209 



LIBRARIES. 



LIBRARIES. 



210 



of collecting every publication and pamphlet that appeared on botl 

 aides in that memorable contest ; and with unshaken constancy, anc" 

 at immense expense and trouble, carried out his project till th 

 Restoration in 1660. His enterprise was less prudent than patriotic 

 for his hopes appear to have been to dispose of, not to retain the collec 

 tion, and the Restoration left him but two probable purchasers, in thi 

 Bodleian library and the king; though it could hardly be expecte< 

 that the university would wish to recall the downfall of the church, o 

 the monarch the downfall of the monarchy. The university, however 

 only declined on the ground of want of funds ; and the king actually 

 purchased but would never pay, so that Thomason's representatives 

 who had at first been glad to be quit of the burden, were glad tc 

 receive it back. After the lapse of a century the collection was final!; 

 purchased by George III., and presented to the British Museum, where 

 it still remains, a library in itself, often consulted for various purposes 

 but never as yet thoroughly explored. Thomason was fortunate in thi 

 time and country of his enterprise. The contemporary French col 

 lectors of ' Mazarinades,' as they were called, or the innumerable 

 pamphlets against Cardinal Mazarin, amassed what was comparative!; 

 worthless. He was less fortunate in another respect, for while their 

 collections have found a special historiographer to describe them, Tho 

 mason's still awaits one, and his name has never yet received the 

 measure of honour which is its due. 



For the remainder of the 1 7th century and for the earlier half o: 

 the 18th, the Bodleian continued the only library of national import- 

 ance. The taste for private libraries arose and flourished, and one 

 among them was remarkable for containing an immense assemblage o; 

 pamphlets, which might well have been made the foundation of a 

 national collection. It may be supposed that the number of 350,000 

 which has been mentioned as that of the pamphlets, English and 

 foreign, in the Harleian library, was much exaggerated, but there can 

 be no doubt that a great and perhaps irreparable loss to literature was 

 sustained, when that collection was allowed to be dispersed in 1741 

 Twelve years after, by the fortunate will of Sir Hans Sloane, 

 and the fortunate acceptance of its provisions by the legislature (in 

 case of whose refusal the library and museum were to be offered to 

 St. Petersburg), a great library was at length, after more than one 

 project had proved abortive, founded in London. The presentation to 

 it by George II. of the library of the kings of England at once stamped 

 it as national : but it was not till the presentation of another royal 

 library, seventy years later, that of George III., by George IV., in 

 1823, that the Museum collection took the first rank among the libraries 

 of England. 



The time of the foundation of the Museum was only later by a 

 few years than the time in which any general attention was first 

 attracted abroad to English literature. In Holland indeed, for a full 

 century previous, owing to commercial and political connection of the 

 two countries, our language had been frequently studied, and in 

 my and the north, theologians and scholars had occasionally 

 mastered it for their purposes, but it was in Western Europe almost 

 unknown. Uarnier, a French Jesuit, who published a method of the 

 arrangement of libraries in 1678, gave no directions respecting English 

 books, because, as he observed, English books seldom crossed the sea. 

 It was not till the memorable visit of Voltaire to England that a know- 

 ledge of the language and literature was introduced into France, and 

 the study became so general, that Mr. Buckle in his ' Historyjof Civilisa- 

 tion,' gives a list of more than a hundred and fifty French authors who 

 are recorded to have had a knowledge of English. The English collector 

 however found no competitors in foreign bibliographers for the 

 purchase of rare and curious English books. The few specimens of 

 the press of Caxton, some of them rare and curious, that are to be 

 fimnil mi the; continent, are in general those which he printed abroad 

 in French, before he introduced the art into England. Of early 

 lea, Christopher Anderson reports in his ' Annals,' that he 

 found but a scanty provision in the great library of Paris, and it may 

 be doubted if in all the continent half a dozen specimens exist of a 

 quarto Elizabethan play. If the library of the Museum had then been 

 I I'd with funds for the purpose, a good opportunity existed for 

 years of furnishing it with an excellent collection of English 

 literature at a moderate expense. Books did not begin to fetch high 

 prices till the gale of Dr. Askew's library in 1775, and then the general 

 run was on classics or works of foreign literature. 



That opportunity was lost, when soon after the commencement of 



'th century, the " bibliomania " awoke in England, and one of its 



it forms was ths craving for early English literature, to 



be gratified at any cost. During the early years of the century, at 



the times of the sale by auction of the library of the Duke of Rox- 



burghe, and the foundation of the Roxburghe club, to commemorate 



the enormous price that was given there for an edition of Boccaccio's 



' Decameron,' the competition at public sales was almost entirely 



ivate purchasers, and the British Museum took no part in 



it. Few of the books that were sold in those years went out of 



England ; they mostly passed into the hands of collectors, at whose 



death it v.as expected that they would again come under the hammer 



of the auctioneer ; and the varyim; prices of even the most coveted 



of waiting in many cases till the fever of 



jy was over. The Roxburghe copy of the ' Valdarfer Boccaccio' 

 itself, which had gone at the Bale for 2260/., sold for less than lOOOi., 



ARTS AND SCI. V. VOL. V. 



when it was a second time in the market, and the early editions 

 of the classics, about which the contest was then carried on most 

 warmly, have since descended considerably in the scale of commercial 

 value. With many other bibliographical rarities, however, the 

 market has risen ; and it has risen niost remarkably in English books 

 of almost every character of the date of the 16th century, and in 

 foreign books, such as Roman Catholic liturgies, connected with the 

 history of the old religion, and of the Reformation in England. 

