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 REMARKS 
 
 PEACTICE AND POLICY OF LENDING 
 
 BODLEIAN 
 
 PRINTED BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS. 
 
 HENRY W. CHANDLER, M.A. 
 
 FELLOW OF PEMBBOKE COLLEGE, OXFORD J 
 
 WAYNFLETE PBOFESSOB OF MOBAL AND METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY, 
 AND A CUBATOB OF THE BODLEIAN LIBBABY. 
 
 B. H. BLACKWELL, 
 
 50 AMD 51, BROAD STREET. 
 
 1887.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE present ' Remarks ' are a reprint, with many 
 omissions and additions, of two privately printed 
 papers which were communicated to the Curators 
 last year. From November, 1884, for about twelve 
 months, I did very little more than watch atten- 
 tively the way in which Bodleian business is 
 transacted, to me at once a novelty and a sur- 
 prise. For some purposes writing is preferable 
 to talking, and accordingly in November, 1885, 
 I printed a memorandum containing many gentle 
 hints Qwvavra avvtrolaiv which I faintly hoped 
 might eventually prove beneficial to the Library. 
 Next came a Memorandum 'on the Classed Cata- 
 logue/ a thing which some Curators look on as a 
 most valuable work, and others as an interminable 
 and wasteful absurdity. This was followed by a 
 paper ' on the Bodleian Coins and Medals ', with 
 some observations on the proposal to transfer the 
 collection to the Ashmolean Museum. As far as 
 could be seen, all this expenditure of ink and 
 money did no harm, and no good. In May, 1886, 
 a committee was appointed to draw up regulations 
 for loans of books ; and in June the Curators re- 
 ceived a paper ' on the lending of Bodleian Books 
 and Manuscripts/ as also Bishop Barlow's Argu- 
 ment against lending them, then for the first time 
 
 2068095
 
 IV 
 
 printed as a whole ; and in both the illegality of 
 the borrowers' list was pointed out, and very 
 broad hints given, not only that the present loan 
 statute is defective, but why, and in what manner 
 it is so. If these hints, facts, and arguments had 
 been addressed to the twelve signs of the Zodiac, 
 they could not have produced less visible effect ; 
 and it was wonderfully amusing to find, that more 
 than half my brethren could not for the life of 
 them see what to everybody else was plain as a 
 pikestaff; so on we went in the well-beaten path, 
 steady as old Time himself, looking neither to 
 the right hand nor to the left, and, what is more 
 remarkable, never for one moment looking ahead. 
 Finally, at the beginning of October, came a paper 
 on ' Book-lending as practised at the Bodleian ' ; 
 and this proved to be the last straw; for on 
 October 30th, partly by words and partly by that 
 silence which gives consent, it was plainly inti- 
 mated that these papers were unwelcome. One 
 friend, and only one, had a good word to say for 
 them ; so far as they contained collection of facts 
 he approved of them, but no further. As my little 
 experiment failed so lamentably, I am hardly likely 
 to repeat it, or to put so severe a strain on the good 
 nature and patience of my colleagues as ever again 
 to trouble them with a scrap of printed paper. 
 This puts me into a sort of quandary. I abhor 
 pen and ink, and should like to hold my tongue 
 and spare my pocket; but that is impossible as 
 things are. I cannot stand by and see men who
 
 know no better trying (with the best possible in- 
 tentions) to get the Bodleian on to an inclined 
 plane, down which it must rapidly slide to per- 
 dition, without loudly protesting against their acts. 
 What then is to be done? Private feelings must 
 be respected, yet not so as to impede the per- 
 formance of a duty to the Library and to the 
 University. The atmosphere of a meeting is not 
 conducive to calm and rational discussion; I can- 
 not make speeches; the board does not relish 
 either facts or arguments in print. Only one 
 course remains then ; whenever there is anything 
 to be said about the Bodleian or its management 
 (and there is much that ought to be, and must 
 be said sooner or later), it shall no longer be 
 privately printed and given away to unwilling 
 recipients, but published and sold. In this way 
 all parties will be satisfied : those who are interested 
 in the Library can buy ; those who are not, can 
 protect themselves against annoyance. So much 
 by way of explanation. 
 
 When at length the board determined to apply 
 for a new statute, and did in November what any- 
 body but ourselves would have done in June, the 
 hope was expressed that the statute would be 
 introduced at once, and then pushed through 
 Congregation and Convocation as rapidly as pos- 
 sible in the present term ; whereupon somebody 
 observed, that it would be just as well not to 
 hurry the business ; and this seems to have been 
 the view adopted by Council.
 
 VI 
 
 If Convocation could only seize the full signifi- 
 cance and incalculable value to present and future 
 generations of a library of reference, a library, that 
 is, where, at all lawful times, every book deposited 
 in it should always be forthcoming in a moment, 
 it would at once see that from such a library no 
 lending whatever ought to be permitted, simply 
 because lending and deposit are practical contra- 
 dictories ; and if Convocation could plainly see 
 this, it would make very short work of any statute 
 which legalized loans. There is no denying, how- 
 ever, that in the present day the public mind, as 
 it is playfully called, and the University mind as 
 well, is in a wonderfully flabby condition. Nobody 
 seems to be thoroughly convinced of the un- 
 questionable truth, that every possible plan in this 
 world is open to objections more or less serious, 
 and so they go hunting about for a scheme that 
 shall embrace all good and exclude all evil; such 
 people are emphatically limp and unpractical. All 
 that is offered to our choice here below is a 
 lesser evil, and experience has proved over and 
 over again, that it is a lesser evil never to lend 
 a book out of such a library as the Bodleian, v than 
 it is to lend one. But if the University in its 
 inscrutable wisdom should choose to do the wrong 
 thing, there are more ways than one of doing it, 
 
 taOXoi juev 70^ aTrAwe, TravroSairwQ Se KUKOI. 
 
 It might, for instance, confine the actual granting 
 of a loan to Convocation. If an application for 
 a book were made, the University might impose
 
 Vll 
 
 on the Curators the duty of stating in writing their 
 reasons for advocating the loan, and Convocation 
 might determine to lend, if it judged those reasons 
 to be sound. This would be an approximation to 
 what was the law (though not by any means the 
 practice) prior to 1873; nor could it be described 
 as a retrograde step, unless the reformation of a 
 bad habit is necessarily a step backwards. 
 
 If, however, the University resolves to copy the 
 practice of foreign libraries, it might be wise, first, 
 to appoint a small committee to discover and report 
 what that practice really is. If, like a mob of 
 monkeys, we are determined to imitate, it is just as 
 well that our imitation should be a good one, and 
 not a caricature. 
 
 In either, or indeed in any, case some effectual 
 provision should be made for enforcing the statute ; 
 it ought no longer to be possible for the Curators 
 to act with impunity as they have been in the habit 
 of acting for almost a quarter of a century. 
 
 A good many of my friends are strong party 
 men of a more or less rabid type, and I hope 
 that they are well informed when they tell me that 
 this purely literary question about the Bodleian is 
 not going to be turned into one of those faction 
 fights, which occasionally disturb and disgrace this 
 place ; but that each man will judge for himself, and 
 vote accordingly, without divesting himself of what 
 little reason he may happen to possess, and blindly 
 following a leader, who may know and care less about 
 the matter than he does himsejf. I hope that it
 
 Vlll 
 
 will be so, yet I have my doubts ; for this vile spirit 
 of faction clings like the robe of Nessus to all who 
 have ever been weak enough, or wicked enough, 
 to yield to its temptations ; and one side is just 
 as bad as the other. Whether Convocation can be 
 got to see the real question in these unlearned and 
 vulgar times may be questionable ; at any rate, I 
 should have felt myself a traitor to Bodley, to 
 Oxford, and to learning itself, if I had not done 
 what little I could to prevent an act, which, if per- 
 petrated, must end, sooner or later, in the irreparable 
 damage, or the complete destruction of a library 
 intended by its founder to be a perpetual help to 
 all true scholars, an inexhaustible treasure-house of 
 learning to last as long as England itself. 
 
 H. W. C. 
 
 Oxford, 
 Jan. 15th, 1887.
 
 Remarks on the Practice and Policy of lending 
 Bodleian Printed Books and Manuscripts. 
 
 BEFORE offering any remarks on the policy of lending 
 books out of the Bodleian Library it may be well to give 
 a brief account of the practice of lending, so far as it 
 has been sanctioned there. From the foundation of the 
 Library down to 1873, though practised, it cannot be said 
 to have been sanctioned at all, except as regards certain 
 books given on the condition that they should be lent. 
 
 On the 20th of June, 1610, a complete Bodleian Statute 
 was promulgated and confirmed in Convocation (Appendix 
 Statutorum, p. 5 sqq. ed. 1763). This statute was drawn 
 up by Sir Thomas Bodley himself, and the eighth section 
 of it 'de Libris extra Bibliothecam non ferendis, aut 
 ullo modo commodandis ' fully expresses his firm and 
 rooted detestation of book-lending. Bodley's own words, 
 of which the Latin statute is a literal translation, run 
 thus : 
 
 "And sith the sundry Examples of former Ages, as 
 well in this University, as in other Places of the Realm, 
 have taught us over-often, that the frequent Loan of 
 Books, hath bin a principal occasion of the Ruin and 
 Destruction of many famous Libraries ; It is therefore 
 ordered and decreed to be observed as a Statute of irre- 
 vocable Force, that for no Regard, Pretence, or Cause, 
 there shall at any time, any Volume, either of these 
 that are chained, or of others unchained, be given or lent, 
 to any Person or Persons, of -whatsoever State or Calling, 
 upon any kind of Caution, or offer of Security, for his 
 faithful Restitution ; and that no such Book or Volume 
 shall at any time, by any whatsoever, be carried forth 
 of the Library, for any longer space, or other uses, and 
 
 B
 
 Purposes, than, if need so require, to be sold away for 
 altogether, as being superfluous or unprofitable; or changed 
 for some other of a better Edition ; or being over-worn 
 to be new bound again, and immediately returned, from 
 whence it was removed. For the Execution whereof 
 in every Particular, there shall no Man intermeddle, but 
 the Keeper himself alone, who is also to proceed with 
 the Knowledge, Liking, and Direction of those Publick 
 Overseers, whose Authority we will notify in other Statutes 
 ensuing 3 ." 
 
 This statute has the great merit of being so plain and 
 clear, that no one could mistake its meaning. It was 
 further fenced about by the statute *de materia indispen- 
 sabili,' Tit. X. 11. 5, as explained in 'Barlow's Argu- 
 ment,' p. 6. It was not totally and absolutely impossible 
 to borrow a book from the Bodleian, but it was only 
 Convocation, moved to the act in a solemn and specified 
 way, that could by any legal means lend it. From 1610 
 to 1856, then, such was the law which everybody in the 
 University was bound to obey, and, as far as I can discover, 
 everybody did obey it, with the few exceptions that will 
 presently be mentioned. 
 
 In 1624 William, Bishop of Lincoln, wished to borrow 
 a book, but was denied b . In 1628 Sir Thomas Roe gave 
 twenty-nine manuscripts, and " proposed that his books 
 should be permitted to be lent out for purposes of printing, 
 on proper security being given ; a proposition which was 
 accepted by Convocation ." In 1629 the Earl of Pembroke 
 presented the Barocci Collection, and "he was willing 
 that the MSS. should, if necessary, be allowed to be 
 borrowed." Borrowed accordingly they were, and one 
 at least suffered irreparable injury in very early days d . 
 In 1634 we were presented with Sir Kenelm Digby's 
 splendid manuscripts : " the donor stipulated that they 
 should not be strictly confined to use within the walls 
 
 Reliquiae Bodleianse, p. 27. b Barlow's Argument, p. 9. 
 
 * Macray, Annals, p. 51. d Barlow, p. 10; Macray, Annals, p. 55.
 
 of the Library ;" but afterwards left the University to 
 treat them as it pleased 6 ; so that they fell under the 
 general Bodleian Statute. 
 
 Between 1635 and 1640 came Laud's magnificent do- 
 nations. He " directs in his letter of gift, that none 
 of the books shall on any account be taken out of the 
 Library ' nisi solum ut typis mandentur, et sic publici 
 et juris et utilitatis fiant,' upon sufficient security, to 
 be approved by the Vice-Chancellor and Proctors; the 
 MS. in such cases being immediately after printing restored 
 to its place in the Library*." This stipulation of Laud 
 should be carefully borne in mind, because it will be 
 found that of late years the Curators have not observed 
 the terms of the gift. Doubtless they did not know 
 what Laud's directions were ; yet men who undertake 
 the office of trustees are bound to know their duties. 
 In 1636 the University refused leave to Laud himself, 
 who wished to borrow Rob. Hare's MS. Liber Privilegiorum 
 Universitatis 5 . In 1645 Charles I, in ignorance of our 
 statutes, applied for a book and was refused ; in 1654 
 Cromwell wanted a book for the Portuguese Ambassador, 
 and was likewise refused h ; and it is much to the credit 
 of both, that they not only acquiesced, but expressed 
 their approval of the Bodleian rule. 
 
