213 



LIBRARIES. 



LIBRARIES. 



211 



hundred volumes appeared in an auction, catalogued without specifica- 

 tion as " Old Novels," in lots of forty volumes each, and were bought 

 for the Museum at less than a penny a volume, probably the cheapest 

 purchase ever made for the national library. The best novels are now 

 admitted to form one of the very best portions of English literature. 

 Of the ' Vicar of Wakefield ' and of ' Waverley,' few will deny that the 

 national library should contain the early editions, those that passed 

 under the author's revision, and those which present peculiar charac- 

 teristics, special illustrations or special notes. After such books as 

 these there come hundreds of novels of the second, and thousands of 

 the third class stories which have had their season, which have been 

 read with interest, laid aside and forgotten, but some of which after 

 being nearly forgotten have revived again, and have been discovered to 

 possess merit greater than was at first imagined. Novels have been 

 for the last fifty years, at least, the field in which most of the genius 

 that was formerly devoted to the drama has sought its exercise, and it 

 was the opinion of Sir Walter Scott that that field was rich indeed 

 in buried treasure. It is to novels in fact that most of us owe our 

 knowledge of the forms of life around us with which we do not 

 come in immediate contact it is in them that the lawyer can study 

 the life of a man-of-war, and the midshipman that of a country 

 i:ige or a cathedral town. The time may come when future 

 generations will look back to the English novels of our own time 

 with as ineffectual emulation as our generation on the drama of the 

 Elizabethan age. But in regard even to volumes of which the merit 

 is not discernible, the new bibliographic school is at variance with 

 the old. It contends that while it is one part of the purpose of a great 

 public library to preserve a copy of every book that people take pains 

 to collect on account of its value, it should be another part of its 

 purpose to preserve a copy of the books which nobody takes pains to 

 collect, because they are therefore almost certain to disappear. There 

 is no knowing beforehand what adventitious interest may come to 

 attach to a book from particular circumstances. Anonymous novels 

 and romances of no intrinsic merit cannot but wear a different aspect 

 in our eyes when they are known to have been written by Theodore 

 Hook or Shelley, as a commonplace anonymous review of Wordsworth 

 in an old magazine is scanned with an attention its merits little deserve 

 when discovered to be by Byron at college. In all the minute 

 biographies of our recent great authors in those of Byron, Walter 

 Scott, Moore, Southey, Wordsworth the reader finds indications of 

 this kind which invest with interest books and fragments that he might 

 have been previously inclined to pass without notice. 



If the arguments of the new school are allowed to be valid in the 

 case of " trash," they are certainly not less forcible with regard to 

 " lumber," of which they no less warmly advocate the collection and 

 preservation. Perhaps the shortest method of arriving at a clear view 

 on the subject of lumber " will be to examine the bearings of a 

 particular case. < 



The ' Times ' newspaper is the most effectual organ of publicity that 

 now exists, or has ever existed in England. On the day of its publica- 

 tion, an article likely to interest the Queen will probably meet the eye 

 of the Queen, an article touching on the law will be scanned by the 

 bench and bar ; a paragraph on public houses will come under the 

 notice of twenty thousand licensed victuallers. Myriads of copies are 

 read by hundreds of thousands of readers at the places of public resort. 

 On the day after its publication it has passed into comparative 



ity ; in the week after it is difficult to procure a copy if one is 

 wanted for a particular purpose ; in the month after, it can only be 

 consulted at particular places ; in a twelvemonth after, of the myriad 



that have been issued, how many remain ? The great majority 

 of its readers have done with it for ever on the day of its publication ; 



rivate individuals think of preserving it, and those -few soon 

 discover that the task is more burdensome than they supposed, that it 

 involves expense and trouble which are continually increasing, and that 

 merely to find room for the volumes is an oppressive tax. Even in 

 coffee-houses and other places where customers are attracted by the 

 announcement that files of newspapers are kept, it is the general 

 practice to destroy them at the end of about ten years, lest the 

 accumulation should drive the accumulator out of house and home. 

 N'uHiing of a literary kind attracts more universally the reproach 

 conveyed in the appellation " lumber " than the files of an old news- 

 paper. The natural results follow. The most insignificant book of 

 which twenty copies are printed is almost certain to be in existence 

 somewhere at the end of twenty years, but it is quite possible that in 

 i rse of that time every copy of one day's edition of the most 

 widely circulated newspaper in Europe 1 may be consigned to destruc- 

 tion. There are numerous reasons why the disappearance of nine 

 hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand copies of the 'Times' 



i be looked on without any disfavour whatever, as in fact equally 



! .-mil nrrs uy, but there are also numerous reasons why the 



!d be preserved. It is a record, the possible im- 



BOt of which can hardly be overrated. The persons who have to 



consult a set of the ' Times ' for a particular piece of information and 



whu may not suddenly require to consult it ? for an advertisement for 



next of kin, for the record of some long past marriage or death may, 



if a single number be wanting in a set, throw away all the tedious 



IT of hunting through the ponderous volumes of years. An 



<i]il nmii'.i i is sometimes in request for literary purposes. An anec- 



dote told in 'Moore's Diary,' that a poetical jeu d' esprit in a number 

 of the ' Times,' at the period of the Reform Bill, was attributed at 

 Rogers's breakfast-table to Moore, and on being denied by him was 

 acknowledged by Macaulay, has led, since Lord Macaulay's death, to a 

 search after the forgotten poem in the set of the ' Times ' at the 

 British Museum, to be transferred from the unwieldy columns to a 

 place in the posthumous works of its illustrious author, which will 

 find then- way in some edition to almost every library in Christendom. 

