Remarks on the practice and policy of lending Bodleian printed books and manuscripts Part 3

To trust to discretion alone, whether it be the discretion of a librarian or of a board, is to lean on a broken reed; and in most foreign libraries that discovery has long since been made: it is high time that we made it too, if we are foolish enough to sanction the practice of lending.

When it is said then that _all_ great foreign libraries lend, let it always be remembered, in the first place, that strictly speaking all do not lend; and, in the second place, that those which lend restrict the practice in a way never dreamt of here.

Such then are the arguments for lending: they may be stated in other terms, and they may be indefinitely varied in shape, but when reduced to their ultimate forms they simply come to this--that by lending books out the utility of the library is increased, the convenience of readers is consulted, the progress of learning is facilitated, and international courtesy is promoted--all very good things in themselves and much to be desired, but, as always in this world, we have to balance good with evil, and to take that course which involves the least inconvenience on the whole.

I confess that it rather depresses me to have to argue the question at all, and if the _genius loci_ affected all minds as it affects mine, the very faintest suspicion of degrading and vulgarising such an inst.i.tution as the Bodleian would be enough, and more than enough, to settle the matter; and surely it is a degradation of that n.o.ble library to look on it, as some seem to do, as a sort of enlarged and diversified Mudie's.

Our books may be all over Oxford, nay, all over Europe; they may be in Germany, in France, in India, in Russia, in London, at Cambridge, and heaven only knows where. What is all this but the first step towards turning the Bodleian into a vast and vulgar circulating library? I must say again, as I have said elsewhere, that the Bodleian Library is absolutely unlike any other library in the world; it is in its way peerless and unique; it was founded and augmented by learned men for learned men; it was never meant for the motley crew which in the present day crams the Camera and the Library itself. It is sad to one who can remember what the Bodleian was even thirty years ago to see such rapid decline, such manifest tokens of disregard for all that once rendered the place a sacred spot. But this is to wander from my immediate business, and what I conceive to be the abuse, I might even say the gross abuse of the Bodleian, for which the Curators are directly responsible, must be matter for some other paper.

It seems to be the notion of some people in this University that the Bodleian Library is a fit place for readers of any and of every kind.

They have not knowledge enough of books or of libraries to see that a library suitable only to scholars of a high cla.s.s is not a library adapted to learners and schoolboys.

Any one beginning microscopic work will find all, and more than all, his wants satisfied for a long time to come by a five guinea instrument, and he is not unlikely to damage even that. Suppose that, instead of such an instrument, you gave him at once a two hundred pound microscope by Smith and Beck, or Ross, what would happen? He would be utterly bewildered by the complexity of it, utterly unable to use it as it should be used, and he would most certainly before long so damage it as to render it useless to all who could make a proper use of it. Between a first-rate microscope by Ross and a three or five guinea instrument the difference is much less than is the difference between the Bodleian and a library fit for undergraduates, or generally for the unlearned. By introducing undergraduates, schoolboys, and girls into such a library as the Bodleian, you in fact degrade the library to base uses, and render it _pro tanto_ inconvenient, to use a very mild term, to all who are fit to benefit by it, and who were intended by the founder to have the advantage of it.

'What my experience has taught me,' says a most learned bibliographer (1. R. 121)[15], 'is, that it ought never to be attempted to use, as a popular library, the large libraries intended in the first instance for a superior cla.s.s of readers;' and he adds further, that 'on every occasion, when it has been tried, the greatest part of the riches acc.u.mulated in the old library have been rendered useless.'

[15] Report from the Select Committee on Public Libraries, ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 23 July, 1849, quoted by pages as 1.

R. A second volume ordered to be printed 1 August, 1850, is quoted also by pages as 2. R. These Blue books contain an immense amount of information on all the libraries of Europe, and although the information is some forty years old, it is still indispensable to all who wish to acquaint themselves with the subject. The evidence also given is of the most varied kind, and very instructive.

If it is in any sense useful to lend books out of the library, it is far more useful, all things considered, not to lend them.