 On August 29, 1654, a grace was passed in Convocation, 
 which permitted Selden to borrow MSS. from the col- 
 lections of Barocci, Roe, and Digby, provided he did not 
 have more than three at a time, and that he gave bond 
 in 100 (not 1000 as Hearne states') for the return 
 of each of them within a yearJ. Barlow k declares that 
 this was illegal and null ; and it may be observed in passing 
 that the whole history of the Selden bequest needs fresh 
 investigation. This same year that grand scholar's books 
 began to arrive in Oxford, and his executors stipulated, 
 
 e Macray, Annals, p. 59. f Macray, Annals, p. 61. 
 
 E Macray, Annals, p. 82. h Barlow's Argument, p. 9. 
 
 ' Barlow's Argument, p. 3. J Macray, Annals, p. 79. 
 k Argument, p. 8. 
 
 B2
 
 as a condition of the gift, that no book from his collection 
 should hereafter be lent to any person upon any condition 
 whatsoever. This also must by no means be forgotten, 
 because we shall by and by see the Curators again and 
 again strangely oblivious of the conditions on which the 
 University received these invaluable books. 
 
 At the Visitation on Nov. 8, 1686, it was ordered that 
 notice be given that ' nullus in posterum quemlibet librum 
 aut volumen extra Bibliothecam asportet,' and that mo- 
 nition be sent to every College and Hall for the return of 
 any books taken out within three days '. 
 
 In 1789 a lazy and incompetent Librarian, John Price, 
 is said to have lent the Rector of Lincoln a copy of Cook's 
 Voyages, presented to the Library by George III, telling 
 him that the longer he kept it the better, 'for if it 
 was known to be in the Library, he (Price) should be 
 perpetually plagued with enquiries after it m .' What the 
 Curators were about to permit such irregularities it is 
 difficult to imagine ; at any rate here you had eight picked 
 men Dr. Joseph Chapman, President of Trinity, Vice- 
 Chancellor ; the two Proctors ; Dr. Randolph, Professor of 
 Divinity, and afterwards successively Bishop of Oxford and 
 of Bangor ; Dr. Vansittart, Professor of Civil Law ; Dr. 
 Vivian, Professor of Medicine ; Dr. Blayney, Professor 
 of Hebrew ; William Jackson, Professor of Greek and 
 afterwards Bishop of Oxford : they are men, citizens, 
 members of a learned corporation, trustees; they have 
 solemnly sworn by everything which they profess to hold 
 sacred, that they will faithfully observe the statutes ; and 
 what was required of them ? As much sense of duty as 
 you expect and commonly find in a watcher or a game- 
 keeper; yet, till they were roused by the public protest 
 of Dr. Beddowes, they seem to have shewed no trace or 
 feeling of responsibility at all. 
 
 Down to the year 1856 the Bodleian Curators were 
 eight in number, namely, the Vice-Chancellor, the two 
 
 1 Macray, Annals, p. 109. m Macray, Annals, p. 198.
 
 Proctors, and the Regius Professors of Divinity, Hebrew, 
 Greek, Medicine, and Civil Law. Eight is rather a large 
 number, and the larger any board is the weaker becomes 
 the sense of personal responsibility. No man feels that 
 he is answerable for anything, because he is sunk and 
 extinguished in a majority or a minority ; and yet, without 
 a keen sense of personal responsibility, all business is 
 laxly and badly done, even when it is done at all. The 
 artificial privacy of our proceedings is also an evil. In 
 theory all our meetings are public, so far at least as 
 Convocation is concerned ; in fact, they are private ; yet, 
 if the University always knew not only what is done, 
 but who it is that does it; if our acts were duly published, 
 as they ought to be, in the University Gazette, probably 
 both board and University would be the better for it, 
 and it is certain that the affairs of the Library would be 
 none the worse. 
 
 If Bodley argued that men who teach a subject are 
 necessarily acquainted with its literature, and are con- 
 sequently the fittest guardians arid directors of a library, 
 he argued very badly, and in ignorance of facts. Ability 
 to teach a subject is one thing; knowledge of the literature 
 of that subject such knowledge as is required in the 
 superintendents of a library is a totally different thing. 
 The two may be indeed united, but very rarely are so. 
 A man, for instance, may be a finished Latin scholar 
 without ever having heard of Coster's Donatus, and with- 
 out being able to offer an opinion on that or on any of 
 the other editions in which Dutch libraries glory. Pro- 
 bably not one man in fifty who reads the sentence which 
 I have just written will have the very remotest idea of 
 its true meaning; and if he has not, it will not follow 
 that he is a dunce, or that he is a poor Latinist; all 
 that follows is that he has much to learn before he is 
 fit to take any part in the management of a large library. 
 What is wanted, what in fact is necessary, is that sort 
 of knowledge which the Italian government proposes to 
 give to all employed in the libraries under its control.
 
 8 
 
 In Rome and in Florence a course of bibliographical 
 instruction and examination has lately been instituted. 
 The syllabus of the course, which is a very good one, 
 lies before me, and in it the subject is divided into six 
 parts : 1 . Paleografi a, 2. Bibliologia, 3. Bibliografia, 4. Biblio- 
 teconomia, 5. Amministrazione, 6. Lingue. The knowledge 
 required is neither recondite nor profound, yet I shudder 
 to think what the result would be were we Curators to 
 submit ourselves to the tender mercies of this Italian 
 board. To speak for myself, I should have faced such 
 an examination without the least trepidation some twenty 
 years ago ; but now, though I have been trying to brush 
 up faded knowledge, I would not stake a single sixpence 
 on a favorable issue; and to judge from all 1 have seen 
 and heard during the last two years, I suspect that, though 
 a few might perhaps scramble through, the great majority 
 of us would emerge from the ordeal more completely 
 plucked than was the unhappy bird, which Diogenes in* 
 troduced to the astonished disciples with the words ' Here 
 is Plato's man!' 
 
 In 1856 the University, probably suspecting that the 
 board as originally constituted was not the best that 
 could be devised, yet timidly shrinking from a radical 
 and salutary reform, endeavoured to improve matters by 
 a measure which, if it remedied one defect, unquestionably 
 increased another. It made a board already too large, 
 still larger by the addition of five members elected by 
 Congregation. In the course of thirty years fourteen 
 different men have been so elected. That all were properly 
 qualified to discharge the duties of their office no one 
 will assert who knows what those qualifications are. Why 
 they were chosen the University best knows. If Congre- 
 gation would but remember what a unique and priceless 
 treasure it possesses in this noble library, if it only knew 
 how easy it is for rashness and ignorance to damage and 
 to ruin it, how difficult it is even for knowledge to pre- 
 serve it, ability and willingness to serve it would be the 
 indispensable and the only qualifications demanded, and
 
 9 
 
 neither age nor rank, dignity, nor above all party, would 
 be for one moment taken into account. It may be re- 
 marked that all the thirteen Curators very rarely attend 
 a meeting : in the course of the last two years such a 
 thing has happened once only ; but a board, the members 
 of which attend intermittently, is apt to show signs of 
 discontinuity in its proceedings; and a firm, consistent 
 policy is as necessary in the management of a library as 
 it is in any other affair of life. What is wanted in 
 Curators is common sense, business capacity, and a special 
 knowledge of books. No one would dream of appoint- 
 ing any man an inspector of locomotives on a railway, 
 unless he were thoroughly acquainted with the structure 
 and working of a locomotive, and capable, at a push, of 
 driving it himself: a large library is as complex as a 
 locomotive, and quite as difficult to manage effectively. 
 Experts, who are not so numerous as might be supposed, 
 will back me in this assertion ; but Convocation must not 
 be astonished if it is hotly and contemptuously denied. 
 
 The minutes of the Curators' Meetings begin on March 
 20, 1793, and, with a break of some four years when there 
 are none (from Nov. 26, 1849, to May 27, 1854), they 
 continue to the present time. 
 
 On Dec. 7, 1803, four printed books were allowed to go 
 out of the Library 'for the use of the Clarendon Press, 
 to be returned when done with,' contrary to statute so 
 far as appears ; and there was a somewhat similar trans- 
 action on June 2, 1815. 
 
 On Nov. 27, 1841, the sum of 500 was paid for the 
 Sanscrit MSS. of Prof. H. H. Wilson, who 'stipulated that 
 the Boden Professor of Sanscrit for the time being should 
 be allowed the privilege of borrowing MSS. (not more 
 than two volumes at one time), giving for them a receipt, 
 and engagement for their safe return.' 
 
 In 1850 came the Government Commission. The Com- 
 missioners have a good deal to say about the Bodleian, 
 which will be found in their Report made in 1852, p. 115 
 sqq. I do not quote their remarks for a reason which
 
 10 
 
 appears to me valid. There were seven Commissioners 
 all told, and although they were very eminent persons, 
 there was not one amongst them, so far as I can discover, 
 who had any special knowledge of libraries, or of the 
 best way of managing them. Moreover, I myself heard 
 one of those seven Commissioners say, more than once 
 in the course of conversation, that he should think it 
 no particular misfortune if the Bodleian and its contents 
 were totally destroyed. Nor do I feel called upon to 
 incur the expense of reproducing in extenso the evidence 
 on which the Commissioners based their recommendations. 
 It may be sufficient to say that the following witnesses 
 were in favour of the lending system, some with restrictions 
 and some with hardly any : the Rev. R. W. Browne ; the 
 Rev. R. Walker ; the Rev. B. Jowett ; the Rev. W. H. 
 Cox ; E. A. Freeman, Esq. ; the Rev. H. Wall ; the Rev. 
 R. Congreve ; Sir E. Head ; N. S. Maskelyne, Esq. ; and 
 the Rev. J. Griffiths. It is not very easy to say whether 
 Prof. H. H. Wilson and Dr. Greenhill did or did not 
 belong to the lending party ; but if they did, they proposed 
 such restrictions as would materially lessen the evil. Prof. 
 H. H. Vaughan (a most wordy person) wished to confine 
 the right of borrowing to the Professors. Against lending 
 were H. E. Strickland, Esq.; Prof. W. F. Donkin; the 
 Rev. R. Scott ; Travers Twiss, Esq. ; Dr. Macbride ; the 
 Rev. E. S. Ffoulkes ; and Dr. Phillimore : and I hope 
 nobody will be offended if I say that knowledge of books 
 and the way to use them is, as might be expected, very 
 much more conspicuous in those who oppose lending than 
 in those who advocate it. The Rev. R. W. Browne observes, 
 that ' probably manuscripts and such books as are unable 
 to be replaced should not be lent, because it would be 
 quite worth the while of those who wished to consult 
 them to visit the Library for that purpose.' It is not 
 often that one meets with so cogent a piece of reasoning, 
 and Mr. Browne's ' because ' proves that he had studied 
 Logic with considerable benefit; he also thinks that the 
 system in the Public Library at Cambridge ' works well.'
 
 11 
 
 Another witness tells us that * the experience of the Cam- 
 bridge University Library, and of many foreign libraries, 
 shews that this [i. e. lending under certain restrictions] 
 can be done without danger, and with small loss compared 
 to the immense benefit obtained by it.' Sir Edmund 
 Head also admires the Gottingen and Cambridge plan, 
 and avers that experience has proved that the risk of loss 
 and damage is groundless. How different are these airy 
 speculations from the hard facts of Mr. Bradshaw the 
 Cambridge Librarian, of the Librarian of the Advocates' 
 Library at Edinburgh, and of Mr. Panizzi (see below, 
 p. 50 sqq.) ; but then these gentlemen had the immense 
 and perhaps unfair advantage of knowing what they were 
 talking about. 
 
 In 1853 a Report and Evidence upon the recommendations 
 of H. M.'s Commissioners was presented to the Heads of 
 Houses. " The Committee think that the opportunity 
 at present allowed for lending books in special cases, by 
 permission of Convocation, is sufficient to meet extreme 
 cases ; and that it is unnecessary to give power to the 
 Curators to lend books from the Library." 
 
 Dr. Pusey's evidence (p. 172) is that of a man who 
 knows something of books, and he points out how very 
 fallacious is Sir E. Head's reference to the Gottingen 
 Library, which is altogether of a different character from 
 the Bodleian. " In 1825 it consisted almost entirely of 
 modern books, and whatever accessions it may since have 
 had, it cannot, like the Bodleian, have any large proportion 
 of books, which, if lost, could not be replaced." Dr. Pusey 
 is strongly against lending Bodleian books ; but how little 
 of principle there was in his objection will be seen further 
 on, where we shall find him more than once advocating 
 loans. The Rev. C. Marriott is also, on very sensible 
 grounds, against lending; yet it should in common fair- 
 ness be known that he borrowed a most valuable manuscript 
 out of Oriel College Library, and died with it in his 
 possession. It was nearly sent to Africa by his executors, 
 and was at last, together with other books, actually given
 
 12 
 
 (in all innocence of course) to Bradfield College, from 
 which establishment Oriel at last retrieved it: so that 
 in his case, as in that of Dr. Pusey, excellent principles 
 were joined to very loose practice. 
 
