287 



LIBRARIES. 



LIBRARIES. 



233 



lished the ' Gentle Shepherd.' They were not introduced to London 

 till 1740, by Batho, a bookseller in the Strand, and in 1770, according 

 to Timperley, there were only four circulating libraries in London and 

 its neighbourhood. From that period the new institution must have 

 advanced with rapidity. It is now general throughout Europe, 

 though England and Oermany are perhaps its most congenial soils. 

 It has had the effect of fostering the production of a peculiar species 

 of literature the " circulating library literature " which was once at 

 all events, flimsy and ephemeral to a proverb. 



Many of the London libraries of this kind were, even in the 18th 

 century, of considerable dimensions ; but an establishment of this class 

 has been developed by Mr. Charles Edward Mudie, in the space from 

 1840 to 1860, into quite a new stage of influence and importance. 

 Mr. Mudie, by taking hundreds and even thousands of copies of par- 

 ticular books, is enabled to supply at his, not their risk, the demand of 

 country circulating libraries which are in communication with him, and 

 it sometimes happens that two rival establishments in a country town 

 both announce that they are connected with Mudie. Even the second 

 largest library in London that of the London Institution in Finsbury 

 Circus, takes out a subscription of 100/. a-year to procure from Mudie 

 the temporary loan of such volumes as the management does not think 

 worthy of a permanent place in the collection. His influence was even 

 beginning to extend abroad, and his books to circulate at Paris, by 

 means of a branch establishment there ; but we believe that this has 

 been abandoned in consequence of the difficulties occasioned by the 

 Custom House and the prohibition of some books in his catalogue. 

 The development of this great establishment appears to have been 

 fatal to innumerable book-clubs, or at least to have induced them to 

 abandon the old plan, of selecting the books for themselves and dis- 

 posing of them after use among their own members, for that of 

 procuring them from Mudie, and of course returning them to him 

 when they are read. One effect of the system not to be admired is 

 that it substitutes the decision of a single purchaser for that of 

 thousands ; but as that purchaser's decision is a costly one, and made 

 at his own risk, he is not likely to favour his own taste in many cases 

 in opposition to that of the public. The great mass of the books, as 

 soon as they begin to fall out of circulation, are disposed of at reduced 

 prices, and it is on the terms on which this can be managed, and the 

 adroitness with which it is effected, that the profit and loss of this 

 vast machinery must depend. The announcements of the augmenta- 

 tions of the library have gradually swelled up to " 150,000 volumes 

 a-year ;" but this of course affords no measure of what is the real augmen- 

 tation, probably little more than 1000 volumes being annually added to 

 the permanent stock. The establishment is almost as unparalleled of 

 its kind as its near neighbour the British Museum. 



Another large circulating library in London is of a different con- 

 stitution and superior order the London Library, in St. James's 

 Square, established by a society of literary men, who by the payment 

 of an entrance-fee and an annual subscription, or by an annual sub- 

 1 >ne, obtain the right of borrowing books from a library 

 which comprises, among other volumes, the folios of the 'Acta Sanc- 

 torum." The London Library is, in fact, a proprietary library of not an 

 unusual type, except that the circulation of its volumes is made the 

 prominent feature. The now extinct Surrey Institution and Alders- 

 gate Street Institution also circulated their books, and the Russell 

 Institution is constituted on the same plan. 



When several establishments of this kind exist in a capital, there is 

 certainly less inducement to allow the books which belong to the 

 national library to circulate beyond its walls. Mr. Panizzi, both when 

 Keeper of the Printed Books at the British Museum, and when Prin- 

 cipal Librarian of that establishment, has often expressed his opinion 

 before committees of the House of Commons and elsewhere, that it 

 would be advisable to form supplementary institutions in different 

 parts of the metropolis, to relieve the Museum of some of the present 

 pressure on ito resources. Should auxiliary libraries ever be formed, 

 consisting, of course, of books of which in every case other copies 

 be found at the Museum, the plan might then, perhaps, be 

 entertained with advantage of circulating the books of these libraries, 

 as in case of loss, the loss would not be so serious. But with regard 

 to a great national library, the preservation of books is as main an 

 object as their collection. Such a library is not for the use of one 

 generation only, in fact, some of its uses are only developed by its 

 passing into the hands of successive generations. It should be exposed 

 to n other risks than such as are absolutely inevitable. The testimony 

 nf Molbech, the librarian of 'the Royal Library at Copenhagen, where 

 ln<lin[; is permitted, is to the effect, not only that the risk is greater, 

 as must of course be the case where the books are removed from super- 

 , and control, but that in practice great damage is found to ensue. 

 It would, perhaps, be expedient to examine the subject more closely 

 a final detennination was come to on either side; for while the 

 Bodleian library is strictly non-circulating, the books are freely lent 

 out to the i T,ity from the University library of 



Cambridge, and yet any material difference in the condition of the two 

 libraries, to the disadvantage of that of Cambridge, is certainly not a 

 r of public notoriety. Even if it should be found in.idmissible to 

 adopt the freedom of borrowing practised in foreign libraries, and tho 

 want of which in England is so loudly complained of by foreign 

 scholari, a proposal made in ' Fraser's Magazine' for June, 1880, by 



Mr. Spedding, the editor of Bacon, might be taken into consideration. 