Every man of the least intelligence can see the difference between a library of reference and one from which books are lent. A library of reference, or a library of deposit, is one where books are to be perpetually preserved as carefully as may be for the convenience of scholars and students, and for the promotion of sound and solid learning; and lending any book from such a library is obviously inconsistent with the very purpose for which it is founded. 'I think,'

says the Solicitor-General for Scotland, speaking of the Advocates'

Library, 'that (lending books out) is quite inconsistent with the proper preservation of a great library' (1. R. 95).[16] And another very able witness, Mr. Colles, one of the library committee of the Royal Dublin Society, gives it as the result of his experience that no lending should be allowed in such a library. 'I speak,' he says, 'against the interest of my own family when I say this: but I think that the public use of the library would be increased by not lending.' And again, 'The two (i. e.

libraries of reference and of circulation) ought to be separated, just as banks of issue should be separated from banks of deposit. I wish to be understood on this point: an individual painter or sculptor might be greatly benefited by borrowing out a capital picture from the National Gallery, or the Torso, Venus, or Portland Vase from the British Museum; but such a loan would by no means benefit artists in general, or advance the ultimate interests of painting or sculpture. This holds good equally with regard to valuable books.' (1. R. 185.)

[16] See note [15].

This question as to the expediency of lending books out of such libraries as the British Museum or the Bodleian has been hotly debated both at home and abroad for the last eighty years or more, and I wish I had s.p.a.ce to detail the arguments that have been used, not by men ignorant of books and eager only to consult their own convenience, or to obtain credit for a spurious liberality; but by those who really and truly knew all the ins and outs of the matter they were talking about, and who were quite as anxious to promote learning as we are ourselves.

Take, for instance, the late Mr. Thomas Watts, keeper of printed books in the British Museum, one of the very rarest of men, a librarian who thoroughly knew his business, at all events so far as printed books were concerned, and quite unequalled as regards all questions of organisation and administration. He carries impartiality almost to excess, for he says, speaking of lending, 'It would, perhaps, be expedient to examine the subject more closely before a final determination was come to on either side; for while the Bodleian Library is strictly non-circulating, the books are freely lent out to the members of the University 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 matter of public notoriety.' This statement appeared in 1867, and Mr. Watts evidently did not know that lending had been practised by the Bodleian Curators ever since 1862 (see above, p. 14); nor was he seemingly aware of the facts detailed by Mr. Bradshaw, or of such gross abuses as that which Mr. Bradshaw told a friend of my own. He said that on a certain occasion a graduate had a dinner party, and that he borrowed from the University Library certain expensive ill.u.s.trated works to be laid on the table to amuse his guests; Bradshaw was powerless, though indignant at an act so disgraceful. Carefully however as Mr. Watts holds the balance, it seems unquestionable that he himself condemned the practice of lending from such libraries as the British Museum or the Bodleian; for after writing a column or more, in which he shows every disposition to lend books where it is possible to do so without causing more harm than good, he considers Mr. Spedding's proposal to lend a book wanted by a reader in London to the British Museum library--the very thing in fact which we now are in the habit of doing, he then says; "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 wis.h.i.+ng to examine a particular book known to be in a particular library might be subjected to a disappointment which he is now in no hazard of. This objection is tersely stated in a pa.s.sage 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 inst.i.tutions are often laxly observed by those from whom we should least expect such disregard. In Walter Scott's correspondence with Southey there is a pa.s.sage in which he recommends him not to show publicly a book which he had sent him, because it belongs to the Advocate's Library, and it is forbidden for those books to be sent out of Scotland."

The opinion then of one of the most accomplished librarians that ever lived is, on the whole, adverse to the system of lending. I believe it to be quite impossible for a man of his enormous knowledge of the subject to come to any other conclusion than that at which he arrived: the less a man knows about books and libraries, the more inclined he is to the pernicious system of lending; the more he knows about them, the less inclined he is to countenance anything of the kind; such at least has been my experience.

The late Mr. Henry Bradshaw of Cambridge was a most learned librarian and an accomplished bibliographer. He has not, so far as I am aware, expressed in print his plain opinion of the lending system; but no one can read his paper on the Cambridge University Library, (The University Library, ... by Henry Bradshaw, Librarian of the University, Camb. 1881.

8vo.,) without seeing that he bitterly regretted the practice which prevails and has long prevailed in that place. The Bodleian has a history, a n.o.ble and honourable history: the Cambridge University Library has none, at all events none that is not disgraceful. 'One reason,' he says (p. 6), 'for the dearth of materials in the Library for its own history is to be found in the circ.u.mstance that the Library is really scattered over the whole country.' And again, 'We have often heard of the princ.i.p.al benefactors to the Bodleian Library having been induced to bequeath their own libraries to the University of Oxford from seeing the careful way in which the bequests of their predecessors have been housed and kept together. The coincidence at Cambridge is too striking to be accidental, where we find that only two such bequests are on record': this statement he subsequently corrects into 'three' instead of two: and again, 'It is probable that by drawing attention to the fact that none of the great collectors of the last two hundred years have thought fit to leave their books to our University Library, we may be pointing to a lesson which our successors may profit by, even though we are too indifferent to pay any attention to it ourselves.'