 Dr. Bandinel, Bodley's Librarian, gives evidence which 
 is short and sweet. " However weighty some reasons may 
 appear, the evidence materially preponderates against 
 lending books out of the Library. I need only quote 
 one great authority, that of Niebuhr," which he does ; 
 the passage is given below, p. 49. Dr. Bandinel also 
 adds, " I have had a long conversation with the Librarian 
 of the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh, who stated, that 
 upon comparing the books in that Library with their 
 different Catalogues previous to the formation of a new 
 Catalogue, it was found that owing to the practice of 
 lending books from the Library they had lost upwards 
 of 6000, indeed very near 7000 works." Evidence, p. 325 ; 
 an 'instructive comment on the lending system. 
 
 About this time, however, ' University Reform,' the 
 true meaning of which most of us here know, was in 
 the air, and on May 22, 1856, the old Library Statutes 
 were abolished and an entirely new one enacted. Bodley's 
 own statute against letting books go out of the Library 
 was of course abrogated. That Convocation still retained 
 the right to lend is beyond question ; but did any- 
 body else, Curators or Librarian, acquire the right to 
 do so ? That the University did not intend to convey 
 any such right seems perfectly clear; for the llth clause 
 of the new statute (which is identical with the present 
 statute, Tit. XX. iii. 11, paragraphs 1 to 6) is headed 
 " De libris extra Bibliothecam ad tempus detinendis, aut 
 etiam efferendis." Now whoever says ' or even to have them 
 takjen out,' and then proceeds to order whither they shall be 
 taken, namely to the Camera, forbids by implication their 
 removal from the Library on any other terms, or to any 
 other place than those expressly mentioned. That the 
 University, whatever its intentions may have been, did 
 not as a matter of fact convey the right to any one is
 
 13 
 
 obvious from the statute itself; and as the Curators never 
 at any time possessed the right of "lending books, it is 
 equally plain that they could not acquire it without an 
 express commission from the University. That the Curators 
 themselves were of this opinion is clear from a resolution 
 of theirs arrived at on Oct. 29, 1859, more than three 
 years after the statute was passed. I should say that 
 in the interval no loan was sanctioned by Convocation, 
 or, so far as appears, even applied for. On Oct. 29, 1859, 
 nine Curators being present, 'The Vice-Chancellor men- 
 tioned the desire of the Rev. Mr. to be allowed 
 
 to have books out of the Bodleian Library for the purposes 
 of study by Grace of Convocation. The Curators re- 
 solved : That it was not expedient that such a proposition 
 should be made to Convocation.' The Curators, or a 
 majority of them, did not dream of arrogating to them- 
 selves the power of lending, and they, as well as the 
 applicant, assume as self-evident that books could not be 
 borrowed. Books could be sent to the Camera; they 
 could not go elsewhere without the sanction of Convo- 
 cation. The new statute then did not make lending 
 (except by Convocation) lawful, nor was there any in- 
 tention to make it lawful. 
 
 That same year, on Nov. 8, a Curator gave notice 
 that he would move : ' That Books and MSS. be taken 
 out of the Bodleian Library under special conditions with 
 consent of the Curators ;' that is, according to my view 
 of the case, he gave notice of a motion to take by force 
 and illegally a power which the University had not 
 given ; but it does not appear by the minutes that any 
 such motion was actually made. 
 
 On Oct. 25, 1860, * leave was granted by Convocation for 
 the lending two Laud Manuscripts, 561 and 563, being 
 copies of the Historia Hierosoylmitana, by Albert of 
 Aix, to the French Government 11 .' Of this loan there is, 
 I believe, no trace in the minutes, but it is one more 
 
 " Macray, Annals, p. 295.
 
 14 
 
 proof that the Curators, or a majority of them, did not 
 believe either in their right or in their power to lend 
 books. Whether Convocation lent these two Laudian 
 manuscripts under bond duly approved, and for the pur- 
 poses of publication, Mr. Macray does not state ; but it 
 looks very much as if the University was just as ignorant 
 of its obligations as the Curators of a later date were of 
 theirs. 
 
 On Feb. 4, 1862, a man applied for a printed book, 
 which he wanted for a law case in which he was engaged ; 
 the result was this : " Resolved That, there being nothing 
 in the present statutes to forbid the exercise of the dis- 
 cretion of the Curators in such a case, the book in question 
 be lent, under such securities and with such precautions as 
 the Librarian may deem necessary." Let any man read the 
 eleventh and twelfth sections of the present Bodleian 
 Statute (identical, so far as the present question is con- 
 cerned, with that of 1856), and he will see that no discretion 
 is left to the Curators at all ; there is no hint, however 
 faint, of " such a case." In 1862, Feb. 4, the Curators 
 assume that they have a power to lend books ; on Nov. 7 
 of the same year they go a step further, for they leave it 
 * to the discretion of the Librarian to lend, if he shall deem 
 fit, a certain MS. to the Belgian Government.' Having 
 themselves no power to lend, they authorise the Librarian 
 to lend if he chooses. 
 
 In 1863, Feb. 17, notice was given of the following 
 motion : ' That on application from the Professors teaching 
 at the Museum the Bodley Librarian be empowered to lend, 
 for a limited time, any books bearing on the subjects there 
 taught that are wanted by the Students at the Museum ; 
 the books to be returned at the end of each term :' and 
 on March 17 of the same year this motion was carried 
 with certain alterations, ' and it was resolved that it should 
 be referred to the Council with a view on their approval 
 of obtaining the sanction of Convocation'; in other words, 
 the Curators acknowledged that Convocation could lend, 
 and that they themselves could not lawfully do so.
 
 15 
 
 In 1859 the Curators, or a majority of them, are clear 
 that they have no power to lend: in 1862 they assume 
 that they have the power, moreover they exercise it, and 
 they authorise the Librarian to lend a MS. to the Belgian 
 Government; yet on Feb. 16, 1864, they appear to disclaim 
 this power, for they resolve, 'That it be proposed to Con- 
 vocation to lend three Icelandic MSS. to the Icelandic 
 Society in Copenhagen at the request of the Danish 
 Minister.' They either had the power to lend, or they 
 had not : if they had, this application to Convocation was 
 unnecessary ; if they had not, they had been occupied for 
 some time in the not very dignified employment of ignoring 
 a statute which it was their peculiar duty to observe. 
 
 On April 20, 1864, Dr. Pusey most inconsistently moves 
 that a Syriac MS. be lent; and on May 11 lent it was. 
 
 In 1865, March 11, a foreigner has leave * to borrow 
 Arabian MSS., provided the application for the use thereof 
 be made through the Saxon Minister, and a bond for 50 
 entered into for the safe return.' 
 
 On June 8, ' the use of Manuscripts 169 187 was 
 granted on the application of Lord John Russell to the 
 French Government for the use of the Imprimerie of Paris 
 [sic] for two months.* 
 
 In 1866 the Curators lent manuscripts to the University 
 Library of Gb'ttingen ; and in 1868, Jan. 31, 'it was 
 resolved to lend MS. Selden B. 31 to the Prussian 
 Government.' Ye Gods and Goddesses ! We only got 
 Selden's books at all by consenting to the condition that 
 they never should be lent under any circumstances what- 
 ever; and here we have five Curators, 'all honorable 
 men,' quietly sending off one of Selden's manuscripts to 
 Germany. On March 21st of the same year, three Curators 
 send off another of Selden's MSS. to London. In 1868 an 
 application for the loan of four Hebrew manuscripts was 
 granted, and apparently they went to a private house. 
 On Feb. 9, 1869, two Curators, one being Dr. Pusey, ' were 
 requested to act in the matter of the loan of Hebrew MSS. 
 to Mr. of College, Cambridge.' On April 17 of
 
 16 
 
 the same year a Laudian MS. was lent to Mr. ; 
 
 there is not a syllable in the minutes about a bond, 
 though that was absolutely necessary, nor any state- 
 ment that the book was required for the purpose of pub- 
 lication ; Laud's stipulations are quietly, and no doubt 
 ignorantly broken under the presidency of the Vice-.Chan- 
 cellor. From this time loans are perpetually being made ; 
 and at least six manuscripts other than those men- 
 tioned above were lent this year. At one meeting (May 
 22) the whole business was the granting of loans. In 
 1870 fifteen MSS. at least were lent, including one of 
 Deuce's -poor fellow ! he little dreamt of the fate in 
 store for his lovely books. One MS. out of the archives 
 was sent to Philadelphia! In 1871 some thirty manu- 
 scripts were lent ; many to private hands ; others to Berlin, 
 Cambridge, and Philadelphia. Not content with these 
 exploits, the Curators positively sent the 39th volume 
 of the Camden Society's publications to Rouen ! In 
 1872 nearly thirty manuscripts were lent: one * subject 
 to the approval of the Librarian,' thus granting to him 
 concurrent authority with themselves. These books went 
 some to private persons ; others to Cambridge, London, 
 Leyden, Berlin, Munster, Leipzic, Kiel, Philadelphia, and 
 elsewhere. The manuscript sent to Munster was an old 
 English book of Laud's ; there was no bond, nor is there 
 any hint that it was lent for publication. Besides manu- 
 scripts they lent printed books, amongst the rest Tyndale's 
 New Testament of 1534! This portentous act was perpe- 
 trated on May 25th, 1872; and the same day there appears 
 this entry on the minutes : ' In reference to applications 
 for loans during the Long Vacation, it was agreed, on 
 the suggestion of the Librarian, that he be empowered 
 in urgent cases, with the assent of two Curators, to grant 
 loans during the Long Vacation ' ; an utterly illegal reso- 
 lution not rescinded till 1886. 
 
 For ten years, ever since 1862, the Curators had been 
 lending, on their own authority, and without a shadow 
 of statutable right, manuscripts and printed books to
 
 17 
 
 persons in Oxford and other parts of England, as well 
 as to foreign countries : will it be believed that on 
 Feb. 8, 1873, the Librarian was asked to state his opinion 
 as to ' the lending of books out of the Library under 
 proper restrictions ; ' and that on Feb. 28 of the same 
 year, ' it was agreed that the Curators should proceed 
 by statute to take power to order the lending out of 
 books under certain restrictions ' ? Why this was the 
 very thing they had been doing for years past ; and 
 now by agreeing * to proceed by statute ' they plainly 
 declare their opinion that for all those years they had 
 been doing something for which they had no statutable 
 warrant. However, they drew up a draft statute which 
 was laid before Council, and Council promptly ' struck 
 out the proposal to lend books out of the Library ; ' 
 whereupon on March 8th, 1873, one of the Curators moved 
 * that Council be requested to insert a provision that books 
 be lent out from evening to morning. This was agreed 
 to'. On which resolution I shall make no remark, for 
 fear my pen might run away with me ; but most people 
 will be able to supply that comment which I refrain 
 from making. 
 
 This very year 1873 they lent the York Missal, unless 
 in the judgment of the Librarian ' too valuable to be 
 lent out of the Library ' : there is a touch of modesty 
 in this which disarms me, otherwise I could say some- 
 thing very true, but very unpleasant. The same year 
 an application was made for one of the Douce MSS., 
 but 'by reason of regulations as to Douce MSS. this 
 was refused.' What regulations these were it would be 
 interesting to know, for I cannot discover that there are 
 at present any regulations, at all events in writing. 
 
 At length the Curators obtained their desire. On 
 March 25, 1873, a form of statute was proposed by one 
 Head of a House and seconded by another, and on 
 May 2, 1873, it was carried without a division in the 
 following shape: (Tit. XX. iii. 11. 10.) Liceat Cura- 
 toribus, sicut mos fuit, libros impresses et manuscriptos,
 
 18 
 
 scientiae causa, viris doctis sive Academicis sive externis 
 mutuari : that is to say, Let it be lawful for the Curators, 
 as the custom has been, to borrow books printed and manu- 
 script in the interest of knowledge for learned men, whether 
 Members of the University or not. A board of grave 
 and learned men viri variis doctrinis et literis imbuti, 
 as the statute says wish to do openly, what they had 
 been in the habit of doing, as it would appear, unknown 
 to Council, and against its wishes (for it 'struck out 
 the proposal to lend books out of the Library ') : there 
 is something droll in that, but it is nothing to what 
 came of it. They petition for leave to lend, walk off 
 perfectly contented with a permission to borrow, and no- 
 body sees the joke ! ' Reform ' seems not only to have 
 impaired our knowledge of Latin, but to have diminished 
 our sense of the ridiculous a most dolorous result. That 
 Convocation intended by this strangely worded statute to 
 convey to the Curators the power to lend books is beyond 
 question ; it is equally beyond question that it conveyed 
 the power to borrow them, for in good Latin and in 
 our statute Latin alike, mutuari means not to lend, but 
 to borrow, as every Latin Dictionary from the Hortus 
 Vocabulorum down to Lewis and Short testifies ; and 
 as to our statute Latin we find : quantum magister .... 
 potest de cista de Guildeforde mutuari (Anstey, p. 99) ; 
 quod magister regens mutuari possit quadraginta solidos 
 (ibid. p. 132); de eadem mutuari poterit ad usum suum 
 proprium .... quinque marcas (ibid. p. 338). As mutuari 
 is correctly used in the barbarous language of our old 
 statutes, so is it in the more polished Latinity of the 
 Laudian code, in which the word occurs once, and I 
 think only once, and as the devil of mischief will have 
 it, in the Bodleian Statute itself, where ' e cista D. Thomas 
 Bodley mutuari ' means * to borrow from Sir Thomas 
 Bodley's chest*. The meaning of the word then is clear 
 beyond dispute, and what it means in one part of the 
 statutes it must mean in another. There is plenty of 
 barbarous Latin in our statute book, but in every case
 
 19 
 
 it is justified or excused by long usage, or by the fact 
 that other learned bodies have constantly used the same 
 or similar language; but the statute of 1873 is probably 
 the only one either in ancient or modern times, where 
 without necessity, without precedent, and without warn- 
 ing, a word which means and always has meant one thing 
 is used under the erroneous impression that it means 
 another, and that not by school-boys, but by their elders. 
 A statute, however, means what it plainly says : with 
 the intentions of a legislative body we have no concern 
 except in so far as they are clearly expressed, and every 
 prudent judge knows what grave evils spring from neglect 
 of this principle of interpretation. (See Dwarris On 
 Statutes, p. 580 sqq.) 
 
