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BRITISH MUSEUM, THE. 



BRITISH MUSEUM, THE. 



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books, early editions of Shakspere's plays, everything that is rare 

 and curious has been secured whenever an opportunity occurred. In 

 the early part of the 1 9th century, when bibliomania was so prevalent, 

 the name of the British Museum was scarcely heard in a sale-room ; 

 of Lite years its agents have been incessantly active. While thus 

 increasing in splendour, the library has been equally increasing in 

 usefulness. For the first time in the history of literature, an attempt 

 has been made on a large scale to bring under one roof all the current 

 literature of the world that had any intrinsic value, regardless of the 

 language in which it might be couched. Mr. Watts, in his proposals, 

 spoke of "one journal from every country in Europe ;" and at the time 

 he wrote there was no journal in the Museum in the Russian language : 

 the catalogue now contains eighteen. The Museum is now supposed to 

 possess the best Russian library in existence out of Russia ; the best 

 Hungarian out of Hungary ; the best Dutch out of Holland ; in short, 

 the best library in every European language out of the territory in 

 which that language is vernacular. The books are in every case the 

 standard books of the language, the laws, the histories, the biographies, 

 the works on topography and local history, the poets and novelists in 

 most esteem ; in short, all that moulds or painta the life and manners 

 of a nation, and which now a student of any European language need 

 travel no farther than to the reading-room of the Museum to see and 

 make use of. 



The literature of the English language in the United States was 

 another point that engaged attention, and orders were sent out as early 

 as 1839 to America direct. At present the number of American books 

 in the Museum is greater than in any library of the United States. A 

 separate catalogue of these books has been prepared by Mr. Henry 

 Stevens, the American agent who has had the largest share in pro- 

 curing them, and it fills two octavo volumes, printed in double columns, 

 which have not as yet been issued to the public. 



For the augmentation of the collection of English books reliance had 

 been placed, in the earlier stages of the Museum, on its legal rights. 

 The donation of the Royal Library to the Museum by George II., in 

 1757, was accompanied by that of the royal privilege of gratuitously i 

 receiving from the publishers a copy of every work printed in the j 

 English dominions. This had first been granted to the Crown by an i 

 Act of Parliament of the 14th of Charles II., and subsequently renewed 

 after expiry by the famous Copyright Act of the 8th of Queen Anne. 

 Dr. Bentley, when keeper of the Royal Library, complained of the 

 constant evasion of this Act by the booksellers ; and the complaints 

 were often renewed by the librarians of the Museum, though from 

 about the year 1818, when Mr. Baber, then keeper of the printed 

 books, gave some curious evidence on the subject before the Copyright 

 Committee, there was certainly a great improvement. The new 

 Copyright Act of 1842 gave a pre-eminence to the Museum among 

 other libraries to which the privilege was conceded, and provided that 

 in case of non-compliance with the Act the negligent publisher might 

 be taken before a magistrate and fined. In 1 850, the superintendence 

 of this part of the Museum business was transferred to Mr. Panizzi, 

 as keeper of the Printed Book department, and the strictness with 

 which he enforced the Act led to a great augmentation in the number 

 of books received. At present all is collected that issues from the 

 English press down to the most insignificant work on crochet, to a 

 Chil'l'if Missionary Magazine, the directory of a country town, or a 

 circulating library novel ; and everything that is collected finds its 

 place on the shelves and in the catalogue, in the conviction that it 

 may often be a point of importance to preserve one copy of even a 

 worthless work in a repository where it may instantly be referred to 

 in case of need. A different system prevailed in former days, when 

 it does not seem to have struck a single individual that it might 

 probably be of advantage to preserve a set of the ' London Directory ' or 

 the ' Navy List.' and a complete collection of either is, in consequence, 

 not to be found in the British Museum or apparently anywhere else. 



The Oriental collections of the Printed Book department have not 

 yet been mentioned. In 1759, the year of opening, a choice and 

 valuable collection of 180 Hebrew volumes in the binding, apparently 

 executed for King Charles II., whose marks it bears, was presented by 

 Mr. Salomon da Costa. No considerable additions were made to the 

 Hebrew till 1848, when Mr. Panizzi purchased a selection of 4420 

 volumes from a library of Hebrew, which had been formed by Mr. H. 

 J. Michael of Hamburg, and purchased entire by Mr. Asher, the 

 learned bookseller of Berlin, the most able and zealous of the con- 

 tinental purveyors for the Museum. In 1836, a collection of the 

 works in Armenian, published by the Meehitarist monks of Venice, 

 was purchased by Mr. Baber; to this, considerable additions were 

 afterwards made, including, among other works, a book that would 

 hardly have been looked for in Armenian, a translation of ' Uncle Tom's 

 Cabin.' It may be worth while to mention that advantage has been 

 taken of the polyglot popularity of Uncle Tom's Cabin, to afford 

 students an opportunity, not otherwise procurable, of studying the 

 i-iilluquial and familiar idiom of different countries. Versions have 

 lieen procured or ordered in almost every European language, and 

 there are some, Welsh ami Wallachian for instance, in which there 

 are double or triple versions of this particular book, while there is 

 hardly a double version of any other except the Bible. The collections 

 <ii Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, at the Museum, as well as of Sanskrit 

 aii'l the other Indian languages, arc very lusceptible of improvement, 

 ARTS AMD SCI. DIV. VOL. II. 



but of Chinese there is a large collection. One bequeathed in 1825, 

 by Mr. Fowler Hull, forma the nucleus ; many other volumes were 

 afterwards selected and purchased on different occasions, and in 1847 

 the collection of Chinese books belonging to Mr. Morrison the younger, 

 amounting to 11,500 volumes, was purchased by government and 

 presented to the Museum. In Chinese literature the library may 

 now, therefore, be considered at least on a level with any other in 

 Europe, and no opportunity has been lost of procuring specimens of 

 the Mongolian, the Mantchoo-Tatar, and other languages pf Eastern 

 Asia. 



