The Book-Hunter
were conducted, they are both instructive and curious. In addition to
these is a work entitled The Rebuker Rebuked, by Daniel Leeds, 1703; A
Sermon preached at Kingston in Jamaica, by William Corbin, 1703; The
Great Mystery of Foxcraft, by Daniel Leeds, 1705; A Sermon preached at
Trinity Church, in New York, by John Sharp, 1706; An Alarm Sounded to
the Inhabitants of the World, by Bath Bowers, 1709; and Lex
Parliamentaria, 1716. All the above works were printed by Bradford, the
earliest New York publisher, and one of the earliest printers in
America. They constitute, perhaps, the most complete collection in
existence of the publications of this early typographer. The whole are
in an excellent state of preservation, and are nearly, if not quite,
unique."]
America had just one small old library, and the lamentation over the
loss of this ewe-lamb is touching evidence of her poverty in such
possessions. The Harvard Library dates from the year 1638. In 1764 the
college buildings were burned, and though books are not easily consumed,
yet the small collection of five thousand volumes was overwhelmed in the
general ruin. So were destroyed many books from the early presses of the
mother country, and many of the firstlings of the transatlantic
printers; and though its bulk was but that of an ordinary country
squire's collection, the loss has been always considered national and
irreparable.
It is, after all, a rather serious consideration--which it never seems
as yet to have occurred to any one to revolve--how entirely the new
states of the West and the South seem to be cut off from the literary
resources which the Old World possesses in her old libraries. Whatever
light lies hidden beneath the bushel in these venerable institutions,
seems for ever denied to the students and inquirers of the new empire
rising in the antipodes, and consequently to the minds of the people at
large who receive impressions from students and inquirers. Books can be
reprinted, it is true; but where is the likelihood that seven hundred
thousand old volumes will be reprinted to put the Astorian Library on a
par with the Imperial? Well, perhaps some quick and cheap way will be
found of righting it all when the Aerial Navigation Company issues its
time-bills, and news come of battles "from the nation's airy navies
grappling in the central blue."
In the meantime, what a lesson do these matters impress on us of the
importance of preserving old books! Government and legislation have done
little, if anything, in Britain, towards this object, beyond the
separate help that may have been extended to individual public
libraries, and the Copyright Act deposits. Of general measures, it is
possible to point out some which have been injurious, by leading to the
dispersal or destruction of books. The house and window duties have done
this to a large extent. As this statement may not be quite self-evident,
a word in explanation may be appropriate. The practice of the department
having charge of the Assessed Taxes has been, when any furniture was
left in an unoccupied house, to levy the duty--to exempt only houses
entirely empty. It was a consequence of this that when, by minority,
family decay, or otherwise, a mansion-house had to be shut up, there was
an inducement entirely to gut it of its contents, including the library.
The same cause, by the way, has been more destructive still to
furniture, and may be said to have lost to our posterity the fashions of
a generation or two. Tables, chairs, and cabinets first grow
unfashionable, and then old; in neither stage have they any friends who
will comfort or support them--they are still worse off than books. But
then comes an after-stage, in which they revive as antiquities, and
become exceeding precious. As Pompeiis, however, are rare in the world,
the chief repositories of antique furniture have been mansions shut up
for a generation or two, which, after more fashions than generations
have passed away, are reopened to the light of day, either in
consequence of the revival of the fortunes of their old possessors, or
of their total extinction and the entry of new owners. How the house and
window duties disturbed this silent process by which antiques were
created is easily perceived.