 Whether this statute really gives the power to lend 
 may be disputed. On the one hand it may be said, 
 that those who borrow a book for learned men may do 
 what they like with it, and may therefore lend it* At 
 first sight this seems probable and reasonable, but the 
 more it is thought of the less probable does it appear. 
 On the other hand it may be said, that since the statute 
 does not plainly and expressly give the Curators the 
 power to lend, they have no power to do so at all. Be 
 that as it may, no such scruples troubled the minds of 
 the Curators ; every one seems to have been completely 
 mesmerised, and this singular statute was straightway put 
 in practice after a fashion; for on June 23, 1873, 'an 
 
 application from Professor was considered, asking 
 
 for loan of such books or MSS. as he might require, 
 at the discretion of the Librarian, under the provisions of 
 11, ch. 10 of the Bodleian amended statute, during the 
 
 present vacation. Mr. and Mr. made similar 
 
 applications. It was agreed to accede to the request in the 
 case of the three applicants respectively ' ; that is to say, 
 within a few days of the passing of the statute it is broken. 
 The Curators do not agree to borrow books for the ap- 
 plicants, the only thing the statute allowed them to 
 do; the statute says not one word about the discretion 
 
 c
 
 20 
 
 of the Librarian, nor does it allow the Curators in this 
 case to leave anything to it : in the buying of books 
 (Stat. XX. iii. 4, 4) they may leave much to his 
 discretion, but nowhere else is any such permission given : 
 so the Curators took it. They did not do what the statute 
 says they may do, and they did do what no statute permits 
 them to do; and as they began that day, so have they 
 continued to this moment. No change is made in the 
 minutes. Before as well as after the passing of this statute 
 the form always is ' applications for loans,' or some equi- 
 valent phrase. In 1873 a dozen MSS. or more, besides 
 printed books, including the Hereford Missal! were lent 
 exactly as before, some to private persons, some to libraries, 
 and they went to Leeds, Cambridge, Utrecht, Kiel, 
 Berlin, &c. 
 
 Iii 1874 more than twenty MSS. were lent to Jena, 
 Cambridge, Marburg, Vienna (two of the Junius collection 
 were sent there), and to private hands. In 1875 MSS. 
 were sent to St. Petersburg, Bonn, Vienna, Paris, Cam- 
 bridge, Edinburgh, Konigsberg, Heidelberg, and some to 
 private houses ; three printed books also were lent, without 
 a shadow of reason so far as can be seen, to a gentle- 
 man residing in the Temple. 
 
 On Oct. 30 two of the sub-librarians applied 'for the 
 privilege of taking books out of the Library. Their ap- 
 plication was agreed to upon the terms stated in the minute 
 of June 23, 1873, in the case of a similar application 
 from others.' 
 
 And here it should be noticed that all the loans do 
 not by any means necessarily appear in the minutes. Owing 
 to the illegal resolution of the Curators of May 25, 1872, 
 (see above, p. 16,) no loans during the Long Vacation are 
 there entered. Moreover, at some time unknown to me 
 the Librarian was quietly permitted to let certain persons 
 borrow books at his discretion, and there at last grew up, 
 it is to be presumed, with the knowledge of the Curators, 
 what the Library officials call the Borrowers' List, and what 
 after a time appears in the minutes as ' the privileged
 
 21 
 
 list.' As every one can see, there is nothing whatever in 
 the statute to justify all this. 
 
 I do not for one moment mean to charge the Curators 
 with doing anything which they thought to be improper 
 or beyond their discretion ; but I do most distinctly charge 
 them with having in fact exceeded their statutable powers, 
 and with taking the law into their own hands, all, I doubt 
 not, with the best and most innocent intentions. Un- 
 fortunately some of the most mischievous acts in the world 
 have been done with the best and purest intentions. Like 
 all other members of the University the Curators have 
 promised to observe the statutes, and the Vice-Chancellor 
 and Proctors have not only done that, but have solemnly 
 pledged themselves to see that the statutes are observed, 
 and are moreover armed with power to enforce them. 
 If statutes are absurd, it is clearly the duty of those 
 who control legislation in this place to get them abolished 
 or amended without delay ; if they are not absurd, all 
 are bound to obey them. As regards the Bodleian 
 there is a special order (XX. iii. 12. 3) directing the 
 Curators what to do with an imperfect statute, and how 
 to do it ; but it is one thing to make a statute ; it 
 is a very different thing to get people to obey it. No 
 one who sees the ease with which statutes are made 
 and unmade, can doubt, that if those of the Bodleian 
 are defective in any respect, it needs but a word from 
 one or two members of Council to have all defects 
 remedied. If the Curators want fresh powers, or more 
 discretion, and greater latitude of action than they are 
 at present allowed, they have but to ask and obtain; 
 but I protest most vehemently against the usurpation 
 of powers not granted by the University as a thing 
 pessimi exempli. If the Bodleian Curators are to do 
 exactly as they like, the University might just as well 
 spare itself the trouble of legislation. If the University 
 deliberately chooses to have its statutes nullified, there 
 is, I suppose, no help for it; yet I cannot but suspect 
 that the University has no knowledge at all events no 
 
 c2
 
 22 
 
 clear and distinct knowledge of the way in which we 
 have dealt with the statutes which were intended to 
 mark out our duties. The secret growth of ' the bor- 
 rowers' list' is as singular a thing as is to be found 
 in the history of the Bodleian. The Curators and the 
 Curators alone have, by a statute of their own devising, 
 a right to borrow ; yet the late Librarian assumed to 
 himself the right of naming persons who are to have the 
 privilege of borrowing, and the Curators quietly allowed 
 it, without, as I believe, the faintest suspicion that they 
 were doing what was wrong. 
 
 In 187t> eleven MSS. went some to private persons, others 
 to Augsburg, Paris, Gottingen, Heidelberg, Cambridge : 
 the book sent to Augsburg without bond, and without 
 guarantee for publication, was one of Laud's Greek MSS. 
 
 On June 24 an application ' from Mr. for use of 
 
 books at home during Vacation ' was ' assented to.' In 
 1877 some fourteen or fifteen MSS. were sent to 
 Heidelberg, Paris, Cambridge, London, Rome, Copen- 
 hagen, Munich, Marburg, besides printed books : the 
 book sent to Munich was one of Laud's, again in total 
 defiance of all his stipulations. 
 
 In 1878 a dozen MSS., or more, went to different people, 
 to Bonn, to Pesth, Leyden, and Rostock, besides printed 
 books : one book with illuminations was refused, * as being 
 one of a class not lent out.' I have before observed that 
 I know of no written rules at all. On Oct. 26 of this 
 year the Curators surpassed themselves, for there was an 
 
 application ' from the Rev. , Fellow of College, 
 
 for permission to borrow works from the Library to be 
 taken to his rooms. In this matter it was agreed that 
 power to act on the clause 10, 11 of the Bodleian 
 Statute be delegated by the Curators to the Librarian.' 
 There were ten Curators present on this memorable occasion. 
 The Curators are themselves delegates, and if they had the 
 right to delegate to the Librarian the power which the 
 University delegated to them, then what is sauce for the 
 goose is sauce for the gander : if the Curators mero motu
 
 may delegate their powers, the Librarian may with equal 
 right and equal reason delegate his, and so on in infinitum, 
 to the utter ruin of all sense of responsibility. 
 
 It would be tedious to enumerate all the loans ; suffice 
 it to say that they have gone on year after year; and 
 from this point I shall only mention a few notable cases. 
 
 On May 31, 1879, ' the request of Professor to 
 
 borrow printed books from the Library was granted.' Con- 
 sidering that only seven months before, the Curators had 
 resolved 'to delegate' their lending powers to the Librarian, 
 it is strange that they did not refer the applicant straight 
 to that official. 
 
 In 1880, June 11, a Selden MS. was ordered to Paris; 
 ten Curators were present, and it is to be presumed that 
 not one of them knew, what he was bound to know, 
 namely, the special stipulation made with respect to all 
 Selden's books. 
 
 On Oct. 29, 1880, the Junior Proctor gave notice of 
 the following motion : ' That in the case of MSS. sent 
 out on loan to persons resident within the United King- 
 dom, a pecuniary bond shall be executed by the person 
 to whom such MS. is lent, of such value as shall be 
 determined from time to time by the Curators, unless 
 the MS. is sent for use only within the precincts of the 
 British Museum, or some other approved Public Library.' 
 On Nov. 27 this motion was made and lost. 
 
 In 1881, June 4, 'an application from for the 
 
 use of books dealing with the subject of Biblical Chro- 
 nology at his own house appeared to the Curators to 
 fall under the provisions of the Statute XX. iii. 11, 
 10 ; the Librarian exercising discretion as to the number 
 of volumes issued.' On Oct. 26, 1878, not three years 
 before, the Curators formally ' delegated ' their powers 
 to the Librarian; on May 31, 1879, they assume that 
 they possess what they have ' delegated ' ; and here they 
 do the same thing, and all this without any formal and 
 solemn resumption by them of their 'delegated' powers. 
 On Oct. 29, 1881, it was reported that Professor of
 
 24 
 
 Cambridge had not returned a manuscript borrowed four 
 years before, and the Vice- Chancellor was requested to 
 communicate with the Professor in the matter. The 
 manuscript never has been, and in all probability never 
 will be restored, and our only consolation must be the 
 fact that it was a transcript of another manuscript in 
 the Bodleian, not on that account necessarily of little 
 value, for a transcript may, and sometimes does, become 
 of inestimable value ; why it does so, all acquainted with 
 books know. 
 
 In 1882, Feb. 11, a Laudian MS. was ordered to Heidel- 
 berg, and a Selden MS. to St. Petersburg. On Dec. 2, 
 
 1882, 'it was agreed that Mr. , Fellow of 
 
 be one of the persons privileged to take out books. 
 It was agreed that the Librarians be allowed to take 
 out books and MSS. for their own use.' 
 
 In 1883, Jan. 27, the Librarian suggested ' that all 
 Fellows and ex-Fellows of Colleges should be entitled 
 to have books out of the Library'; the suggestion was 
 
 not adopted. On the same day, ' Mr. ( 
 
 College) and Dr. were placed on the list of 
 
 persons specially entitled.* On March 3 of the same 
 year, ' Dr. Frankfurter's application to be placed on the 
 privileged list of borrowers was assented to.' There we 
 have it at last, in black and white the privileged list 
 of borrowers, as unstatutable and as illegal a thing as 
 could well be permitted. The words ' let it be lawful for 
 the Curators to borrow books for learned men? (always 
 supposing the Latin not to be downright nonsense,) cannot 
 convey to the Curators the power to let other people 
 borrow books ; for if they could, then any words may 
 have any meaning, which comes to the same thing as 
 saying that they have no meaning at all. Yet it is on 
 these words, and on these words alone, that the 'borrowers' 
 list* has been made to depend; though how educated 
 men can have extracted from this statute any meaning 
 whatever which would justify, or even seem, in the most 
 distant way, to justify the act of conveying to others
 
 25 
 
 the power to borrow books from the library is one of the 
 most astonishing things that I ever met with in the whole 
 course of my life. But it will be said that the Bodleian 
 Curators for thirteen years understood mutuari to mean 
 'lend', and therefore they might institute a 'borrowers' 
 list'. It is an astonishing, not to say staggering, fact 
 that they did so understand it, yet the borrowers' list is 
 none the less illegal. Nay, I have heard a Curator in 
 his place maintain, that as there could be no doubt what 
 the University intended when it passed this statute, mu- 
 tuari in this place must mean * lend '. Much as I admired 
 the boldness of the assertion, I was unable to commend 
 either the law or the logic of it ; the consequences which 
 would at once follow from the position, that if the in- 
 tentions of a legislative body are clear it matters not how 
 it expresses them, are too palpably absurd to find ac- 
 ceptance with ordinary minds. However, let it be supposed, 
 that instead of mutuari the word actually used were 
 commodare. You are still no better off. The University 
 on this hypothesis gives to the Curators as a board the 
 power of lending a specific book to a specific person, 
 and that is all. It does not give the Curators the power 
 to invest any person or persons with the right or privilege 
 of borrowing books, still less does it convey the power 
 of creating a class of persons who have such a right or 
 privilege. This is not only clear to plain common sense, 
 but, as I am advised, is plain as a matter of law ; and 
 I am further assured that, if any book is damaged or 
 lost in consequence of the Curators persisting in such 
 a course, they become themselves personally liable to the 
 University. 
 
