The Book-Hunter
a great university library. This was the Rev. John Fisher, Bishop of
Rochester, who gave what was called "the noblest library in England" to
the newly founded college of St John's. It was not a bequest. To make
his gift secure, it was made over directly to the college, but as he
could not part with his favourites while he lived, he borrowed the whole
back for life. This is probably the most extensive book loan ever
negotiated; but the Reformation, and his own tragic destiny, were
coming on apace, and the books were lost both to himself and his
favourite college.[58]
[Footnote 57: Edwards on Libraries, vol. i. p. 586.]
[Footnote 58: Edwards on Libraries, vol. i. p. 609.]
The Preservation of Literature.
The benefactors whose private collections have, by a generous act of
endowment, been thus rendered at the same time permanent and public,
could be counted by hundreds. It is now, however, my function to
describe a more subtle, but no less powerful influence which the
book-hunter exercises in the preservation and promulgation of
literature, through the mere exercise of that instinct or passion which
makes him what he is here called. What has been said above must have
suggested--if it was not seen before--how great a pull it gives to any
public library, that it has had an early start; and how hard it is, with
any amount of wealth and energy, to make up for lost time, and raise a
later institution to the level of its senior. The Imperial Library of
Paris, which has so marvellously lived through all the storms that have
swept round its walls, was founded in the fourteenth century. It began,
of course, with manuscripts; possessing, before the beginning of the
fifteenth century, the then enormous number of a thousand volumes. The
reason, however, of its present greatness, so far beyond the rivalry of
later establishments, is, that it was in active operation at the birth
of printing, and received the first-born of the press. There they have
been sheltered and preserved, while their unprotected brethren, tossed
about in the world outside, have long disappeared, and passed out of
existence for ever.
Among the popular notions passing current as duly certified axioms, just
because they have never been questioned and examined, one is, that,
since the age of printing, no book once put to press has ever died. The
notion is quite inconsistent with fact. When we count by hundreds of
thousands the books that are in the Paris Library, and not to be had for
the British Museum, we know the number of books which a chance refuge
has protected from the general destruction, and can readily see, in
shadowy bulk, though we cannot estimate in numbers, the great mass
which, having found no refuge, have disappeared out of separate
existence, and been mingled up with the other elements of the earth's
crust.
We have many accounts of the marvellous preservation of books after they
have become rare--the snatching of them as brands from the burning;
their hairbreadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach. It would be
interesting, also, to have some account of the progress of destruction
among books. A work dedicated apparently to this object, which I have
been unable to find in the body, is mentioned under a very tantalising
title. It is by a certain John Charles Conrad Oelrichs, author of
several scraps of literary history, and is called a Dissertation
concerning the Fates of Libraries and Books, and, in the first place,
concerning the books that have been eaten--such I take to be the meaning
of "Dissertatio de Bibliothecarum ac Librorum Fatis, imprimis libris
comestis." This is nearly as tantalising as the wooden-legged
Britisher's explanation to the inquisitive Yankee, who solemnly engaged
to ask not another question were he told how that leg was lost, and was
accordingly told that "it was bitten off."
Nor is there anything to allay the curiosity thus excited in finding
that the French, in the all-comprehensive spirit of their classification
and nomenclature, include the book-eater with the decorous title
Bibliophage, seeing that in so gossiping a work as Peignot's
Dictionnaire de Bibliologie, all that is communicated under this
department is, "Bibliophage signifie celui qui mange des livres." We are
not favoured with any examples explanatory of the kind of books most in
demand by those addicted to this species of food, nor of the effect of
the different classes of books on the digestive organs.
Religious and political intolerance has, as all the world knows, been a
terrible enemy to literature, not only by absolute suppression, but by
the restraints of the licenser. So little was literary freedom indeed
understood anywhere until recent days, that it was only by an accident
after the Revolution that the licensing of books was abolished in
England. The new licenser, Edmond Bohun, happened in fact to be a
Jacobite, and though he professed to conform to the Revolution
Settlement, his sympathies with the exiled house disabled him from
detecting disaffection skilfully smothered, and the House of Commons, in
a rage, abolished his office by refusing to renew the Licensing Act. Of
the extent to which literature has suffered by suppression, there are no
data for a precise estimate. It might bring out some curious results,
however, were any investigator to tell us of the books which had been
effectually put down after being in existence. It would of course be
found that the weak were crushed, while the strong flourished. Among the
valuable bibliographical works of Peignot, is a dictionary of books
which have been condemned to the flames, suppressed, or censured. We do
not require to go far through his alphabet to see how futile the
burnings and condemnations have been in their effect on the giants of
literature. The first name of all is that of Abelard, and so going on we
pick up the witty scamp Aretin, then pass on to D'Aubigne the great
warrior and historian, Bayle, Beaumarchais, Boulanger, Catullus,
Charron, Condillac, Crebillon, and so on, down to Voltaire and Wicliffe.