The inference plainly to be drawn from these and other pa.s.sages is that the writer strongly disapproved of the practice which he was obliged officially to countenance. From 1600 down to the last ten or fifteen years the history of the Bodleian Library has been on the whole a history of which every true scholar, and every genuine lover of books may be proud; the history of the Cambridge Library for the corresponding period has been an almost unbroken record of disgraceful carelessness, and the root of all the evil has been the practice of lending, as will be clear to any one who will take the trouble to read Mr. Bradshaw's paper. There has been, as there always must be, where such a practice is allowed, wholesale robbery. In 1772 the library was inspected and 'a large number of rare books were reported to be missing.' (p. 28.) The latest previous inspection had been in 1748, when 902 volumes were reported as missing from the old library alone ... the loss was the result of that wholesale pillage spoken of before. It is very singular that the very same year that the inspection shewed such serious losses to have happened from unrestricted access, the University should have made fresh orders (the basis of those now in use), permitting more fully this same freedom of access. The _Cicero de Officiis_ printed in 1465 on vellum, a Salisbury Breviary printed in 1483 on vellum (the only known copy of the first edition), the Salisbury _Directorium Sacerdotum_ printed by Caxton (the only known copy), are three instances out of many scores of such books which might be mentioned as purloined during the latter half of the eighteenth century, simply from this total disregard of all care for the preservation of the books. Even ma.n.u.scripts were lent out on ordinary tickets; and it was seemingly only owing to the strong remonstrances of Mr. Kerrich, the princ.i.p.al Librarian of the day, that a grace was pa.s.sed in 1809, requiring that no ma.n.u.script whatever should be borrowed, except with the permission of the Senate, and on a bond given for the same to the Librarian. "We have the ticket, but we cannot get the book back," Mr.

Kerrich says: "and to this day the book in question has never been returned." (p. 28.) Such are the disgraceful acts of men bred at an English University, compared with whom the common pickpocket appears positively respectable.

Mr. Panizzi, princ.i.p.al Librarian of the British Museum, a man whose knowledge of libraries and of books has rarely been equalled, was asked, 'Are you of opinion that there should be in all countries libraries of two sorts, namely, libraries of deposit, and libraries devoted to general reading and the circulation of books?' answered, 'That is another question. I think the question of lending books is a very difficult question to answer. I have enquired in all countries, and, as far as experience goes, I find that, in spite of all the precautions taken, of the regulations, and of everything which is done, books disappear; they are stolen or spoiled.' (2. R. 62.) And again: 'I do not think that lending can well be adopted without great risk of losing books; the question is whether there might not be remedies; I think from all experience I never found that librarians had succeeded in preventing stealing.' He also tells a very instructive story of some rare books stolen from the library at Wolfenb.u.t.tel, and be it noted that Panizzi and Watts knew more of their profession than a whole army of ordinary librarians. Let no one fancy for one moment that a congress of librarians is necessarily a congress of men really acquainted with either bibliography or with books; it may, perhaps, on some occasions include one or more who answer to that description, but in general it does not do so. 'La bibliographie,' says Richou, 'est une science exacte qui demande une preparation a.s.sez longue et que la pratique developpe.

Les bibliothecaires improvises en ignorent jusqu'a l'existence et se preoccupent peu de l'acquerir. Il ne faut pas chercher ailleurs la cause de la mauvaise administration d'un grand nombre de bibliotheques publiques, car le mal est commun.' (_Traite de l'Administration des Bibliotheques publiques_, p. 82.)

The opinion expressed by Mr. Watts and Mr. Panizzi, and implied by Mr.

Bradshaw, is, I am convinced, the opinion of all men who are acquainted with this question in its length, breadth, and depth.