 This illegal borrowers' list comprises at this moment 
 (subtracting one dead man and double entries) one hundred 
 and eleven persons, besides the Clarendon Press. Among 
 these persons are two ladies, who can have no conceivable 
 right to be where they are, for even those whose tolerant 
 Latinity suffers them to take mutuari for commodare will 
 hardly maintain that ' viris doctis* covers learned women.
 
 26 
 
 It includes too non-residents and foreigners; and I am 
 informed that manuscripts have been sent for the use of 
 one of these persons more than a hundred miles as the crow 
 flies. Books are sent by post, and Bodleian money is 
 spent to pay for carriage. The finances of the Library, 
 however, deserve a paper all to themselves, and some day 
 they shall have one, 
 
 On May 26, 1883, 'an application from Dr. Leumann 
 to be placed on the privileged list was agreed to.' On 
 Oct. 20, of the same year, two persons were ' placed on 
 the privileged list of readers ; ' and on Nov. 24, another 
 'was placed on the privileged list;' and from that moment 
 to the present no other formula is employed in the minutes. 
 
 In 1885, Oct. 31, the Librarian applied ' for authority 
 to decline requests for loans of Selden MSS, and books, 
 and of Laud's MSS. (except for purposes of publication), 
 without referring the application to the Curators, as being 
 contrary to the terms of the respective donations. This 
 was agreed to.' It was, and to my great astonishment it 
 passed without any remark whatever, 
 
 In 1886, March 13, ' Liceat Curatoribus' was ruled 
 to mean ' the consent of a majority of Curators ; ' that 
 is to say, the illegal resolution of May 25, 1872, was 
 silently rescinded. On May 15 of the same year a com- 
 mittee of four was appointed to consider the practice of 
 loans. At a meeting on June 19, another name was 
 added to the borrowers' list. Every Curator knew that 
 the legality of their practice with respect to loans, and 
 especially with respect to the borrowers' list, had been 
 openly challenged ; notwithstanding this, and in spite of 
 protest then and there made, the chairman put the name 
 to the vote, and a majority actually voted for it. This 
 proceeding was, in my opinion (and not in mine only), 
 irregular and improper to say the least of it, but it was 
 highly characteristic. After waiting to see whether the 
 Vice-Chancellor or any other Curator would call attention 
 to the charge brought against the board, and finding, as 
 I was sure would be the case, that no one shewed any
 
 disposition to do so, I gave notice of a motion for the 
 next statutable meeting : That the borrowers' list be 
 abolished as illegal; that all books in the hands of bor- 
 rowers be at once recalled as having been illegally lent; 
 and that for the future the Statute XX. Hi. 11. 10 be 
 faithfully observed. 
 
 On June 28 it was agreed (I being silent for an obvious 
 reason) that during the Vacation all the Curators in Ox- 
 ford should meet every fortnight in the Library at 2 p.m. 
 solely to consider applications for loans. During the 
 Vacation six such meetings were summoned. On July 10, 
 three Curators met and refused an application ; on Aug. 21, 
 and on Sept, 11, only two were present, and of course 
 declined to act ; on Sept. 25, and Oct. 9, I, who attended 
 all the meetings, found myself alone ; on Oct. 23, there 
 were six of us, and business was adjourned on the ground 
 that the whole question of loans would be debated on 
 Oct. 30. Accordingly, on Oct. 30, all the Curators made 
 their appearance, a thing I never saw before, though they 
 were not all present during the whole of the proceedings. 
 The motion to abolish the borrowers' list was duly made 
 and seconded ; then, after some confused talk, which could 
 not be dignified by the name of a debate, an amendment 
 was moved, ' That the consideration of the regulations 
 under which books be lent be referred to a committee'; 
 and this was carried, all the Curators being present. An 
 instruction to the committee was also moved, * To consider 
 what alteration is required in the statute with regard to 
 the borrowing of books ' ; which was also carried. Next 
 we considered the report of the committee on loans, and 
 returned it in a somewhat mangled condition to the re- 
 consideration of those who drew it up. After that, ap- 
 plications for loans numbered 1 to 16 were discussed, 
 and all were refused. This exhausted the agenda paper, 
 and should, I apprehend, have finished the business of the 
 day. However, an application for the loan of manuscripts 
 not on the agenda paper was considered, and the board, 
 which up to that moment had refused all applications,
 
 including one from Sir Richard Burton, granted the loan 
 of seventeen manuscripts to one man. In self-defence, 
 let me say that I always vote against all loans when 
 there is a division. 
 
 On Nov. 8 the loan committee recommended that Council 
 be asked to propose amendments in Stat. Tit. XX. sect. iii. 
 11, and thought that 'the farther consideration of the rules 
 framed by them and amended at the Curators' meeting on 
 Oct. 30 should for the present be postponed.' On Nov. 25, 
 ten Curators being present, this recommendation was con- 
 sidered. One of the Curators thought that while there was 
 ' no harm ' in applying for a new statute, yet that it was 
 ' a waste of time * and ' a little ridiculous ' : another wished 
 to move an amendment and have the new statute in English, 
 but some of us saw (though no one said so) that such an 
 amendment would be a highly comic confession on the 
 part of the viri variis doctrinis et literis imbuti; and 
 accordingly it was not pressed. Then the same Curator 
 proposed that commodare should be substituted for mutuari, 
 and that sicut mos fuit should be struck out. Four voted 
 for this amendment, which was lost. Even had it been 
 carried, it would still have been unlawful to lend books 
 to women, for, as was pointed out at the time, vir means 
 a man ; but the minority was in no mood to be affected 
 by philological facts. The original recommendation was 
 then passed. 
 
 The board having thus expressed its opinion that a 
 new statute was necessary to enable it to lend books had, 
 it might be thought, asserted that the existing statute 
 does not enable it to do so ; accordingly we at once turned 
 our attention to applications for loans. The first article 
 applied for was not a book at all, but an inscribed bronze 
 vessel ; and it was observed that we have no statutable right, 
 in other words no power whatever, to lend such a thing ; 
 whereupon some one remarked that it might be done, be- 
 cause it is not forbidden, an argument, which (if valid) 
 would lead to some startling conclusions. 
 
 However, that a decree of Convocation to authorise the
 
 29 
 
 loan of this vessel should be asked for was duly moved 
 and seconded; then the Curator, who wished to patch 
 the Bodleian Latin statute with a bit of English, moved 
 as an amendment 'that the Curators lend it', quite ignor- 
 ing the fact that they had no statutable power to do so. 
 For this amendment three Curators voted, one abstained, 
 and the rest voted against it: finally the original motion 
 was carried. After that, two loans of books were refused 
 and three were granted. 
 
 In applying for a decree to enable them to lend this 
 vessel the Curators turned over a new leaf. The whole 
 Bodleian statute consists of ten octavo pages, eleven lines 
 and four words: it can be read out aloud in thirty 
 minutes, and by eye alone in half that time : there is, 
 therefore, no excuse whatever for not knowing its contents, 
 and still less for not obeying it. It is not my purpose 
 at the present moment to point out how often, and in 
 how many ways, we drive a coach and four through statutes 
 intended to control our actions ; but to complete the 
 subject of loans, and dismissing the practice of book- 
 lending from further consideration, it may be noted that the 
 Stat. XX. iii. 11. 9 allows the Curators under specified 
 conditions to place certain prints and drawings either in 
 the Radcliffe or in the Taylor Building; but with this 
 exception, if exception it be, no power is anywhere given 
 to them to lend any picture, coin, antiquity, or other 
 object belonging to the library. Nevertheless I find the 
 following entries in the minutes : 
 
 On April 26, 1865, 'it was agreed to lend "Miniatures" 
 to the Lords of the Committee of Council on Education 
 to be exhibited in the South Kensington Museum.' 
 
 On Oct. 28, 1865, ' the Curators sanction the loan of 
 such Pictures as may be desired for the National Exhibition 
 of Portraits at Kensington in 1866.' 
 
 On Dec. 12, 1865, ' that the loan of the Pictures according 
 to the list sent, save that of Sir Thomas Bodley, be granted 
 to South Kensington Museum Exhibition of National 
 Portraits.'
 
 On March 8, 1867, 'a letter from the Secretary of the 
 Earl of Derby was read asking for the loan of eighteen 
 Pictures for exhibition at Kensington. This was ac- 
 ceded to.' 
 
 On Jan. 31, 1868, 'it was resolved .... to lend to the 
 Leeds Exhibition the Portraits they wish of Yorkshire 
 Worthies.' 
 
 On Feb. 5, 1870, 'an application from Mr. Cosmo Innis, 
 of the General Register house, Edinburgh, for the loan 
 of the old map of Britain of the 14th century, which 
 hangs on the wall of the Library, to be traced in facsimile, 
 under the care of Sir Henry James, for the 2nd volume 
 of the National MSS. of Scotland, was granted,' 
 
 On Feb. 14, 1874, 'an application from the South 
 Kensington Museum was read, asking for the loan of 
 remarkable specimens of Book-binding for next year's 
 International Exhibition. In this matter it was agreed 
 that the Museum should be invited to send a person 
 to Oxford to inspect, and that it should be left to the 
 discretion of the Librarian to decide upon lending any 
 specimen required.' 
 
 On April 28, 1877, 'an application from Mr. Blades 
 [sic] on behalf of Caxton memorial committee for the 
 loan of certain early printed books to a Public Exhibition 
 at South Kensington was considered and granted.' 
 
 On May 26, 1877, application ' for Bibles to be sent 
 to the Caxton Exhibition. This was granted, and the 
 Librarian was directed to take such measures as might 
 be necessary to ensure secure transmission.' 
 
 On May 11, 1878, permission was given to lend the 
 Selden Portrait to the Nottingham Art Exhibition ; and 
 an application from the Bath and West of England Agri- 
 cultural Society for works of art, &c. for their approaching 
 meeting at Oxford, was considered. This was left to 
 the Librarian's discretion. 
 
 On Nov. 13, 1880, Wyngarde's Plan of London 'to be 
 granted under a bond ' to Mr. Wheatley. 
 
 On April 29, 1882, the Portrait of Sam. Butler was lent 
 to the Worcestershire Exhibition of Fine Arts.
 
 On Feb. 2, 1884, Drake's Chair was lent to the Mayor of 
 Plymouth. 
 
 On May 2, 1885, ' the Librarian presented applications 
 from the Exhibition of Inventions now being held for 
 the loan of certain MSS. ; certain early printed books; 
 certain works on music. It was agreed that the Librarian 
 be empowered to lend out of the above as required, as 
 he may think well, to the Exhibition.' 
 
 At this last meeting I was present, and the following is 
 a verbatim copy of my note written the same day : 
 
 ' An Exhibition of Inventions (I have not got the name 
 correctly) applied for the loan of certain MSS. and books 
 from Bodleian: 5 MSS. Liturgies: 3 Bodley MSS. 515, 
 775, 842 : Gough, Missal 336 : an Ashmole book, and 
 2 English. I objected, but the loan was carried, except 
 as to 775 Bodley.' I have lately been informed that one 
 of the books sent up to be stared at by the mob of sight- 
 seers was a Selden book : this I neither knew nor could 
 have known at the time, or it should have been stopped, 
 if protesting could have stopped it. 
 
 In every one of these cases the Curators, with the most 
 perfect innocence, took upon themselves to do what they 
 had not a shadow of right to do. If the University is 
 content to have its property so dealt with that in case 
 of damage or loss its only remedy would be to mulct 
 the Curators, there is nothing more to be said; but it 
 is just as well that the University should know what has 
 been done in the past, and what would have been done 
 in the future, had not a protest been made against the 
 practice ; and even now, though the board as a board has 
 seemingly condemned its former doings, it still contains 
 a stubborn and impenitent minority. If the University 
 wishes its statutes to be obeyed, it should ordain substantial 
 pecuniary fines for breaches of them ; if it does not care 
 whether they are obeyed or not, it is a pity that it wastes 
 its time in enacting them.
 
