229 



LIBRARIES. 



LIBRARIES. 



230 



Milton sold 'Paradise Lost,' or the autograph of Shakspere, or the 

 will of Mary Queen of Scots, or the lines that Lady Jane Grey wrote 

 in the prayer-book she had with her on the scaffold ? All these are in 

 the Museum ; but it has no large collection of recent autographs, such 

 as is now possessed by several continental libraries, and would be of 

 frequent use for the verification of the authenticity of signatures. 

 The diaries of Byron, of Walter Scott, and of Moore books such as 

 these should also be secured, if possible, for our national library, for, 

 by their remaining in private hands, an occasion is lost for much 

 innocent and ennobling gratification of the public. A library of 

 printed books resembles a collection of engravings, a library of manu- 

 scripts resembles a collection of paintings ; and as the one cannot 

 aspire to the completeness of the other, it should aim at making up for 

 the deficiency by the high excellence of some of its constituents. Such 

 books as have been mentioned would be equivalent to a fine Raffaelle or 

 Murillo. 



A great library of printed books and manuscripts will thus, if carried 

 out on a scale worthy of a great nation, comprise specimens of every 

 kind of literature that the world has produced, from the earliest that 

 the tooth of time has spared to the last and least in date from the 

 library of the kings of Assyria to the ' Clerkenwell News.' A national 

 collection of this kind is the greatest of ornaments to a capital, and yet 

 is of still greater use than ornament. It is a boon to the casual visitor, 

 still more to the constant resident, for its treasures are inexhaustible 

 in the limits of a hundred lives. 



The rules which are applicable to the collection and management 

 of a large public library are certainly the same in principle which are 

 applicable to those of a small one. The difference is only in the scale 

 on which they are to be applied ; but the effect of this difference is in 

 some things enormous. In the case of a large library, not only must 

 everything be done more extensively, but many things more minutely. 

 Errors and oversights which are of small consequence in a small cata- 

 logue, for instance, are not only more difficult to avoid in a large one, 

 but when they are not avoided they are more misleading and more 

 confusing. 



It has been supposed that some of these difficulties may be got over 

 by treating a large library as an amalgamation of small ones. It has been 

 suggested, for instance, that in so immense a collection as the British 

 Museum there should be librarians for separate parts of it one for the 

 theology, another for the law, a third for natural history, a fourth for 

 medicine, a fifth for mathematics, and others for other branches. To 

 this it has been answered that, practically, another kind of division is 

 not only preferable, but in some cases imperative. There are books on 

 medcine, for instance, in the Museum not only in English, Latin, French, 

 and German, which are the most ordinary languages for the subject, 

 but in Spanish, Danish, Russian, Chinese, &c. A medical librarian, 

 therefore, not acquainted with Russian and Chinese, would not be able 

 to class or to catalogue the whole of the books in his department. On 

 the other hand, a Russian scholar not acquainted with medicine or 

 mathematics would meet with no difficulty, if of ordinary intelligence, 

 in classing and cataloguing a Russian medical or mathematical volume. 



The first requisite therefore for dealing efficiently with a book is to 

 be able to read the title-page, and often a great deal more than the 

 title-page. In fact, at the Museum, though the different assistants 

 of the Printed Book department are all officially reported as engaged 

 without distinction in "assisting the keeper of the printed books," 

 it has been found in practice necessary to have one to catalogue 

 Hebrew and another to catalogue Chinese ; and books in certain other 

 languages, Slavonic or Oriental, only go to particular persons. As 

 there are more than twenty cataloguers, a division can easily be 

 made; but the difficulty recurs in the case of operations which 

 are confided to one or two persons only. The books to be sent to 

 the binder, for instance, are sent by one assistant, and the letterings 

 to each book are to be in the language of that book. The course 

 necessarily taken is, for the assistant to write the letterings in as many 

 languages as he can, and to apply in cases of difficulty to those of his 

 colleagues who can assist him. The binder himself is often in a 

 perplexity, and obliged to ask for information ; for, it must be remem- 

 bered that the printed directions to the binder given in books at the 

 Museum are couched, of course, in the language of the book Welsh 

 or Wallachian, as the case may be. As the library is now arranged in 

 different classes, and each book is placed according to it* subject, it is 

 of course necessary, also, for those who place them to read at least the 

 title of each, or to have the title translated for them. In short, in all 

 thp operations of a library, from first to last, and more especially of a 

 large library, the question of language is continually recurring, 

 although, strange to say, in outside speculations on the subject of 

 library management, it appears to be continually overlooked. It may 

 be doubted if Mr. Gladstone, when he recently told the House of 

 Commons, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, that the duties of the 

 assistant* in the British Museum were so easy and agreeable, that 

 their salaries might well be proportionably light, remembered at the 

 moment that it was part of those duties to catalogue Sanscrit and 

 Chinese. 



