6 



foreigner — one who finds himself in this country with the- 

 intention of making it his home — is to have the whole of 

 the literature of the world placed at his disposal, so soon 

 as he can find some person to guarantee that he will 

 not abuse it. Will Englishmen complain if the second 

 privilege claimed should be, that so dear to themselves, of 

 correcting a public abuse by a public complaint ? 



The events which led to the investigations made public 

 in the following pages may be the more quickly disposed of 

 because, though of public interest, they were in them- 

 selves accidental and personal, and certainly involve no 

 hostility to so splendid an institution as the British 

 Museum — an institution whose value I am better able than 

 many men to comprehend. For I have known what it is 

 to see for long months nothing but the bare walls of a 

 narrow prisoner's cell, not 1 even enlivened by a last year's 

 almanack, or such an old newspaper cutting as that to 

 which Tetterby used to appeal to demonstrate the vicious- 

 ness of the poor. At such times a man has two thoughts: 

 first, " How shall I regain my liberty ?" — second, " What 

 use shall I make of freedom ?" The latter leads to 

 dreams, his only consolation, and in my den in Versailles 

 — narrower even and more pestilential if possible than 

 some that I shall have here to describe — debarred the 

 company even of an unfinished catalogue, many were the 

 glorious visions which I indulged in of orgies of Shake- 

 speare, Goethe, Mickiewicz, Novalis, Tegner, Lenau, 

 Calderon, and Lope da Vega ! And so it was that when 

 free and in England, which means a reduplicated freedom, 

 I turned my steps at once to the British Museum. English- 

 men may smile, but those who can put themselves in my 

 place will hardly wonder when I say that my first visit was 

 one of simple reverence. I heeded not the hot, dry, stuffy 

 air of the Reading Room. For me that great dome covered . 



