THE LIBRARY AND KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 207 



That fiction responds to a need of human nature may be safely 

 inferred from its universal popularity. A great critic has styled 

 poetry " a criticism of life," and the phrase may with at least equal 

 justice be applied to nearly every variety of fiction, whether in verse 

 or prose, and whether it take the form of novel, romance, drama, or 

 apologue. For every work of fiction, great or small, shapeless or 

 artistic, wise or foolish, is the author's solution of some problem 

 of existence, presented to his mind as the result of experience or of 

 vision. The hackneyed but beautiful Terentian phrase applies to 

 the library, which aims at being the record of Man, and therefore 

 finds nothing alien or out of place that relates to Man and the Uni- 

 verse which environs him. Well has Matthew Arnold said : 



Look, the world tempts our eye, 



And we would know it all! 

 We map the starry sky, 



We mine this earthen ball, 

 We measure the sea- tides, we number the sea-sands; 



We scrutinize the dates 



Of long-past human things, 

 The bounds of effaced states, 



The lines of deceased kings; 

 We search out dead men's words, and works of dead men's hands; 



We shut our eyes and muse 



How our own minds are made, 

 What springs of thought they use, 



How righten'd, how betrayed 

 And spend our wit to name what most employ unnamed . 



But still, as we proceed, 



The mass swells more and more 

 Of volumes yet to read, 



Of secrets to explore. 



Centuries ago, Michael the Bishop spoke with enthusiasm of 

 the Book of the Wise Philosophers, a sort of miniature library 

 in one volume. 1 " In this book," he says, " are gathered together 

 many discourses of exhortation and doctrine. This book gladdens 

 the heart and increases the understanding of the intelligent. In it the 

 wise philosophers have told of noble and of famous deeds. It con- 

 tains the wisdom of the wise and the pronouncements of the learned. 

 It is a light of inquiry and a lamp of understanding. There is in it 

 a chain of profit, and it is to be preferred to gold and silver and to 

 precious stones. It is fairer than the flowers of the garden. What 

 garden can be compared to it in the fairness of its aspect and in the 



1 The book was a translation in Ethiopia from the Arabic. A German version 

 by Dr. C. H. Cornill appeared in 1875 and is described in The Library, October, 

 1903, by the present writer. 