How comes it then, some one may ask, that foreign librarians do not speak out against the practice? Because it is not in general the habit of foreign officials to have opinions of their own, and still less to express them, if they have them, when such opinions are not fas.h.i.+onable, or not likely to advance those who utter them: and this goes a long way towards explaining the answers given to questions put by the English Government nearly forty years ago to the custodians of libraries where (though under many restrictions) lending was, and is practised. The general tenor of the answers is that books do not suffer more than might be expected, that losses are comparatively rare, that when loss is suffered the books can generally be replaced, and that when they cannot their value can almost always be recovered from the borrower. Such, I say, is the general tenor of the answers, but few who know anything about circulating libraries will accept such answers as satisfactory.

Before the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War the Germans printed splendid books, and not unfrequently bound them grandly; but for the last two hundred years few German librarians, unless trained in France or England, have known what a really fine book is, or whether it is in what a Frenchman would call good condition. In other words, when they say that books lent are not much damaged, it must be always remembered that notions of damage are relative, and most German librarians are in all probability like an old friend of my own, who holds that no book is in really ill condition, provided the readable part of it is still legible: the t.i.tle may be torn or gone; 'I don't want to read the t.i.tle,' says he: the covers may be broken or destroyed; 'Cannot you read an unbound book?' he asks; and so on. There is this difference, however; my friend does know when a book really is in good condition. Moreover, there are, or at least there were, some foreign librarians who have dared to tell the truth. Thus (see 2. R. 161-171), from the returns made by eighteen libraries in Belgium, we learn that the library of Antwerp (19,148 vols.) never lent; that no ma.n.u.scripts were ever lent from that of Bruges; that ma.n.u.scripts and rare books were never lent from the library of Malines; that valuable books were never lent from the library of Louvain; that no ma.n.u.scripts or valuable books were ever lent from the library of Mons; and that such books and ma.n.u.scripts were never lent from any of the University libraries. Nevertheless, some lending there was from some libraries; and it was a.s.serted that little damage was done the books. Very different is the answer of the Librarian of Tournay (2. R. 163): 'Cette coutume a des inconvenients a.s.sez graves: impossibilite pour certains lecteurs de consulter les ouvrages dont ils ont besoin: rentre tardive des livres pretes; perte ou deterioration des volumes.' The Librarian of Na.s.sau (2. R. 299), very unlike most of his brethren, says, 'das Verleihen der Bucher a.s.serhalb der Anstalt hat allerdings die nachtheilige Folge da.s.s dieselben in kurzer Zeit, im Aussern wie im Innern stark mitgenommen werden. Die Einbande werden verstossen und schabig und der Druck durch Schnupfer und Raucher oft aufs Unangenehmste beschmutzt,' with more to the same effect. Even at the Royal Library of Berlin it is admitted that 'die Bucher und Einbande werden dadurch mehr beschadight und verdorben' (2. R. 304); and at the University Library, 'die Abnutzung durch die Studirenden ist sehr stark'

(2. R. 305). The answer from the University Library at Bonn is, 'Nachtheilige Folge beim Verleihen der Bucher waren troz der sorgfaltigsten Ueberwachung nicht immer zu vermeiden. Manche Bande kamen beschmutzt auch verstummelt zuruck.' There are very similar answers from a few other libraries both of Germany and Italy. Common sense and a little experience will tell any one to which cla.s.s of testimony credence should be given.

As to replacing a lost or damaged book, the thing is by no means so easy as it looks. What is common to-day may be rare a year hence, and quite unprocurable on any terms in two years time. 'Then,' says Ignoramus, 'it will be reprinted, and you may buy that'; but the man who talks so wildly cannot be argued with, because he does not know the elements of the subject of which he is speaking. Suppose you lose the 19th edition of the _Christian Year_, you do not replace the book by purchasing the 100th edition, as all experts know. 'Buy another copy of the 19th then', says Ignoramus; but it may be that you have to pay a very high price for it, and it sometimes happens that you cannot get it at all. 'If you do not get the book, you can recover its value.' Even supposing that you can--and here in Oxford we have no machinery by which we can recover a farthing--how is a man who wants to see a particular book benefited by being told that he cannot see the book because it has been lent and lost, but that the Library has received compensation? Well might Panizzi say that the question of lending is a very difficult question; it is so difficult that a volume would hardly contain an enumeration of all its complexities.