Wars and revolutions have of course done their natural work on many
libraries, yet the mischief effected by them has often been more visible
than real, since they have tended rather to dispersion than destruction.
The total loss to literature by the dispersion of the libraries of the
monastic establishments in England, is probably not nearly so great as
that which has accompanied the chronic mouldering away of the treasures
preserved so obstinately by the lazy monks of the Levant, who were found
by Mr Curzon at their public devotions laying down priceless volumes
which they could not read, to protect their dirty feet from the cold
floor. In the wildest times the book repository often partakes in the
good fortune of the humble student whom the storm passes over. In the
hour of danger, too, some friend who keeps a quiet eye upon its safety
may interpose at the critical moment. The treasures of the French
libraries were certainly in terrible danger when Robespierre had before
him the draft of a decree, that "the books of the public libraries of
Paris and the departments should no longer be permitted to offend the
eyes of the republic by shameful marks of servitude." The word would
have gone forth, and a good deal beyond the mere marks of servitude
would have been doubtless destroyed, had not the emergency called forth
the courage and energies of Renouard and Didot.[59]
[Footnote 59: Edwards on Libraries, vol. ii. p. 272.]
There are probably false impressions abroad as to the susceptibility of
literature to destruction by fire. Books are not good fuel, as,
fortunately, many a housemaid has found, when, among other frantic
efforts and failures in fire-lighting, she has reasoned from the false
data of the inflammability of a piece of paper. In the days when
heretical books were burned, it was necessary to place them on large
wooden stages, and after all the pains taken to demolish them,
considerable readable masses were sometimes found in the embers; whence
it was supposed that the devil, conversant in fire and its effects, gave
them his special protection. In the end it was found easier and cheaper
to burn the heretics themselves than their books.
Thus books can be burned, but they don't burn, and though in great fires
libraries have been wholly or partially destroyed, we never hear of a
library making a great conflagration like a cotton mill or a tallow
warehouse. Nay, a story is told of a house seeming irretrievably on
fire, until the flames, coming in contact with the folio Corpus Juris
and the Statutes at Large, were quite unable to get over this joint
barrier, and sank defeated. When anything is said about the burning of
libraries, Alexandria at once flares up in the memory; but it is
strange how little of a satisfactory kind investigators have been able
to make out, either about the formation or destruction of the many
famous libraries collected from time to time in that city. There seems
little doubt that Caesar's auxiliaries unintentionally burnt one of them;
its contents were probably written on papyrus, a material about as
inflammable as dried reeds or wood-shavings. As to that other burning in
detail, when the collection was used for fuel to the baths, and lasted
some six weeks--surely never was there a greater victim of historical
prejudice and calumny than the "ignorant and fanatical" Caliph Omar al
Raschid. Over and over has this act been disproved, and yet it will
continue to be reasserted with uniform pertinacity in successive rolling
sentences, all as like each other as the successive billows in a swell
at sea.[60]
[Footnote 60: One of the latest inquirers who has gone over the ground
concludes his evidence thus: "Omar ne vint pas a Alexandrie; et s'il y
fut venu, il n'eut pas trouve des livres a bruler. La bibliotheque
n'existait plus depuis deux siecles et demi."--Fournier, L'Esprit dans
l'Histoire. What shall we say to the story told by Zonaras and repeated
by Pancirole, of the burning, in the reign of the Emperor Basilisc, of
the library of Constantinople, containing one hundred and twenty
thousand volumes, and among them a copy of the Iliad and the Odyssey,
written in golden letters on parchment made from the intestines of the
dragon?]
Apart, however, from violence and accident, there is a constant decay of
books from what might be called natural causes, keeping, like the decay
of the human race, a proportion to their reproduction, which varies
according to place or circumstance; here showing a rapid increase where
production outruns decay, and there a decrease where the morbid elements
of annihilation are stronger than the active elements of reproduction.
Indeed, volumes are in their varied external conditions very like human
beings. There are some stout and others frail--some healthy and others
sickly; and it happens often that the least robust are the most
precious. The full fresh health of some of the folio fathers and
schoolmen, ranged side by side in solemn state on the oaken shelves of
some venerable repository, is apt to surprise those who expect mouldy
decay; the stiff hard binding is as angular as ever,--there is no
abrasion of the leaves, not a single dog-ear or a spot, or even a
dust-border on the mellowed white of the margin. So, too, of those
quarto civilians and canonists of Leyden and Amsterdam, with their
smooth white vellum coats, bearing so generic a resemblance to Dutch
cheeses, that they might be supposed to represent the experiments of
some Gouda dairyman on the quadrature of the circle. An easy life and an
established position in society are the secret of their excellent
preservation and condition. Their repose has been little disturbed by