 Another, and a world-wide influence was next to come into operation, 

 to raise, in the language of political economy, first the supply of 

 English books, and then the demand for them an influence which 

 will probably work as great a change in the commerce of books as in 

 that of cotton. 



A hundred years ago, at the accession of George III. in 1760, the 

 English language is supposed to have been spoken by about twelve 

 millions of persons. In the year 1860 it is probably spoken by not 

 less than sixty millions, and each year adds to the census of those who 

 speak it a number as great as the whole population of those who 

 speak some of the secondary languages of Europe. The French and 

 German languages, which at the commencement of the century far 

 surpassed it in that respect, are now far below it. Russia is the only 

 form of speech in Europe that owns at present a larger number of 

 speakers, having about sixty-five millions ; and if the advance of popu- 

 lation continues for a few years as before, Russian mil be outnumbered. 

 The English language is at the same time the vernacular of a great 

 kingdom in Europe, and of great colonies in America, in South Africa, 

 and in Australia, all of which are growing and some are rushing into 

 importance. But the dominion of the English language is not bounded 

 by the limits of the British empire, wide as they are. It is also the 

 language of a great republic, or rather cluster of republics, whose 

 territories now extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and will 

 probably in the course of another century be teeming with population. 

 English is now spoken by more persons out of Europe than within it, 

 and the disproportion is certain to grow greater every year. While in 

 Old England it has yet been unable to supplant the Welsh in the 

 course of centuries, in New England it has long swept from before it 

 all trace of the languages of the aboriginal nations, except the books 

 that were written for them by the missionaries of the 17th century. 



This bond of community of language, which is often invoked in 

 continental Europe as naturally leading to a community of government, 

 did not prevent the Americans from commencing a war, in which they 

 aimed at rendering themselves as completely independent of England as 

 they were of France. Their political independence was secured by the 

 treaty of 1 783. For about forty years after, however, some of their ultra- 

 patriotic writers were in the habit of complaining that their literary 

 dependence was as great as ever, while at the same time, it was almost 

 made a subject of national complaint, that a writer in one of the 

 English reviews had inquired, " Who reads an American book ? " 



When American writers of remarkable merit really began to appear, 

 their merit often found its warmest and sometimes earliest welcome in 

 England, where the names of Irving and Cooper, Bryant and Long- 

 fellow, Prescott and Ticknor, Lucretia Davidson and Mrs. Stowe, are 

 held in honour, not inferior to that which is paid to them in their 

 own country. Irving and Bryant are the only two of these 

 whose writings date back before 1820. and the reputation of Irving, 

 as well as of Cooper, was powerfully aided by the voice of England. 

 The truth is, that when the question was put " Who reads an 

 American book ? " no one either in England or America could clearly 

 'oresee the rapid development that was to take place in American 

 iterature, a phenomenon as striking in the field of literature as its 

 political development in that of politics. Tho 18th and 19th centuries 

 lad been remarkable in Europe for the number of old established 

 anguages which had, after a long period of barrenness, at length 

 >urst into literary fertility. Before 1750 it might have been inquired 

 with some truth, " Who reads a German book ? " and the highest 

 names in the latter half of the century were those of German authors. 

 After the signal success of German, five or six other languages 

 lad emerged into an importance altogether undreamed of a century 

 ago ; but in every case of a fresh literature there had been a fresh 

 anguage associated with it. As in North America the first example 

 was given of one of the colonies of Europe rapidly emerging into 

 a new and powerful state, so in North America the first instance 

 occurred of one of the old languages of Europe giving birth to a new 

 and important literature. The Spanish and Portuguese colonies, long 

 interior in date to the English, followed the Anglo-American example 

 n one case, as they will do apparently in the other. 



The circumstance of two literatures flourishing together in the same 

 anguage is in an eminent degree fortunate for both. National pre- 

 udices are necessarily weakened, circumscribed ideas are necessarily 

 videned, even by the mere enlargement of the literary horizon which 

 s thus created. The sympathies of those who can read Dante and 

 Schiller are not likely to be cold towards Italy and Germany ; but how 

 imited a number of English readers can be expected to master German 

 nd Italian, how different is the effect of reading a poet in the trans- 

 ition or the original. The American can enjoy every word of 

 ihakspure and Byron; the Englishman, of Bryant and Longfellow. 

 iVhen America had scarcely a writer of its own, its readers had 

 jccess to the rich treasures of English literature, and educated by that 