 32 
 
 And now as to the policy of lending the printed books 
 and manuscripts of the Bodleian. The question is not 
 whether it is a good or a bad thing to lend books, nor 
 whether it is a good thing for this or that library to do 
 so ; it is simply whether it is right to lend Bodleian books. 
 It may be argued that it is right to do so 
 
 1. Because books are made to be used, and they will 
 be very much more used if they are lent than if they 
 are not; moreover it is generally more convenient to 
 read in one's own room than it is in a public place. 
 Some men cannot read, certainly cannot read and think 
 in a library, or in the midst of company ; I cannot myself, 
 and all that I have ever been able to do in such places 
 is to make extracts, verify references and the like ; 
 but to read a book as I should in my own room is to 
 me, and probably to many people, impossible. If you 
 go to a public institution you must go when it is open ; 
 you must sit still ; you must not whistle or make a noise ; 
 you must not smoke; you cannot lie down and read oh 
 your back ; you cannot throw the book aside, go for a 
 walk, and resume your perusal ; you cannot read quietly 
 over the fire of an evening ; you cannot read in the small 
 hours of the night, and so on ad infinitum. Yet all this 
 you can do if you are allowed to borrow the books. 
 You can then treat them exactly as if they were your 
 own. It is clear that this argument may be expanded 
 in a multitude of ways, and no one is so destitute of 
 imagination as not to be able to fill up the details to 
 suit his own particular case and fancy. 
 
 The answer to it is very simple. You cannot by any 
 device or contrivance combine the advantages of private 
 and of public property. He who wishes to use the books 
 of a public library must submit to many personal in- 
 conveniences; and the man who is unwilling to deny 
 himself for the general good is the very last person in 
 the community to whom any favour ought to be shown, 
 and of all people he least deserves the favour of borrowing. 
 He who has ever been foolish enough to lend his own books
 
 33 
 
 freely, learns by almost unvaried experience that hardly 
 one man in twenty can be trusted : your book comes 
 back (when it comes back at all) more damaged by a 
 month's outing than the owner would occasion in fifty 
 years. The book of a public library is even less re- 
 garded, as a rule, than that belonging to a friend; for 
 the friend may have a sharp tongue, and a knack of using 
 it, whereas a librarian is an official ; even if he ever has 
 time to look through the books when they are returned, 
 his censure is disregarded, and after all accidents will 
 happen, and the book might possibly have been equally 
 damaged had it never left the library walls. It is really 
 astonishing how few men there are in the present day 
 who know how to use a book without doing it real and 
 often serious damage. Over and over again have I seen 
 men who would be very angry to be called boors delibe- 
 rately break the back of a book. Over and over again, 
 both in libraries and in private rooms, have I seen the 
 headband broken, simply because people did not know 
 how to take a book off a shelf. Again and again I have 
 seen men of education (but grossly ignorant for all that 
 of the ways of books) play such pranks with my own 
 volumes as made me shudder. The horrid trick of turning 
 a leaf by wetting a finger I have seen practised in this 
 seat of learning over and over again by Graduates, by 
 Professors, by Heads of Houses; and years ago I saw 
 that same nasty trick played pro pudor! in the sacred 
 precincts of the Bodleian itself on a manuscript, which 
 will bear to its last moment the impression of the dirty 
 thumb (and it was dirty) that perpetrated the uncleanly 
 act. Often and often you see a man sitting close over 
 the fire with a well-bound volume ; a few such experi- 
 ments will ruin the binding of any book ; if it is his 
 own, well and good, though even so the act is that of a 
 barbarian: but suppose it a Bodleian book, what then? 
 "Why in that case the binding bills will be higher than 
 ever, to say nothing about the ruin of the book itself. 
 A man who knows how to handle a book will use a
 
 34 
 
 volume habitually for years and leave no trace of wear 
 and tear behind him ; but the average man, even though 
 he may be a Master of Arts, is, not unfrequently, totally 
 unfit to have the use of any books in good condition, 
 even in a library, much less out of one. 
 
 The scholars and readers of former days seem to have 
 been far more careful in their habits than men are now. 
 Look at the books of the great collectors Grolier, the 
 Maioli, Selden, De Thou, the Colberts, and the like. These 
 men read their books^ and Grolier and Thomas Maioli 
 certainly lent them : yet even after all these years, though 
 time and neglect may have ruined the magnificent bindings 
 bindings such as few, if any, modern collectors ever 
 indulge in the books themselves are internally spotless. 
 I have myself scores of volumes, many of them three 
 or four hundred years old, clean and pure as the day 
 they were issued from the press ; they have most cer- 
 tainly been used and read, but used by men of clean 
 hands and decent habits* In the present day books 
 are so common and so cheap, and modern readers too 
 frequently so unrefined, that they get into a vile habit 
 of misusing them, and to such persons that is, to the 
 great majority the books of a public library cannot 
 be safely trusted except under the very strictest super- 
 vision. The slovenly practice of placing one open book 
 on another, a practice sternly forbidden in many foreign 
 libraries, may be seen in full swing both at the Camera 
 and in the Bodleian ; and no one seems to be aware how 
 ruinous it is, or to have the least suspicion that he who 
 knows how to handle books never treats them so. Treated 
 in a cleanly and decent manner, there is not the least 
 reason why a book printed on good paper should not 
 last for twenty centuries or more ; treated as they are too 
 often treated here in Oxford, they will hardly last as 
 many months. 
 
 By lending the books as we illegally do, we are per- 
 ceptibly hastening the destruction of a library intended 
 by its founder and benefactors to be a blessing for gene- 
 rations of scholars yet unborn.
 
 2. Books are to be lent, and what is more ought to 
 be sent out of Oxford, because it is an immense conve- 
 nience to students at a distance to have Bodleian treasures 
 close at hand. Not a doubt about it ; vastly convenient. 
 Suppose I am studying Greek sculpture, it would be very 
 convenient to get all the master-pieces sent from the 
 various galleries of Europe to London or Oxford. It 
 would not only be a convenience, but a joy and a delight, 
 to have over the Venus of Melos. Instead of sitting for 
 hours together, as I used to do, in the Louvre, it would 
 be much more convenient to go down to the New Schools 
 and gaze on that glorious and divine being. Does any one 
 suddenly scent an absurdity in the supposition ? Why so 
 do I, but the absurdity is in the whole argument, not in 
 the particular application of it. Some people who have 
 not a gift for seeing the point of things will ride off by 
 saying that the Venus is a majestic beauty, and that the 
 expense of her carriage and insurance would be enormous. 
 Such an objection is pointless, because it evades the ques- 
 tion of convenience ; but let us take a case where weight 
 will not oppress us. Say you study Greek gems ; would 
 it not be very convenient to have some of the best from 
 Naples, from Paris, from Rome, and from Vienna, sent 
 here to the Bodleian, where you could study them at 
 your leisure ? They are more portable than books, far 
 less liable to damage, and hardly more valuable. Do 
 you think that any guardian of such treasures would be 
 so foolish as to listen to your request ? Would any 
 nation, city, or even University, permit it ? 
 
 The cases, it will be said, are not parallel. Gems, 
 coins, medals, statuettes, are too valuable to be lent ; the 
 books and manuscripts which the Bodleian Curators lend 
 are comparatively valueless. I am by no means sure of 
 that fact. I have before now tapped at a friend's door, 
 and receiving no answer entered his room to leave a message 
 or what not, and have more than once seen lying on his 
 table an eleventh-century Bodleian manuscript of a certain 
 classic author, a book of inestimable value, the codex 
 
 D
 
 36 
 
 archetypus of every other copy now in existence. Any 
 stranger could have entered that room, and any enterprising 
 literary thief a not uncommon and particularly detestable 
 animal might have slipped this priceless book into his 
 pocket. I am by no means sure that very valuable manu- 
 scripts have not been, in spite of remonstrance, lent out 
 within the last two years ; but it is beyond all dispute 
 that not so very long ago the thing was done, and any 
 man or any body of men who will allow one such thing 
 to be done are quite capable of allowing a dozen to be 
 done. 
 
 Let it, however, be granted, for the purposes of the 
 present argument, that we now, having a clearer perception 
 of our responsibilities, only allow comparatively worthless 
 manuscripts to be sent to France, to Germany, Russia, 
 or India ; for our manuscripts, be it observed, travel as 
 far afield as Bombay. Now what makes a book or manu- 
 script comparatively worthless ? It is so, either because 
 it is one of many copies, or because it is a poor and 
 faulty copy. If it is one of many, why in the name of 
 all that is absurd should we be asked to send our goods 
 away (at our expense and risk let it be remembered) when 
 ex hypothesi there are many other copies in existence ? 
 why cannot the foreign student go to some one of those 
 copies ? why should we be called on to gratify his laziness 
 or consult his convenience ? If the copy be a poor one, 
 he who asks for the loan of it must be a noodle, for 
 who cares for the readings of a confessedly inferior book ? 
 Is it not clear as day that the man who at Rome, or Heidel- 
 berg, or Bombay, asks for the loan of a manuscript, 
 believes it to be a good and valuable copy ? moreover, 
 if he believes so, is it not in the highest degree probable 
 that his judgment is correct, seeing that his attention 
 is in a special manner concentrated on the matter ? And 
 if it be a good and valuable copy, what becomes of the 
 plea that we only lend comparatively worthless books ? 
 Have we any common sense amongst us ? I really confess 
 that there are times when I come to the conclusion that
 
 37 
 
 we have none ; for if we had, how could we be deceived 
 by pretexts so flimsy and fallacious ? ' All the manuscripts 
 which we now lend are most certainly valuable, and their 
 loss or damage would be irreparable ; all talk of com- 
 parative worth or worthlessness is futile, and is merely 
 used as so much dust thrown in the eyes of those who 
 (I am sorry to say it, but it must be said) ought to have 
 a higher conception of their duties. 
 
 3. Some maintain that MSS. and books should be 
 lent out because ' more work ' will be done by that device. 
 It is difficult to see why. It is inferred, in fact, that 
 ' more work ' will be done, because it is more convenient 
 to work at home than it is in a library. A partial answer 
 to this fallacious plea has been already given, but I cannot 
 pass over the particular form of it without a protest. 
 The cant that is talked now-a-days about ' work ' is 
 enough to make one sick. As far as my experience extends, 
 the very notion of work, as opposed to fidgetty pottering, 
 is not possessed by fifty men in the place ; the very 
 conception of thoroughness and comprehension is gone ; 
 and as to learning, why the thing has almost vanished ; 
 of ' science ' we have enough and to spare, but what in 
 the world has become of all our knowledge ? Briefly, 
 at the present moment and in this place, all this wretched 
 pretence of 'work' is arrant imposture. A few, and only 
 a few, know what it means, and they would never dream 
 of talking about it. 
 
 But I have heard this argument about ' more work ' 
 put in another form, and it obviously is a theme on which 
 endless variations may be composed. Suppose, it is said, 
 a very poor scholar, anxious to give the world a critical 
 edition of some book, and further suppose that there is 
 a valuable manuscript at St. Petersburg, another at Stock- 
 holm, another in Paris, another in Oxford, and so on ; 
 let the poor scholar live where you like, say in Giessen, 
 and suppose him to be totally unable to defray the expense 
 of a journey to these several places, and to have no means 
 of paying for collations made by others, and no confidence
 
 38 
 
 in their correctness, even if he could pay for them ; would 
 it not be an advantage to literature that all these manu- 
 scripts should be sent to Giessen for the use of the 
 poor scholar aforesaid ; and would it not be a dead loss 
 to the world of letters, if, by refusing so to lend them, 
 you prevented the poor scholar from constructing a critical 
 and admirable text of the author in whom he is interested ? 
 This purely hypothetical case I have heard put in all 
 seriousness, and used as a knock-me-down sort of argument; 
 yet it must occur to any one with a grain of common 
 sense that it is only too easy to 'suppose* anything; 
 that it would not require the imaginative powers of a baby 
 to go one step further, and suppose the poor, the ardent 
 and the ripe scholar to have just money enough or pluck 
 enough to carry him to the places which he wishes to 
 visit, (I note parenthetically that a real student, a man 
 to read of whose exploits warms one's heart, Cosma de 
 Kb'ros, started on his extraordinary expedition to the 
 East with 100 florins and a walking-stick, for being what 
 he was, he dispensed with luggage,) or you might suppose 
 brains enough in his neighbourhood to perceive that so 
 deserving a creature of the pure imagination might fairly 
 enough be helped or but it is needless and foolish to 
 dream with one's eyes open, and practical men generally 
 object to discuss purely hypothetical cases. Yes, my 
 excellent but fanciful friend will say, this is all very 
 well, but if there were such a case, what would you do ? 
 Well, to speak for myself, I should prefer to wait till the 
 poor scholar's exchequer was in a more flourishing con- 
 dition, or why should I not take a turn at 'supposing' 
 myself? and perform the very easy trick of imagining 
 a more ripe scholar, a more enthusiastic student, endowed 
 not only with brains, but blessed with means to gratify 
 his whims, and then, without the least violence, I might 
 suppose the result to be a much more correct, a much 
 more critical edition than my friend's phantom scholar 
 could ever by any possibility concoct. But to return 
 to the region of reality ; I ansvr er that not even in
 
 39 
 
 the case supposed, or in any case would I lend out 
 manuscripts, and this for more reasons than I have 
 patience to write down. One remark may, however, be 
 made. We are constantly requested to send manuscripts 
 abroad * for collation,' and we not unfrequently send 
 them. Will any one be good enough to mention to 
 me a single collation of a Greek or Latin classic made 
 by any scholar by profession of any manuscript of fair 
 length say, if you like, 300 pages of octavo print which 
 is faithful, or which can be depended on ? Even if it 
 were a defensible practice to send manuscripts abroad for 
 collation, it can never be a defensible practice to expose 
 them to all the risks they necessarily run, and after all 
 reap as a net result collations not worth the paper they 
 are written on. 
 