The maps and music are collections both of which are connected 

 with the Printed Book department, and both of which are in a course 

 of development unknown to them twenty years ago. The collection of 

 maps in the King's Library is a remarkably rich one, accompanied with 

 a large collection of topographical prints and drawings, and is arranged 

 in more than 100 folio volumes. The music was formerly confined to 

 that received by privilege only, in addition to the works acquired by 

 the purchase of the library of the elder Dr. Burney, and received by 

 the donation of Sir John Hawkins. It has now extended to more than 

 4000 volumes, and is still extending. 



The catalogue of the British Museum has been a subject of frequent 

 discussion in the public press, since the committee of the House of 

 Commons in 1835. Before that time, in 1824, the Rev. Thomas Hart- 

 well Home had been appointed to superintend the preparation of a 

 classed catalogue ; but in 1834 his labours and those of his colleagues 

 had been suspended, and the Rev. Mr. Baber had been directed to 

 draw up plans for an alphabetical catalogue. A long correspondence on 

 the subject will be found in the Appendices to the Reports of the 

 Commons' Committee and of the Royal Commission. When, after 

 Mr. Panizzi's appointment to the keeper-ship, the library had been 

 removed from the old to the new building, the question of cataloguing 

 and of printing the catalogue again came up ; and a small committee of 

 the Printed Book Department, presided over by Mr. Panizzi, drew up 

 in 1839 a series of rules for that purpose, which amounted, when they 

 finally received the sanction of the trustees, who re-discussed them, to 

 the number of ninety-one. Objection has been made to their number ; 

 but it must be remembered that it was requisite to provide beforehand 

 for all the contingencies to be foreseen in operating on a large library 

 by several hands ; and experience shows that the variety in the notions 

 of cataloguers is wonderful. In the King's Library catalogue, for instance, 

 though it is professedly alphabetical, all the novels and tales by anony- 

 mous authors, from Amadis de Gaul to Waverley, are entered in a mass, 

 under the singular heading of ' Fabulse Romanenses.' In such a title as 

 the ' Second Report of the Auxiliary Trinitarian Bible Society of St. 

 James's, Clerkenwell,' there is hardly a word, except the particles, which 

 has not been selected by some cataloguers as a heading, many taking 

 even the word " Second ;" though it is evident that, on that principle, 

 a set of twenty of these reports would figure in twenty different parts 

 of the same list. It is evident that difficulties of this kind do not 

 1 diminish when foreign languages are to be treated, which, in the 

 case of the Museum library, are not few in number. A commence- 

 ment was made of printing the catalogue compiled on the new 

 principles, and in 1841 the first volume, containing the letter A, 

 appeared under the superintendence of Mr. Panizzi ; but immediately 

 afterwards the printing was suspended, and one of the objects of the 

 royal commission of 1847 was to inquire into the cause of this sus- 

 pension. The commission approved of the step which had been taken, 

 for the reasons assigned by Mr. Panizzi, that it was eminently unad- 

 visable to print any portion of an alphabetical catalogue before the 

 whole was ready for the press. Since this decision has been arrived at, 

 the revision of the old catalogue has continued in manuscript, while all 

 the fresh books added have been dealt with on the same principles ; 

 but, as has already been stated, the number of volumes in the Museum 

 before the year 1839 was about 235,000, while the number since added 

 exceeds 335,000 ; so that the bulk of the supplements, had the 

 catalogue been printed, would in 1859 have already exceeded that 

 of the principal. The immense labour expended on this gigantic work 

 would perhaps have been more highly appreciated by the public, had 

 some of its results been embodied in print. The knowledge and care 

 required in settling the items of an extensive catalogue might often 

 win a reputation if exerted in some other direction, but apparently 

 will never in England win a reputation in this. 



When a new book has been catalogued, the next step to be taken 

 with it is to place it on one of the shelves in a press or book-case, that 

 it may receive its appropriate ' press-mark," that is, the indication of 

 its locality. At the Museum each press or book-case has a certain 

 number, and the different shelves are indicated by the letters of the 

 alphabet. Thus the press-mark ' 1340 a,' indicates that the book is 

 placed on the ' a ' or topmost shelf of press or book-case 1340. 

 Nothing can be more simple, yet this simplicity is rare. In another 

 library in London, for instance, the system is exactly reversed, the presses 

 are marked with the letters of the alphabet, and the shelves with num- 

 bers ; the consequence is, that as the letters of the alphabet are soon ex- 

 hausted, the librarians have to commence a second series by repeating 

 them thus, AA, BB, &c. ; then a third and a fourth on some other 

 principle, and long before they have arrived at as high a nrml IT 

 as 1340, the system is involved in inextricable entanglement. As 

 the shelves in any book-case never amount to the number of 



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