Consider the case of books, printed and ma.n.u.script, lent out to those on the borrowers' list, a list, be it observed, which, according to the lawyers, has not the least statutable warrant. In the first place, you have not the least a.s.surance or guarantee that any one of them knows how to use a book without damaging it, and, as I have already said, it is an almost uniform and invariable experience, that borrowers of books do damage them. All book-lovers know this so well, that they make very sure of their man before they intrust a valuable or well-bound book to him, but we at the Bodleian do not. Pixerecourt, a great collector, was so convinced of this fact that he inscribed over his library door these sadly true lines--

Tel est le triste sort de tout livre prete Souvent il est perdu, toujours il est gate.

How unfit some at least on the borrowers' list are to be intrusted with books, how little notion they have of taking care of them, is clear from many facts which might be mentioned. In the library itself you may see almost any day abundant proof of the unfitness of those admitted to enjoy the privileges which are allowed them. On May 19th, 1885, a Curator came into my room and said, 'I was walking through the Bodleian looking for ---- when I saw a sight which made me sick.' 'You may see many such sights there,' said I; 'what was it?' 'I saw a bevy of women with an illuminated MS., and they were turning over the leaves, all looking at it.' On Friday, August 21st, 1885, I myself counted at one desk at the Selden end _sixty-four_ volumes, all had out by one reader; on the table was a MS. open, and on it two or three books; another was open on the floor, and so on. On April 22nd, 1886, I saw on a desk also at the Selden end three (I believe four) Sanscrit MSS. They were open and kept so by books placed on them, sundry printed books also open one on the other, and in my note written the same day I find the observation that it was 'a miserable spectacle of untidiness and reckless disregard for precious volumes.' It would be easy to add more, for from the first I have kept notes of all that I see in the library, and of much that I hear about it--this, however, is enough to show what may be expected when people carry off books home. There no prying eye will see them, no one is likely to come suddenly round a corner and observe their proceedings. Things are really bad enough _in_ the library as it is; and they are as bad or worse in the Camera, where books are most shamefully ill-used. I have notes of some things which I have observed there, and of a conversation which I had with a person of sharp eyes and wits. One Curator alone can do very little; if all would, even it were only occasionally, do what I do habitually (t.i.t. XX. iii. -- 12, 2), it would be far easier than it now is to put a stop to some rather serious abuses. Let it be distinctly understood that in saying all this I do not blame any person or persons whatever, except the readers. In the British Museum Reading-room a man placed where the officials sit could, with a machine-gun, comfortably pick off every reader in less than a minute, because he could rake every desk; the Bodleian is so picturesque and so peculiar in its construction, that Argus himself would be completely non-plussed, if ordered to keep his eyes on the readers, for even this highly-endowed being had not the dragon-fly power of seeing round corners; and from the Librarian's seat you might discharge a Gatling gun straight up 'Duke Humphrey,' with no other result than the downfall of a little dust, and the smas.h.i.+ng of the west window; as to hitting a reader, you might as well try to shoot the Invisible Girl. At the Camera there is just the same difficulty, which will hardly be overcome till the laws of nature are reformed, and light condescends to travel in convenient curves. The regular officials have quite enough to do, if they attend only to their necessary work, which pins them down to one spot, and totally precludes them from exercising (even if they possessed it) the saintly privilege of bilocation. To come back to the point: books are badly used in the library itself. Now I ask any man of common sense, whether it is possible that books treated so vilely in the library itself will be better treated in a private house?

I am not going to tell any tales, but this I may say, that before I became a Curator I have seen Bodleian books (once a very rare book) in strange places, and under circ.u.mstances by no means conducive to their preservation. The thing must be so: it is as much as the most vigilant officer can do to prevent damage being done under his very eyes, and it stands to reason that no mercy will be shown a book as soon as it is fairly out of the building.

Again, when a man borrows a book from the Bodleian, you have not the least a.s.surance that he will not in his turn lend it. This I know has happened with one book at least belonging to another library in Oxford.

Sir Walter Scott had, perhaps, as much conscience as it is possible for a literary man to have, yet he lends Southey a book borrowed from the Advocates' Library (see above, p. 49) contrary to rule; and what Scott would do, Scott's inferior in character and morals would most certainly not scruple to do.

When a book is lent out to any one on the borrowers' list no contract is entered into, either verbally or in writing, that the book shall be returned at any specified time, nor in fact that it shall ever be returned at all. Are the Curators quite sure that they have any legal power to compel a return under such circ.u.mstances?

Unless a book is carefully collated when it is returned, it will always be impossible to say with truth that it has been returned intact; and if every book is to be collated on its restoration to the library, we shall have no small increase of work, and increase of work always means, as we well know, increased expense.

