shillings); the first edition of Homer, printed at Florence in 1488, two hundred pounds; Poliphili Hypnerotomachia, printed by Aldus in 1499, fifty-three pounds; the Aldine Virgil of 1501, one hundred and forty-five pounds; Roman de Guy de Warwick, Paris, 1525, one hundred and thirty pounds; the New Actes and Constitucionis of Parliament maid by James V., Kyng of Scottis, printed on vellum at Edinburgh in 1541, one hundred and fifty-one pounds; the Contes of La Fontaine, Amsterdam (Paris), 1762, in two small 8vo volumes, bound in red morocco, ninety-three pounds; MoliÈre's Works, with plates by Moreau, six volumes, 1773, seventy-seven pounds.

Among the books with historical or fine bindings were Alcyonius, Medices Legatus de Exsilio, in Ædib. Aldi, Venetiis, 1522, bound for Francis I., with the arms of France, the crowned initial of the king, and the salamander stamped on the covers, fifty-eight pounds; Aristotle, De Arte Poetica, FlorentiÆ, 1548, bound for Henry II. of France and Diana of Poitiers, with the devices of the king and his mistress on the covers, two hundred and five pounds; Crinitus, De Poetis Latinis, FlorentiÆ, 1505, bound for Grolier, seventy-four pounds; Irenici Germania, HagenoÆ, 1518, also bound for Grolier, sixty-two pounds; and two works by Giordano Bruno—Spaccio de la Bestia Trionfante, Parigi, 1584, and La Cena de la Ceneri, 1584; the former bound in citron morocco, with a red doublÉ by Boyet, and the latter in a beautiful mosaic binding by Monnier, realised respectively the large sums of three hundred and sixty pounds and three hundred and sixty-five pounds.

The principal manuscripts were a copy of Dante, with a commentary by Joannes de Sarravalle, written in the years 1416-17, which sold for one hundred and fifty-one pounds; and a very beautiful Roman Breviary of the beginning of the sixteenth century, on vellum, illuminated for FranÇois de Castelnau, Archbishop of Narbonne, for which five hundred and fifteen pounds was obtained.