A Librarian's Work. 351 



less important works which happen to be specially 

 interesting or useful to the owner. But in a pub- 

 lic library the treasures and the rubbish of the 

 literary world are alike hoarded ; and the works of 

 exceptional men whom everybody remembers are 

 lumped in with the works of all their less distin- 

 guished cousins and great-uncles, whose names the 

 world of readers has forgotten. 



A librarian has the opportunity for observing 

 many curious facts of this sort, but he will seldom 

 have leisure to speculate about them. For while 

 a great library is an excellent place for study and 

 reflection, for everybody except the librarian, his 

 position is rather a tantalizing one. In the midst 

 of the great ocean of books, it is " water, water 

 everywhere, and not a drop to drink." 



To make up for the extreme vagueness with 

 which authors customarily designate themselves 

 on their title-pages is the work of the assistants 

 who write the long cards, and it is apt to be a 

 very tedious and troublesome undertaking. Bio- 

 graphical and bibliographical dictionaries, the 

 catalogues of our own and other libraries, uni- 

 versity-catalogues, army-lists, clerical directories, 

 genealogies of the British peerage, almanacs, 

 " conversations - lexicons," literary histories, and 

 volumes of memoirs, all these aids have to be 