The lending of books to private houses then involves the very probable, and in many cases the absolutely certain, damage of the book, and its possible total loss without the least remedy, and without the slightest recompense or penalty. A ma.n.u.script was lent to the late Professor ----, and it is hardly necessary to say that it has never been returned, and this is, I fancy, at least the second instance within a very few years of total loss, for which neither the public nor the University ever received one atom of benefit.

Even if the Bodleian were not one of the two great reference libraries of this country, if it were merely a large and fine library of no very great national importance, there would still be no excuse for borrowing from it; for there is no town of its size that contains so many books as Oxford. In every College there is a library, which is not unfrequently full of fine books--Christ Church, All Souls', St. John's, Worcester, Merton, Corpus, Oriel, Magdalen and Queen's are all remarkable; and if we count in ma.n.u.scripts there is hardly a single College without its gems and rarities. Nor is there the slightest difficulty in making a proper use of all these treasures. Any one really fit to use a College book is always permitted to do so, nor is there in general any objection to lending if the borrower is known to be trustworthy: the fault, if any, is rather the other way. 'But,' says some borrower, 'the book that I want is in no College library, and it is in the Bodleian.' Is it not plain to every man of sense, that the book which is in no College library, and is in the Bodleian, is just the book which ought not to be lent, under any conceivable circ.u.mstances? Lending even from College libraries has been the cause of innumerable losses--in fact, nothing in Euclid is more true than the proposition, that sooner or later A BOOK LENT IS A BOOK LOST.

Of the losses which the library at Cambridge has sustained, something has been said above (p. 51). All libraries, however carefully kept, are exposed to occasional and exceptional depredations. Paulus, the celebrated German professor, stole one ma.n.u.script at least from the Bodleian; the thefts in German, Russian, Italian, and French libraries are only too notorious. Are we to give additional facilities by lending books out? Even when lent to the greatest scholars, and presumably to careful men, books are by no means safe. Every one knows how, not so long ago, two or more of the most ancient ma.n.u.scripts of Jornandes were destroyed while in the hands of Mommsen. Fire invaded his rooms; the professor escaped unharmed (of course he did), but the ma.n.u.scripts were destroyed. Literature and scholars.h.i.+p gained nothing by this loan, though all future generations have lost much. Had common sense been the ruling principle of the libraries from which Mommsen obtained these ma.n.u.scripts, they would have been safe at this moment. The convenience, perhaps the laziness, of an individual was consulted, and the world has lost what can never be replaced.

Mr. Watts, whom I have already quoted, says in speaking of lending, 'The testimony of Molbech, the librarian of the Royal Library of Copenhagen, where lending is permitted, is to the effect, not only that the risk is greater, as must of course be the case where books are removed from supervision and control, but that in practice great damage is found to ensue.' If we are told, as very likely we shall be told, that no such damage occurs here, I am somewhat at a loss to answer; perhaps it will be enough to observe that different men unavoidably have different ideas of what const.i.tutes damage, and that what is not always immediately discovered may hereafter be detected when it is too late to a.s.sign the blame to the real offender.

Under the present system of administration, for which the Curators are responsible, the actual, and, it may be, the unavoidable wear and tear of books in the library itself, even in the choicer portions of it, is great enough to deter any man in the future from acting as Douce did in the past. The way in which very precious volumes are knocked about is plain enough to any one who visits the interior of the library as constantly as I do, and as all Curators are by statute empowered and even ordered to do. Readers are impatient, sometimes unreasonable; immense numbers of books can only be reached by means of ladders; the whole establishment is undermanned, and though the small staff does its best to protect the books, they are notwithstanding much b.u.mped about.

One consequence of this rough usage is that the standard of carefulness, as it may be called, is very naturally lowered, and as a further consequence the estimate of what const.i.tutes damage is lowered in proportion.

There are many readers, or there certainly have been readers in the library, who have not hesitated to make marks in printed books and ma.n.u.scripts. The man who will do such a thing as this in the library, will not hesitate to do it when he gets the book into his own possession. Now all avoidable wear and tear is so much real loss to the library, and detracts in that proportion from its utility. It may be useful to A or B to borrow books from the Bodleian, but it cannot be useful to the University or to future generations that the life of any book should be carelessly or needlessly abridged.