 If it be granted that it is desirable that a complete set of the ' Times ' 

 should exist, it can hardly be doubted that it is desirable it should 

 exist in a public library. Such a set in the possession of a private 

 individual could not well be made available for one-half of its proper 

 purposes, even if with the most transcendant good-nature he should 

 be willing to entertain at his own expense every application made to 

 him; There must not only be the store-rooms or cellars to place it in 

 and there are now twelve folio volumes a year but the room to 

 examine it in, the large strong tables to place it on, the attendants to 

 bring and remove the volumes, as they are wanted or done with. But 

 does such a set exist either at the British Museum, the ' Times ' office, or 

 elsewhere ? It is no part of the general economy of newspaper offices 

 in London to take such things into account. At the office of the 

 ' Morning Chronicle,' which is one of the oldest London papers, there 

 is no set of the ' Morning Chronicle,' and at the office of the ' Daily 

 Telegraph,' which is one of the newest, there is no set of the ' Daily 

 Telegraph.' 



Supposing the set to be imperfect at a public library and pains 

 taken to complete it, how thorough an illustration would the process 

 probably afford of the usual joys and sorrows of the management of a 

 library ? In such cases catalogues have to be searched to ascertain when 

 any volumes of the ' Times' will occur for sale ; when they do, attention 

 is to be given to procure the information, often not easy to be obtained, 

 if "with all faults and errors of description," they really contain the 

 missing numbers. Care must be taken not to let it be known too widely 

 that the numbers are wanted, lest some bookseller should take advantage 

 of the knowledge to secure them for himself, or run up the price. Even 

 under the most favourable circumstances the price may accidentally 

 ascend so high that the librarian may doubt if he is justified in expend- 

 ing the money in the purchase ; and those who think his proceedings 

 worth notice, without understanding them, may criticise him for the 

 extravagant style in which he wastes the public money. When the 

 numbers are secured, when finally the set is thoroughly complete 

 comes the tedious task of the incorporation of the new acquisitions, 

 the disposal of the duplicates that have in all probability been necessa- 

 rily acquired, and the crowning joy of the alteration of the entry in the 

 catalogue from "' The Times ' from 1788 to 1859, wanting such and such 

 numbers," to the simplicity of " ' The Times' from 1788 to 1859 com- 

 plete." When this consummation is achieved, the librarian's toils are 

 naturally forgotten, and every subsequent reader assumes, as a matter 

 of course, that the volumes, to use an expressive phrase, " grew on the 

 shelves." It is well for the librarian if the history terminates here ; 

 but the annals of the British Museum inform us that some years ago 

 a writer, admitted to all the privileges of that magnificent institution, 

 being engaged in writing a life of Daniel O'Connell, for which he 

 required some extracts from the newspapers, took his penknife instead 

 of his pen, and to save himself the trouble of copying a few paragraphs, 

 deliberately mutilated every volume of newspapers that was brought 

 for his use. A man of this description may in a few days of undetected 

 villany ruin the labours of years, and defraud centuries to come. Sets 

 of the ' Times,' it may be observed, are evidently rising in the market. 

 The library of the State of New York has acquired a set, though 

 not a complete one ; and we have heard, on good authority, that 1000?. 

 would be given for a perfect set for the library of Melbourne. 



Of course the argument in favour of the ' Times' will extend to 

 many other of the London papers. The British Museum now receives 

 and preserves them all, and in addition, all the English country papers, 

 all the Scotch, and all the Irish. In the Museum returns for 1860, 

 it is reported that in 1859, 584 were received from England, 113 from 

 Ireland, and 125 from Scotland. They are sent from the Stamp 

 Office, not at the time of publication, but a few years after ; and they 

 are attended to with the utmost care, bound and kept ready for instan- 

 taneous reference. A new use of them has lately been developed. An 

 excellent example has been set in some of the northern counties of 

 England, of publishing ' Local Records,' in which all the really memor- 

 able occurrences that have taken place in a particular district for about 

 a century, are condensed from a hundred folio volumes of the local 

 newspapers, into the compass of one or two octavos, easy of reference 

 and abundant in interest to the resident or visitor of the different 

 localities. If this practice spread, as it appears likely to do, the vaults 

 of the British Museum will furnish matter for many a volume that 

 will be popular at the fireside, and that must otherwise have remained 

 unwritten. A still wider interest must attach to the annals of English 

 colonies, than to those of English counties ; and there can be little 

 doubt that the prosperous communities of future times will look 

 back to the struggles of their early period as mirrored in their con- 

 temporary records, with an interest akin to that felt by the grown man 

 in the reminiscences of his childhood. It is to be regretted that, as yet, 

 little has been done in this direction in the Museum Library. Unless 

 current reports are ill-founded, a great statesman, who was also a 