 I hope that these considerations may satisfy my imagin- 
 ative friend that there is not that force in his argument 
 which he supposes ; but if he is still unconvinced, let 
 us agree to consider the case of the poor scholar when 
 it actually occurs on its merits, and let it be conceded 
 as a thing not impossible, that should all the supposed 
 conditions exist, we might for once in a way move Con- 
 vocation to lend a manuscript for the use of so singular 
 and so deserving a character; how does that justify us 
 in sending manuscripts abroad when no such conditions 
 exist ? The most I have ever yet heard pleaded on behalf 
 of these foreign students was, not that they could not 
 afford to come to Oxford, but merely that it was much 
 more convenient to have a book sent out to Hungary or 
 Russia, than it was for the Hungarian or Russian to visit 
 us. I dare say it was more convenient to him, but it 
 has already been observed that he who wishes to use 
 public property must and ought to submit to not a few 
 personal inconveniences. It would, too, be interesting to 
 know whether, supposing any of us possessed a very 
 valuable book of our own, we should be ready and willing 
 to lend it as freely as we lend these books which are not 
 ours. I will answer for myself that I certainly should
 
 40 
 
 not, and that it would be grossly inconsistent in me to 
 lend University property when I decline under precisely 
 similar circumstances to lend my own. 
 
 4. Again, it is argued that since foreign libraries are 
 willing to lend to us we ought to reciprocate their liberality : 
 we ought, it is said, to be as liberal as France or Germany 
 are. To the end of time men will be the dupes of 
 phrases and the slaves of words, yet it is a little strange 
 that we, who fancy ourselves in some respects raised 
 above the mob, should see any force in this singular per- 
 version of language. Who does not detect the hollow 
 and worthless nature of that * liberality' which lends, 
 not what is its own, but what is another's ? In what 
 possible sense, except an illusory and fallacious one, can 
 the Bodleian Curators credit themselves with the virtue of 
 ' liberality ' when they hand over, not their own property, 
 not anything which they collectively set great store on, 
 not anything which it would grieve them deeply to lose, 
 but something not their own? Such liberality seems to 
 me to be as cheap as it is worthless; as easy as it is 
 unreal. But, it will be objected, that the University em- 
 powers them so to lend, and that it would be 'illiberal' in 
 them to accept loans from others and refuse themselves to 
 lend. As to the powers given by the University, I have 
 already said something ; the rest of the plea may be 
 sufficiently answered by a single line from Hamlet 
 
 " Neither a borrower nor a lender be." 
 
 Sound, wholesome advice to all, whether taken as Polonius 
 intended it, or as I now use it. It would be mean and 
 shabby to borrow if you refuse to lend, for it would be 
 conniving at a vice which you decline to commit. Would 
 it not be more rational to argue that all lending out of 
 Bodleian books being bad, we therefore decline .to benefit 
 (if benefit it be) by a practice which we disapprove of 
 in principle ? To argue simply, as I have heard some do, 
 that because foreign libraries are willing to lend us books, 
 therefore we ought to be willing to lend them books, is, 
 as an argument, about as valid as it would be to say,
 
 41 
 
 ' My friend X has signified his willingness to lend me 
 his banjo, and therefore I am bound to lend him my 
 Erard's piano, if he asks for it ' : not every one would see 
 the force of such reasoning. If the lending of books from 
 such a library as the Bodleian be, as I maintain it is, 
 bad in principle, it can never become right because other 
 libraries are willing to be loose in their practice. 
 
 But suppose we look a little more closely into this 
 alleged ' liberality ' of foreign countries, where lending 
 in some form or other is the rule rather than the ex- 
 ception. And here let it be observed that * library ' though 
 one word covers things as different as chalk is from cheese. 
 Libraries differ not merely in quantity, in the number 
 of volumes which they contain : they also differ enormously 
 in quality and value. The University Library of Got- 
 tingen some forty years ago was estimated to contain 
 350,000 volumes. The Grenville Library (now part of 
 the British Museum) consists in round numbers of 20,000 
 volumes, each of which cost on an average two pounds, 
 fourteen shillings; and this small but most choice col- 
 lection would in the present day probably sell for a sum 
 almost sufficient to purchase the whole of the Gottingen 
 350,000 volumes. The Bodleian is equalled and even 
 far surpassed in point of numbers by other libraries, but 
 for quality and real value there are not in all the world 
 a dozen that could, or by any competent person would, 
 be compared with it, and this fact makes all the difference 
 when lending is in question. You might lend and lose 
 half the books at Gottingen, and still be able without 
 very much trouble or expense to replace them to the 
 satisfaction of that University. By losing a single half- 
 dozen of some of our Bodleian books, you might seriously 
 maim and cripple a large department ; and as to replacing 
 the half-dozen, you might just as well try to replace the 
 coal in our coal pits. I have seen it stated that all the 
 great libraries of Europe lend, except the Vatican and 
 the British Museum : even Mr. Panizzi, forgetting for 
 the moment what he well knew, says, ' In all libraries on
 
 42 
 
 the Continent they lend books, but here [i.e. at the 
 British Museum] I hppe they will never lend them : it 
 is quite right not to lend them ' (Report on British 
 Museum, 1850, p. 230), And even if all do lend (and 
 all do not), it would no more follow that they ought to 
 do so, than it follows that no man should do right, 
 because all men are sinners. Why are we to follow a 
 foreign fashion ? Why are we tp follow a multitude to 
 do evil ? We are quite strong enough to act properly, 
 if we only had the infinitesimal amount of courage needful. 
 Even if it were true that every great library in Europe 
 does, a fpplish thing, why should we, with the true spirit 
 of slavish imitation, be equally foolisji ? 
 
 Amongst the libraries, which may be with more or less 
 justice compare^ 1 with the Bodleian, are the National 
 Library pf Paris ; the British Museum ; the Vatican ; 
 the Royal Library pf Munich ; the Imperial Library of 
 St. Petersburg j the Imperial Library a,t Vienna j the 
 Ambrosian at Milan. Thirty odd years ago only two 
 of these ever lent a book, and then hardly in the sense 
 in which any one in Oxford would understand that phrase. 
 At this very moment, the British Mu,seum, the secon,d or 
 third largest and finest library in the world, does not 
 lend ; the Vatican does not lend ; tl^e Ambrosian library, 
 great in printed books, greater in manuscripts, does not 
 lend ; the Escurial, famed for its Arabic manuscripts, never 
 lends, not even within the limits of Spain ; the Municipal 
 Library of Ravenna, a name well known to all students 
 of Aristophanes for its famous codex, never lends; nor 
 does the Angelica at Rome : and there are more libraries 
 of which this is true. Few, however, would believe till 
 they have tried the experiment, how difficult it is for 
 a private person to get really trustworthy information 
 as to the practices of foreign libraries. 
 
 Again, all foreign libraries that practise lending lend under 
 restrictions unknown to us in Oxford. At the Bodleian 
 there are no written rules at all, and, as far as I know, 
 ^here never have been any. The present Librarian rightly
 
 43 
 
 felt that such a state of things ought not to be allowed ; 
 he accordingly drew up a draft set of regulations ; it 
 was at his request that the committee mentioned above, 
 p. 26, was appointed, and but for his sense of duty the 
 board would possibly never have perceived that rules were 
 requisite. The Italian government controls some 33 libraries, 
 and the rules for loans fill 83 paragraphs and 18 pages 
 quarto. Without the special leave of the Minister of 
 Instruction, no government librarian in Italy can lend manu- 
 scripts, printed books of the 15th century, very rare 
 editions, books with autographs of celebrated men or with 
 important notes, books printed on vellum, books with 
 plates of much value, or the chief value of which consists 
 in the engravings, expensive works, works in many volumes, 
 coast surveys, maps, atlases, books finely bound or other- 
 wise valuable, old music. In other words, no librarian 
 can lend any manuscript whatever, or any valuable printed 
 book, without special leave. The restrictions on loans to 
 foreign countries are also numerous. 
 
 The National Library of Paris, the largest in the whole 
 world, also lends, but never in the wild fashion sanctioned 
 in this place. Here are the very words of the 'R&glement,' 
 Art. 115: 'Peuvent seuls etre pretes dans le d^partement 
 des imprimes, les doubles qui ne font pas partie de la 
 reserve, pourvu, en outre, qu'il ne s'agisse ni de livres 
 particulierement pr^cieux, ni de dictionnaires, ni de jour- 
 naux, ni de morceaux ou partitions de musique, ni de 
 volumes appartenant a de grandes collections ou contenant 
 des figures hors texte. 
 
 ' Ne peuvent pas non plus etre pretes les romans, ni les 
 pieces du theatre moderne, ni les ouvrages de litterature 
 frivole. Le conservateur apprecie en premier ressort les 
 circonstances qui permettent ou non de preter un livre.' 
 
 Art. 116: * Peuvent seuls etre pretes dansle departement 
 des manuscrits, les volumes qui ne sont pas particulierement 
 precieux par leur rarete, leur antiquite, les autographes 
 ou les miniatures qu'ils contiennent, ou par toute autre cir- 
 constance dont le conservateur est juge en premier ressort.'
 
 44 
 
 This library then never lends anything but duplicates, 
 and only such duplicates as are not part of the reserve, 
 i. e. part of the more valuable section of the library, and 
 not even such duplicates if they are specially valuable. 
 
 The libraries of Germany and Switzerland have rules 
 substantially the same as those adopted in France and 
 Italy ; and it is the same with Belgium when they lend 
 at all. In the Bibliotheque Royale de Belgique, Art. 41 
 of the ' Reglement ' runs thus : ' Dans la section des im- 
 primes, les ouvrages d'un usage journalier, les livres rares, 
 de luxe ou a figures, les editions du XV e siecle, les livres 
 sur velin ou sur grand papier, ceux dont les reliures sont 
 precieuses ou remarquables, les collections ou parties de 
 collection considerable ne sontjamais pretes au dehors.' 
 
 As to the Imperial Library of St. Petersburg, the 
 Director writes under date Dec. 11, 1886 : ' la Bibliotheque 
 Imperiale n'a pas le droit, d'apres la loi, de preter ses 
 manuscrits aux personnes particulieres, que sur la demande 
 des autorites competents, et pour les personnes hors des 
 limites de la Russie, que par 1'entremise du ministere 
 des affaires etrangeres avec 1'autorisation de Sa Majeste. 
 En meme temps je crois devoir ajouter, que les manuscrits 
 les plus precieux ne sortent jamais de la Bibliotheque, dans 
 aucun cas, de meme que les codes dont s'occupent les 
 savants du pays.' 
 
 It would be impossible to do in any of these foreign 
 countries what is done in Oxford. Expensive illustrated 
 works are, as I have heard, had out of the library, and 
 are then used to illustrate lectures a short and easy 
 method of bringing books to ruin. 
 
 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
 
 45 
 
 place, that those which do 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 inter- 
 national courtesy is promoted all very good things iri 
 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 institution as the Bodleian would 
 be enough, and more than enough, to settle the matter ; 
 and surely it is a degradation of that noble 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 respon- 
 sible, must be matter for some other paper.
 
 46 
 
 It seems to be the notion of some people in this Uni- 
 versity 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 class 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 in- 
 strument, 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 com- 
 plexity 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 ad- 
 vantage of it. 
 
 * What my experience has taught me,' says a most learned 
 bibliographer (1. R. 121), '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 class of readers ;' 
 
 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 in- 
 formation 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.
 
 47 
 
 and he adds further, that * on every occasion, when it has 
 been tried, the greatest part of the riches accumulated 
 in the old library have been rendered useless.' 
 
 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).p And another very able 
 witness, Mr. Colles, one of the library committee of the 
 Royal Dublin Society, gives it as the result of his ex- 
 perience 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.) 
 
 This question as to the expediency of lending books 
 out of such libraries as the British Museum or the 
 p See note o, p. 46.
 