It will be admitted that no book can be in two places at the same time; if a volume is in the rooms of Mr. X or Mr. Y, it cannot at that moment be produced in the Bodleian should a reader happen to want it. One of the great advantages of such a library as the Bodleian, if it were properly administered, is that a visitor is sure to find the book which he comes to consult. This is perfectly well understood by such men as Mr. Watts (see above, p. 49); it was brought home to the mind of Niebuhr, and it has been one of the reasons why all lending has up to the present moment been most rigidly forbidden at the British Museum. In a library like the Bodleian, where the practice of lending prevails as it now does, a man may put himself to great inconvenience in order to visit it; he may even travel from Berlin, and when he arrives he may find that all his trouble has been in vain; the very book he wants is out: at the British Museum, where up to the present time knowledge and common sense have prevailed, every man is sure that he can at once get any book whatever that he finds in the catalogue. It is a thousand pities to destroy this confidence; one of the great uses of a library like ours disappears when things are so ill managed, and I believe that there are in the Bodleian men who could tell of some grievous disappointments caused by our modern laxity. I know very well that we shall be told that such cases are few and trivial: be it so. Who does not see that as the present practice extends, as extend it must, one of the great advantages of a grand library will at last vanish? Nothing can be more strictly useful to all real students than the absolute certainty of obtaining at once any book that can be found in the catalogue.

No limit seems to be placed on the borrower's powers; he may, for anything that appears to the contrary, have any number of books or ma.n.u.scripts out. Now when we see the practice of more than one reader _in_ the library, we may form a pretty shrewd guess of what men will do in the way of borrowing. I am well within the mark when I say that at least _one hundred_ volumes have been ere now allowed out to one reader at a time.

The present Librarian has been trying, I believe, to check this morbid appet.i.te for superfluous volumes; but it is not always an easy thing to root out a bad habit.

Any one who examines the slips in the various parts of the Bodleian, as I habitually do, will be struck by two things; the immense number of volumes had out by the same reader or readers, and the length of time that volumes are allowed to remain off the shelves; and this is in great measure the fault of a system for which we are answerable. What takes place in the library will undoubtedly sooner or later take place out of it. A borrower is not, so far as I know, limited as to the number of volumes he may have out; neither is he limited as to the time he may keep them out. The present Librarian informed me that when he came into office he found that one book had been out of the library for _nine_ years, and that others had been off the shelves for very long periods of time. And such things must happen, if you sanction this wretched system of lending. It is perfectly easy to do what constant experience has shown to entail on the whole the minimum of evil; it is easy to keep your books within the library as they do at the British Museum; but if you once lend, there is no drawing of lines possible. Altogether there are about one hundred and eleven persons on the borrowers' list already.

It is said that the Curators can refuse any application if they choose; of course they can, but as a matter of fact no application ever has been refused, and every name added will make it more and more difficult, more and more invidious to refuse any one. Every Oxford resident is potentially on the list, and he may be actually on it whenever he likes.

What is this but the beginning, and something more than the beginning, of that wretched system which Mr. Bradshaw speaks of above? (p. 50.) The dissolution of our magnificent library is already insidiously begun; and why is all this gratuitous and irreparable mischief to be done? why is that vast storehouse intended for the use and benefit of generation after generation of scholars to be scattered and at last destroyed?

Simply to gratify the vulgar, selfish convenience of this or that individual regardless of the general good. The whole is to be sacrificed for a part, and for what a part! The present Librarian has been trying to do something to check this disastrous and ruinous practice, but the Curators are responsible for it, not the Librarian.

Ma.n.u.scripts and printed books when lent out of Oxford are as a rule not lent to private houses but deposited in some library. What happens abroad I do not know, though I confess to having my suspicions. If a ma.n.u.script were lent to some one in a Cathedral town, it would be deposited in the Cathedral library; and we comfort ourselves with the belief that in such a place it would be secure, and that it would not on any account be removed from that library elsewhere. An acquaintance of my own, a very safe man, has had a Bodleian ma.n.u.script of great value out for some years, and it is lent not to him directly, but to a library where alone he is to use it. It may be that this arrangement is actually carried out, and I do not know that it is not, yet I would bet five pounds to a penny that if I went to his house I should find the Bodleian book kicking about in his study, where, in fact, though exposed to a thousand risks of damage and even destruction, it is really safer than in the library where we suppose it to be. For one Cathedral library I can answer: a book would hardly be safer there than it would be on a public and unwatched book-stall, and such I have no doubt whatever is the case with more than half the places to which we send books for safe custody. There is as little conscience about books in this stupid and wicked world as there is about umbrellas, and one of the most important and most useful functions of a body like the Curators of the Bodleian is to set up a high standard in such matters. It is our duty as trustees to take lofty ground, and to be sensitive where the world is listless and careless; and even if we do not really feel exactly as we ought, we are bound, like Gertrude, to 'a.s.sume a virtue though we have it not'; it is very laudable hypocrisy if the real article cannot be had. Yet I hope that it can, and that upon consideration we may all see that the convenience of a few is not for a moment to be compared with the convenience of many, and that we shall awake to the fact that we, of all people, ought not to countenance in any way whatever any practice which may tend in the remotest degree to damage the only inst.i.tution in Oxford of which any rational being can in the present day be justly proud.

