204 THE LIBRARY 



can accomplish, if not for wisdom, then for folly. The most stupid 

 production that ever flowed from a pen is at least a human document. 

 And who shall decide what is and what is not " trash "? The legen- 

 dary dictum attributed to Al Moumenin Omar, who declared that 

 whatever was opposed to the Koran was noxious and whatever 

 agreed with its teachings was unnecessary, a dictum at once prac- 

 tical and thorough, has not earned either the assent or the grati- 

 tude of posterity. Sir Thomas Bodley, the munificent founder 

 of the Great Oxford Library, a learned man and a friend of learning, 

 excluded plays and pamphlets from his great collection as mere 

 " riff raff." He thus missed the opportunity of making a matchless 

 collection of Elizabethan literature, and of furnishing to future ages 

 the material for solving many of the problems that now perplex 

 the student of the most glorious period of English literature. To 

 Bodley the plays of Shakespeare as they came singly from the press 

 were " trash," and he died before they were collected into the goodly 

 " first folio." That the friends as well as the foes of learning can 

 make such enormous blunders may give us pause in the effort to 

 decide what is unworthy of preservation. " What," asked Panizzi, 

 " is the book printed in the British dominions . . . utterly unworthy 

 of the place in the National Library? " And he tells of a British lib- 

 rary that was entitled to books under the copyright law and that 

 solemnly rejected Scott's Antiquary, Shelley's Alastor, and Beetho- 

 ven's musical compositions as unworthy of a place upon the shelves. 

 Everything that has come from the human mind has a certain value. 

 True, its value may be pathological, an evidence of mental or moral 

 aberration, but pathology is an important department of science, 

 and in the midst of its sadness, pathetic or grotesque, blossoms the 

 flower of hope. The historian can usefully illuminate his annals by 

 citations from the trivial and ephemeral literature of the period of 

 which he writes. A ballad will express the feelings of the multitude, 

 at least as clearly and as truthfully as a dispatch" will exemplify 

 the designs of ambassadors or kings. 1 A volume valued as theology 

 in the fifteenth century may now be highly treasured, not for its 

 literary contents, but as the handiwork of an early printer. That 

 which was once thought to be sober science may now be folklore, 

 but it is still a matter for investigation. 



The intimate nature of its relationship to the whole range of human 

 knowledge and human conduct becomes evident when we realize 

 fully that the essential note of the library is universality. All that 

 relates to Man and the Universe in which he has his place it is the 

 function of the library to remember. There we ought to find all 



1 An admirable paper on " The Idea of a Great Public Library " appears in 

 the Library Association Record for April, 1903, from the pen of Mr. Thomas W. 

 Lyster, M.A., of the National Library of Ireland. 