 Mr. Spedding proposes that if a scholar in London be desirous of 

 consulting a manuscript or rare book in the Bodleian, not existing in 

 the Museum collection, he shall communicate his wish to the Oxford 

 authorities, and they, if they entertain his application, shall trans- 

 mit the books required, not to his or to any private address, but to the 

 authorities of the British Museum, who shall retain the book for a 

 certain period in their custody and send it to the Reading Room, under 

 the same guardianship and supervision as their own books. Of course, 

 under similar circumstances, a book might be sent from the Museum 

 to the Bodleian, and there might be a certain number of libraries with 

 which the communication should be kept up. By this ingenious 

 arrangement some of the advantages proposed by the lending system 

 would certainly be afforded, under safeguards not now obtainable ; 

 but there would still remain the strong objection, that a reader wishing 

 to examine a particular book known to be in a particular library, might 

 be subjected to a disappointment which he now is in no hazard of. 

 This objection is tersely stated in a passage from a letter by Niebuhr, 

 which was quoted by the commissioners for examining into the 

 University of Oxford. " It is lamentable," writes Niebuhr from 

 the University of Bonn, " that I am here much worse off for books 

 than I was at Rome, where I was sure to find whatever was in the 

 library, because no books were lent out ; here 'I find that just the 

 book which I most want is always lent out." There are few libraries 

 from which books are lent of which stories are not current respecting 

 the abuse of the privilege, of volumes kept for years by persons too 

 high or too venerable to be questioned. The rules of such institutions 

 are often laxly observed by those from whom we should least expect 

 such disregard. In Walter Scott's correspondence with Southey there 

 is a passage in which he recommends him not to show publicly a book 

 which he had sent him, because it belongs to the Advocates' library, 

 and it is forbidden for those books to be sent out of Scotland. 



Our theme has hitherto been public libraries, but the observations 

 which have been hazarded with regard to purchasing, arrangement, and 

 cataloguing will be applicable, with some alterations, to private libraries 

 also. In many countries in which great private libraries have been 

 once prevalent, and diffused a useful light, the rising of a great public 

 library has dimmed their lustre, and even occasioned their extinction. 

 Many a smile has been excited by the maxim of the enthusiastic 

 engineer, that rivers were made to feed navigable canals, but it may 

 be well maintained that the chief use of private libraries, after they 

 have run their course for a generation, is to feed public collections. 

 Nothing can be well more misplaced than the regret expressed by Evelyn 

 and others at the non-continuance of libraries as heir-looms in certain 

 families. If, indeed, a private library be generously opened as some 

 have been to the application of every scholar, and be made subservient 

 to general use, nothing better can be wished for while it lasts, but a 

 library like this, though nominally private, is in reality a public one. 

 So, many a nobleman's park in the country, which is open to his 

 neighbours, is as conducive in its degree to the public benefit as one of 

 the public parks of London. But the case is different when, as with 

 Beckford at Fonthill, a proprietor surrounds his estate with a high 

 wall, and shuts himself up in selfish magnificence, and in England the 

 instances are few in which private libraries have been other than 

 private. But even if liberality in this respect had been much more 

 frequent and conspicuous than it has been, it is surely a far more 

 healthy state of things that in future it should be looked to as a staff, 

 and not as a crutch ; that progress in literature should be released 

 from dependence on the favours of tho great. In the case of a private 

 library which is given or bequeathed to public use, the collector is a 

 public benefactor of a high order; in the case 6f one which is broken 

 up at its collector's death, its breaking-up may possibly be just as 

 useful as its collection ; in the case of one kept in private hands for 

 generation after generation, it is more than probable that an injury is 

 done to the public by withdrawing from public use what is not turned 

 to private account. Among the many memorable circumstances con- 

 nected with the sale of the memorable Valdarfer Boccaccio in 1812, 

 perhaps the most striking is, that the purchaser, who gave the highest 

 price for it ever given for a book, had at the time, unknown to himself, 

 another copy in his own library, which had descended to him by 

 inheritance. The only instance in which it would seem desirable that 

 a great private library should remain in a family is in the case of a 

 great author. It seems an appropriate tribute to his memory that 

 Sir Walter Scott's collection should be kept entire at Abbotsford, but 

 to keep the library of an ordinary collector together in respect to his 

 memory, is not at all justified by the case of Scott. The monument 

 which is erected to him in the centre of Edinburgh might as well be 

 quoted as a justification for the ostentatious columns in honour of 

 aristocratic landlords, which it is now the practice to raise from the 

 so-called voluntary subscriptions of their tenants. To be incorporated 

 in a public library, or rather to be distributed in several, ia the proper 

 " euthanasia " of a private collection. 



Having thus examined the composition of a library of the very first 

 order, and the rules that have been proposed for collecting and 

 managing such a library, with a view of making it of the utmost 

 possible public benefit, it remains to take a general survey of libraries) 

 not in the abstract, but the concrete, of the history and statistics of 

 such collections as have from time to time been formed. 