One service our Legislature has done for the preservation of books in
the copies which require to be deposited under the Copyright Act at
Stationers' Hall for the privileged libraries. True, this has been
effected somewhat in the shape of a burden upon authors, for the benefit
of that posterity which has done no more for them specially than it has
for other people of the present generation. But in its present modified
shape the burden should not be grudged, in consideration of the
magnitude of the benefit to the people of the future--a benefit the full
significance of which it probably requires a little consideration to
estimate. The right of receiving a copy of every book from Stationers'
Hall has generally been looked on as a benefit to the library receiving
it. The benefit, however, was but lightly esteemed by some of these
institutions, the directors of which represented that they were thus
pretty well supplied with the unsaleable rubbish, while the valuable
publications slipped past them; and, on the whole, they would sell their
privilege for a very small annual sum, to enable them to go into the
market and buy such books, old and new, as they might prefer. The view
adopted by the law, however, was, that the depositing of these books
created an obligation if it conferred a privilege, the institution
receiving them having no right to part with them, but being bound to
preserve them as a record of the literature of the age.[54]
[Footnote 54: I am not aware that in the blue-books, or any other source
of public information, there is any authenticated statement of the
quantity of literature which the privileged libraries receive through
the Copyright Act. The information would afford a measure of the
fertility of the British press. It is rather curious, that for a morsel
of this kind of ordinary modern statistics, one must have recourse to so
scholarly a work as the quarto volume of the _Praefationes et Epistolae
Editionibus Principibus Auctorum Veterum praepositae, curante Beriah
Botfield, A.M._ The editor of that noble quarto obtained a return from
Mr Winter Jones, of the number of deposits in the British Museum from
1814 to 1860. Counting the "pieces," as they are called--that is, every
volume, pamphlet, page of music, and other publication--the total number
received in 1814 was 378. It increased by steady gradation until 1851,
when it reached 9871. It then got an impulse, from a determination more
strictly to enforce the Act, and next year the number rose to 13,934,
and in 1859 it reached 28,807. In this great mass, the number of books
coming forth complete in one volume or more is roundly estimated at
5000, but a quantity of the separate numbers and parts which go to make
up the total are elementary portions of books, giving forth a certain
number of completed volumes annually. From the same authority, it
appears that the total number of publications which issued from the
French press in 1858 was estimated at 13,000; but this includes
"sermons, pamphlets, plays, pieces of music, and engravings." In the
same year the issues from the German press, Austria not included, are
estimated at 10,000, all apparently actual volumes, or considerable
pamphlets. Austria in 1855 published 4673 volumes and parts. What a
contrast to all this it must be to live in sleepy Norway, where the
annual literary prowess produces 146 volumes! In Holland the annual
publications approach 2000. "During the year 1854, 861 works in the
Russian language, and 451 in foreign languages were printed in Russia;
besides 2940 scientific and literary treatises in the different
periodicals." The number of works anywhere published is, however, no
indication of the number of books put in circulation, since some will
have to be multiplied by tens, others by hundreds, and others by
thousands. We know that there is an immense currency of literature in
the American States, yet, of the quantity of literature issued there,
the Publishers' Circular for February 1859 gives the following meagre
estimate:--"There were 912 works published in America during 1858. Of
these 177 were reprints from England, 35 were new editions, and 10 were
translations from the French or German. The new American works thus
number only 690, and among them are included sermons, pamphlets, and
letters, whereas the reprints are in most cases _bona fide_ books."]
If the rule come ever to be thoroughly enforced, it will then come to
pass that of every book that is printed in Britain, good or bad, five
copies shall be preserved in the shelves of so many public libraries,
slumbering there in peace, or tossed about by impatient readers, as the
case may be. For the latter there need not perhaps be much anxiety; it
is for the sake of those addicted to slumbering in peaceful obscurity
that this refuge is valuable. There is thus at least a remnant saved
from the relentless trunk-maker. If the day of resuscitation from the
long slumber should arrive, we know where to find the book--in a
privileged library. The recollection just now occurs to me of a man of
unquestionable character and scholarship, who wrote a suitable and
intelligent book on an important subject, and at his own expense had it
brought into the world by a distinguished publisher, prudently
intimating on the title-page that he reserved the right of translation.
Giving the work all due time to find its way, he called at the Row,
exactly a year after the day of publication, to ascertain the result. He
was presented with a perfectly succinct account of charge and discharge,
in which he was credited with three copies sold. Now, he knew that his
family had bought two copies, but he never could find out who it was
that had bought the third. The one mind into which his thoughts had
thus passed, remained ever mysteriously undiscoverable. Whether or not
he consoled himself with the reflection that what might have been
diffused over many was concentrated in one, it is consolatory to others
to reflect that such a book stands on record in the privileged
libraries, to come forth to the world if it be wanted.
Nor is the resuscitation of a book unsuited to its own age, but suited
to another, entirely unexampled. That beautiful poem called Albania was
reprinted by Leyden, from a copy preserved somewhere: so utterly
friendless had it been in its obscurity, that the author's history, and
even his name, were unknown; and though it at once excited the high
admiration of Scott, no scrap of intelligence concerning it could be
discovered in any quarter contemporary with its first publication. The
Discourse on Trade by Roger North, the author of the amusing Lives of
Lord-Keeper Guildford and his other two brothers, was lately reprinted
from a copy in the British Museum, supposed to be the only one existing.
Though neglected in its own day, it has been considered worthy of
attention in this, as promulgating some of the principles of our
existing philosophy of trade. On the same principle, some rare tracts on
political economy and trade were lately reprinted by a munificent
nobleman, who thought the doctrines contained in them worthy of
preservation and promulgation. The Spirit of Despotism, by Vicesimus
Knox, was reprinted, at a time when its doctrines were popular, from a
single remaining copy: the book, though instructive, is violent and
declamatory, and it is supposed that its author discouraged or
endeavoured to suppress its sale after it was printed.
In the public duty of creating great libraries, and generally of