In addition to qualifications of this kind, it is especially required in 

 those who are entrusted with the (election of books to be purchased 

 for a 1 irge library, that they should have an acquaintance with biblio- 

 graphy in general. The name of no other science has been so misapplied 



as this. To call a man a bibliographer because he is well acquainted 

 with the productions of the press of the Alduses and the Elzevirs is 

 as absurd, however frequently done, as it would be to call a man a 

 geographer because he was familiar with the topography of the weald 

 of Kent or the coast of Sussex. Bibliography is the knowledge of the 

 world of books, as geography is the knowledge of the world of sea and 

 land. The ramifications and details of the science are infinite ; but it 

 is no more the business of a bibliographer to know every detail of a 

 set of volumes than of a geographer to know every street of a market- 

 town. 



When it is determined what books are to be acquired, the method of 

 acquiring them comes next into consideration. The best and most 

 rapid method of increasing a large library has often been said to 

 be the purchase of collections in a mass. There can be no doubt 

 that, if it be determined to form a library of one or two hundred 

 thousand volumes, and a good collection of forty or fifty thousand 

 occurs for sale, it will be expedient to secure it to begin with. There 

 are certain books that may be expected to be found in every consider- 

 able collection, and to acquire them by thousands is a saving in point 

 of time to acquiring them one by one. But this very circumstance 

 renders it impossible to proceed in the same way. If a second col- 

 lection, still more if a third or a fourth, be bought in a mass, there is 

 a certainty of acquiring duplicates, triplicates, and quadruplicates. It 

 is-true that in the history of several of the great libraries we lind this 

 proceeding recorded as having taken place. The library of Vienna, we 

 are told, was enriched on the decease of its librarian Blotz by the 

 books which had belonged to Blotz, on the decease of his successor 

 Tengnagel by those of Tengnagel, and on the decease of his successor 

 Lambecius by those of Lambecius. It is evident, however, by the 

 mere statement of the facts that they involve a dilemma. Either these 

 acquisitions brought duplicates to the library by wholesale, or else 

 during the lifetime of Blotz, Tengnagel, and Lambecius, the collection 

 of which they were the guardians must have been deficient in the very 

 books which they esteemed worthy of a place in their own libraries, 

 and thus the addition of a valuable set to the imperial collection must 

 have depended, not on the life, but on the death of the librarian. It 

 is, in fact, a strong censure on the composition of any great library, 

 that it should be possible to add a large well-chosen collection to it 

 without adding a mass of duplicates. There may be occasions on 

 which, not to let an opportunity escape, it may be advisable for the 

 possessors of a large library to buy another in a mass, but in that case 

 it will be necessary to sell again immediately most of what has been 

 purchased. 



The additions to a large well-chosen library will thus have to be 

 made in detail. This will more particularly be the case with the 

 current literature of the day a kind of literature which has been 

 perhaps more frequently overlooked in large libraries than any other 

 from the time of the invention of printing downwards. There has 

 been a singularly obstinate delusion, that it might be safely neglected 

 because procurable at any time a delusion which, much to the advan- 

 tage of posterity, appears to be giving way. The method of arriving 

 at a knowledge of this literature is easy and obvious. To Germany 

 and its booksellers we are indebted for that simple but invaluable 

 invention, the catalogue of all the new books published at certain 

 intervals, which was first exemplified in the catalogues of the fairs of 

 Frankfort and Leipzig one of the earliest forms of periodical publi- 

 cation, the first of these lists being 101 years antecedent to the 

 ' Journal des Savans,' which was the first review. Separate editions of 

 them were apparently issued for different countries ; for we have seen 

 in the British Museum a Leipzig catalogue for part of 1623, in which a 

 long list of English books is given, which does not occur in the 

 ordinary German copies. No other periodical catalogue of English 

 books so early as this is known ; Maunsell's, which preceded it, being 

 not of a periodical character. It is the earliest member of the family 

 which was represented by ' ClavelTs Lists ' in the time of Charles II., 

 and now by ' Bent's Advertiser ' and the ' Publishers' Circular.' Pub- 

 lications of the same nature are now issued in nearly every European 

 country ; and by inspecting the whole, and giving orders from each, it 

 is practicable for any library provided with the indispensable requisite, 

 liberal funds, to collect under one roof in an unbroken flow the whole 

 moss of current European and American publications of value, with- 

 out any other agency than that of the ordinary book-trade. 



Books published for sale may be divided into those which are on sale 

 by the publisher, and those which are " out of print," according to the 

 technical phrase ; that is, into those which are procurable at once if an 

 order is given to a bookseller, and those which can only be acquired 

 when an opportunity occurs, at sales by auction or otherwise. The 

 purchase of a book when it is on sale by the publisher is the simplest 

 method of acquiring it, but it is supposed not to be the most economical, 

 because by waiting it may generally be obtained at a lower price. In 

 many cases, however, it is the most economical also ; for if there be a 

 demand for a book, and it becomes out of print, the price of it imme- 

 diately ascends, and sometimes to an extravagant height. lu England, 

 and still more in America, a book passes so soon out of the hands of 

 its publisher, such violent measures are sometimes adopted to get rid 

 of it in the way of a " remainder," thiit those who do not buy it on 

 its first appearance may often afterwards inquire for it in vain. In 

 Germany a different and less hurried system prevails : the stock of a 