Lending of books has many more evil consequences, proximate and remote, than I have enumerated; but there is one which at the risk of being tedious must be mentioned. The glorious part of the Bodleian, the part contributed by Bodley himself, by Laud, by Selden, Pembroke, Digby, Roe, Rawlinson, &c., consists largely of gifts. Every man who knows anything at all about books, every one who loves them, is perfectly well aware that very few men will bequeath their libraries to an inst.i.tution which emulates the American or the English circulating and commercial establishment. Barlow knew this, Bradshaw knew it (see above, p. 50); every one knows it, who has the least acquaintance with the habits and peculiarities of collectors. The Bodleian has to my certain knowledge already lost very rare books indeed which it might have had, but for this penny-wise and pound-foolish policy. Neither Rawlinson nor Douce would ever have been such fools as to leave us what they did, could they have foreseen how little sense of our duties and of our interests we have shown. Bodley over and over again, and in the strongest terms, forbad the lending of his books; Selden's executors only delivered his books to us on the express condition that they never should under any circ.u.mstances be lent; Laud stipulated that his books should not be lent, except for one particular purpose and in one particular way. The Bodleian is what it is, because till quite recent times we adhered to the rule of common sense, not to say to that of common honesty, and it is ever to be regretted that we departed from a course which was at once safe and honourable. There will be no more Douces, no more Rawlinsons, until we have returned to better ways and proved the sincerity of our repentance. I have heard it maintained that the days of great benefactors are over, that in some way not explained men's characters and habits have changed. I cannot admit this; men are now what they always were, and collectors in all ages are singularly alike. Only let us be as prudent, as worldly wise, and, I will add, as honest as our predecessors were, and there is no reason why the munificent benefactors of the past should not be rivalled by equally munificent benefactors in the future. Mr. Bradshaw (above, p. 50) is decidedly of opinion that carelessness with regard to books prevents benefactions, and that care attracts them. Barlow is of the same mind, and indeed the thing is too obvious to be insisted on. It is only those who know little or nothing of the feelings which actuate the real lovers of books who doubt about such very simple facts as these.

To conclude this part of the subject; the arguments against the lending of books out of such a library as the Bodleian may be briefly summed up thus: lending is bad, because books are necessarily exposed to needless and certain risks of damage and of downright loss; because one of the great ends served by a large library is defeated, in that no man can be certain of obtaining a book known to be in it; because lending leads sooner or later to the destruction of a library; because it dries up the great sources from which large numbers of the most valuable books are derived; because it is disapproved of by all those who have the largest and widest experience of books and their management; because, finally, it is in violation of the express directions of Bodley, of Selden, of Laud and others, and almost certainly contrary to the wishes of all our great benefactors, even though they may not have said as much. Reason and authority are equally against it; and the cause of learning and of literature can never be permanently served by a practice which tends to destroy that without which learning and literature alike are impossible: whatever advantages may seem to attend it, are more than counterbalanced by disadvantages so great, that none but those who recklessly sacrifice the future to the present, the interests of generations yet to come, to the selfishness of the generation that now is, can regard it with any favour or even with common patience. We have by the st.u.r.dy honesty of our predecessors received a vast treasure which they carefully preserved intact; we are its guardians and trustees, and we are bound in honour and honesty to hand on to our successors, undiminished and unimpaired, what we have received only as a trust, not as a something which we may spend or destroy at our pleasure. Any wilful act of ours which tends, however remotely, to damage the Bodleian Library is not only a scandalous breach of duty, but a crime against learning itself, in which I for one will have no part or share.

BAXTER, PRINTER, OXFORD.