 48 
 
 Bodleian has been hotly debated both at home and abroad 
 for the last eighty years or more, and I wish 1 had 
 space 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 
 illustrated 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
 
 49 
 
 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 in- 
 genious arrangement some of the advantages proposed by 
 the lending system would certainly be afforded, under 
 safeguards not now obtainable ; but there would still re- 
 main the strong objection that a reader wishing 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 
 passage 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 institutions are often laxly observed by 
 those from whom we should least expect such disregard. 
 In Walter Scott's correspondence with Southey there is a 
 passage 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 lend- 
 ing; the more he knows about them, the less inclined
 
 30 
 
 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 
 noble and honourable history : the Cambridge University 
 Library has none^ at all events none that is not disgraceful. 
 ' One reason,' he says (pi 6), ' for the dearth of materials in 
 the Library for its own history is to be found in the cir- 
 cumstance that the Library is really scattered over the 
 whole country.' And again, ' We have often heard of the 
 principal benefactors to the Bodleian Library having been 
 induced to bequeath their own libraries to the University 
 of Oxford from seeing the dareful 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 passages is that the writer strongly disapproved 
 of the practice which he was obliged officially to counte- 
 nance. 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
 
 51 
 
 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 pur- 
 loined during the latter half of the eighteenth century, 
 simply from this total disregard of all care for the pre- 
 servation of the books. Even manuscripts were lent out 
 on ordinary tickets; and it was seemingly only owing to 
 the strong remonstrances of Mr. Kerrich, the principal 
 Librarian of the day, that a grace was passed in 1809, 
 requiring that no manuscript whatever should be bor- 
 rowed, 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, principal Librarian of the British Museum, 
 a man whose knowledge of libraries and of books has 
 

 
 52 
 
 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 Wolfenbiittel, and 
 be it noted that Fanizzi 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 biblio- 
 graphic,' says Richou, ' est une science exacte qui demande 
 une preparation assez longue et que la pratique developpe. 
 Les bibliothecaires improvises en ignorent jusqu'a 1'exist- 
 ence et se pre'occupent peu de 1'acquerir. II ne faut 
 pas chercher ailleurs la cause de la mauvaise administration 
 d'un grand nombre de bibliotheques publiques, car le 
 mal est commun.' (Traits de V Administration des Bib- 
 liotheques 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
 
 53 
 
 opinions of their own, and still less to express them, if 
 they have them, when such opinions are not fashionable, 
 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 com- 
 paratively 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 title may be torn or gone ; ' I don't 
 want to read the title,' 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 manuscripts were ever 
 lent from that of Bruges ; that manuscripts and rare books 
 were never lent from the library of Malines ; that valuable 
 
 E 2
 
 54- 
 
 books were never lent from the library of Louvain ; that 
 no manuscripts or valuable books were ever lent from 
 the library of Mons ; and that such books and manuscripts 
 were never lent from any of the University libraries. 
 Nevertheless, some lending there was from some libraries ; 
 and it was asserted 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 assez 
 graves : impossibility pour certains lecteurs de consulter 
 les ouvrages dont ils ont besoin : rentre tardive des livres 
 pretes ; perte ou deterioration des volumes.' The Librarian 
 of Nassau (2. R. 299), very unlike most of his brethren, says, 
 * das Verleihen der Biicher asserhalb der Anstalt hat 
 allerdings die nachtheilige Folge dass 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 Biicher und Einbande werden dadurch mehr besch- 
 adight 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 Biicher waren troz der sorgfaltigsten Ueberwachung 
 nicht immer zu vermeiden. Manche Bande kamen besch- 
 mutzt auch verstiimmelt zuriick.' 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 class 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
 
 55 
 
 Christian Year, you do not replace the book by purchasing 
 the 100th edition, as all experts icnow. ' 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 manuscript, 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 assurance 
 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 prt 
 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
 
 56 
 
 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, 1 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 dis- 
 regard 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 (Tit. 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,
 
 57 
 
 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 smashing 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 circumstances by no means conducive to their pre- 
 servation. 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 assurance 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'
 
 58 
 
 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 circumstances ? 
 
 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 manuscript 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 manuscripts 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
 
 59 
 
 in the Bodleian.' Is it not plain to every man of sense, 
 that the Look which is in no College library, and is in 
 the Bodleian, is just the book which ought not to be 
 lent, under any conceivable circumstances ? 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 manuscript 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 
 manuscripts of Jornandes were destroyed while in the 
 hands of Mommsen. Fire invaded his rooms ; the professor 
 escaped unharmed (of course he did), but the manuscripts 
 were destroyed. Literature and scholarship 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 manu- 
 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 per- 
 mitted, 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
 
 60 
 
 somewhat at a loss to answer; perhaps it will be enough 
 to observe that different men unavoidably have different 
 ideas of what constitutes damage, and that what is not 
 always immediately discovered may hereafter be detected 
 when it is too late to assign 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 bumped about. One con- 
 sequence of this rough usage is that the standard of care- 
 fulness, as it may be called, is very naturally lowered, and 
 as a further consequence the estimate of what constitutes 
 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 manuscripts. 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
 
 61 
 
 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 dis- 
 appointments 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 manuscripts 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 appetite for superfluous volumes ; but 
 it is not always an easy thing to root out a bad habit.
 
 62 
 
 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 un- 
 doubtedly 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 in- 
 sidiously begun ; and why is all this gratuitous and 
 irreparable mischief to be done ? why is that vast store- 
 house 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
 
 63 
 
 whole is to be sacrificed for a part, and for what a part! 
 The present Librarian has been drying to do something 
 to check this disastrous and ruinous practice, but the 
 Curators are responsible for it, not the Librarian. 
 
 Manuscripts 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 manuscript 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 manuscript 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 
 'assume 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
 
 64 
 
 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 institution 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 men- 
 tioned. The glorious part of the Bodleian, the part con- 
 tributed 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 institution 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 fore- 
 seen 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 circumstances 
 be lent; Laud stipulated that his books should not be 
 lent, except for one particular purpose and in one par- 
 ticular 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
 
 65 
 
 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
 
 66 
 
 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 sturdy honesty of our pre- 
 decessors 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. 
 
 BAXTKB, PBINTEB, OXFOBD.
 
 FURTHER REMARKS 
 
 ON THE 
 
 POLICY OF LENDING 
 
 BODLEIAN 
 
 PRINTED BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS, 
 
 HENRY W. CHANDLER, M.A. 
 
 FELLOW OF PEMBBOKE COLLBGE, OXFORD ; 
 
 WAYNFLBTE PBOFE8SOK OF MOBAL AND METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY, 
 AND A CXJBATOB OF THE BODLEIAN LIBBABY. 
 
 B. H. BLACKWELL, 
 
 50 AND 51, BROAD STREET. 
 1887. 
 
 Price Sixpence.
 
 Further Remarks on the Policy of Lending 
 Bodleian printed Books and Manuscripts. 
 
 THERE are several reasons why it is in the highest 
 degree improbable that I should take any part in the 
 debate on the Bodleian Statute, but I reserve the right 
 to handle in my own fashion any arguments that may 
 be used, and to supplement, if need be, any facts or 
 supposed facts that may be brought forward during the 
 discussion. 
 
 Those who are in favour of changing the whole character 
 of the Bodleian, and who wish to convert it from a library 
 of reference into a library of circulation, do not seem 
 to feel much confidence in the strength of their case ; 
 at all events, they have made no serious attempt to meet 
 the facts and arguments with which they are confronted, 
 but show a disposition to wander off into side issues of 
 little or no importance. Before examining the letters 
 of Mr. Sanday, Mr. Ellis, and Dr. Rost (as far as I know 
 the only advocates of lending that have yet ventured 
 into print), it may be well to add some further evidence 
 on the lending system, which was omitted from the 
 * Remarks ' by inadvertence. The Advocates' Library 
 is, as we all know, a lending library, and in 1852, or 
 thereabouts, the librarian informed Dr. Bandinel that 
 they had already lost nearly seven thousand works. In 
 1849 Mr. Maitland told a Committee of the House of 
 Commons that ' all the ordinary readable books, for which 
 there is a great demand, are now reduced into a state 
 and condition so bad that it is perfectly disgraceful ; ' and 
 he was of opinion that ' the only satisfactory and practical 
 reform in the Advocates' Library would be to put an 
 end to the circulation of the books.' Mr. Panizzi a 
 splendid librarian and a man with a head on his shoulders 
 addressed a string of queries to thirty-six large con-
 
 tinental libraries, and asked, inter alia, whether they lent 
 their books, whether those books were in consequence 
 lost or damaged, whether the practice was complained 
 of, and whether readers were inconvenienced by it. 
 Six libraries out of the thirty-six never lent under any 
 circumstances whatever ; thirteen returned either no answer 
 or no clear answer as to the consequences of the practice ; 
 three (the Public Library at Basle, the University Library 
 at Turin, and St. Mark's, Venice) reported 'no incon- 
 venience as resulting ;' but the remaining fourteen told 
 a very different tale from the Royal Library, Berlin, 
 ' few books were lost,' but books were damaged ; at 
 the City Library, Berne, ' books do certainly suffer,' and 
 readers are inconvenienced ; at the Royal Library, Co- 
 penhagen, 'many inconveniences are the consequences of 
 such a practice'; 'books are lost, &c.' a very eloquent 
 ' &c. ' especially if it be compared with the evidence of 
 Molbech the librarian there, see ' Remarks,' p. 59 ; at 
 the City Library, Frankfort, ' books are not entirely 
 lost, but are often damaged '; at the Public Library, Geneva, 
 ' books are lost and damaged ' ; at the Brera, Milan, 
 'generally speaking books are not injured,' but readers 
 are inconvenienced ; at the National Library, Paris, it is 
 hoped that rules have been adopted which would ' prevent 
 the great losses and just complaints of the public.' (I may 
 parenthetically observe that forty years ago or more the 
 losses of this one library were estimated at fifty thousand 
 volumes) ; at St. Genevieve, ' the principle is acknowledged 
 to be liable to many abuses'; at the Mazarene Library, 
 ' the system is found very dangerous ' ; at the Library 
 of the Institute, the practice was condemned as ' highly 
 pernicious and practically liable to the abuses implied 
 in the question ' ; at the Ducal Library, Parma, books 
 are not lost and ' few slightly damaged,' but readers 
 complain of inconvenience ; at the Imperial Library, 
 Prague, ' readers were inconvenienced ' ; and at Wolfen- 
 biittel, 'all the inconveniences mentioned in the question 
 are the consequence of the system '; that is to say, books 
 were lost and damaged, and readers were inconvenienced.
 
 I have said that the answer returned from St. Mark's, 
 Venice (where lending on a very .small scale prevailed), 
 was that no inconvenience was felt, but it is well de- 
 serving of notice that the respondent continues thus, 
 ' if librarians were asked all over the world, AND THEY 
 
 WOULD CANDIDLY ANSWER THE QUESTION, One and all 
 
 would deprecate the system of lending, being liable to every 
 one of the abuses mentioned in the question. Unfortunately 
 librarians, like other people, will not always answer 
 questions candidly. There is plenty more evidence of 
 this sort, but what has been already adduced here and 
 in the * Remarks ' is surely enough to prove the mischief 
 inseparable from this silly practice even to the most 
 obtuse of mankind. 
 
 Here too is a very significant fact, which ought to speak 
 trumpet-tongued to the Bodleian Curators. In 1827 
 Mr. Kerrich, the Public Librarian at Cambridge, possessed 
 an Arabic Manuscript (a history of the Berbers), which 
 was in the strictest sense of the word unique. In one 
 sense all manuscripts are unique, for no two are or 
 can be exactly alike, but Mr. Kerrich's book was the 
 only known copy of the work in existence anywhere. He 
 was strongly urged to give or sell it to the University 
 Library over which he presided, but he utterly declined 
 to do either the one or the other, because the Cambridge 
 Library is a lending library. Few men, he said, know 
 the value of manuscripts; and he declared that there 
 were only two libraries in England where his book 
 would be open to the use of scholars and at the same 
 time safe, the British Museum and the Bodleian. This 
 manuscript now reposes on our shelves, and we got it 
 simply and solely because in 1827 (and for many years 
 after) we still possessed common sense. Kerrich would 
 never have let us have this unique volume, had he sup- 
 posed it possible that we should ever have been so for- 
 getful of our duty as to lend Bodleian books. We might 
 learn something from the Persians, who, as I was informed 
 the other day, on what seemed to be very good authority, 
 have a saying which runs thus : ' The man who lends
 
 6 
 
 a book is a fool, but that man is a greater fool who 
 returns a book that has been lent to him ' a fearful 
 mixture of true with false doctrine. 
 
 Now for the letters, and as Dr. Rost is a librarian he 
 shall have precedence. His epistle will be found in the 
 Academy (March 5, 1887), and it is a real contribution to 
 the facts of the case. It is reducible to two statements : 
 
 1. During nearly eighteen years there have been from 
 the India Office 'thousands of loans' and 'there has not 
 been a single loss to record.' In February, 1887, there 
 were ' 337 Oriental MSS. out on loan, 47 of which are 
 in the hands of scholars in India.' 
 
 2. ' Numerous editions of texts and other works based 
 on our collections of MSS. would either have been im- 
 possible, or at least not possible, to their actual extent 
 except for the existing arrangement.' 
 
 Here we have lending on a truly gigantic and imperial 
 scale, ' thousands of loans' and ' not a single loss ' : nothing 
 is said, however, about damage and deterioration, which 
 must have been considerable. Still ' thousands of loans ' 
 and ' not a single loss ' is a mighty strong fact, so strong 
 indeed that Dr. Rost may be congratulated on a surprising 
 run of luck. But his marvellous good fortune is no 
 argument in favour of lending ; it is rather an argument 
 against it. A man has been known once in his life 
 to throw double sixes four times running in a game of 
 backgammon ; no other player, however, who has seen 
 this done need expect to do the like, for the chances 
 against him, if we merely consider the single and simple 
 chance, are more than a million and a half to one : 
 (strictly 1,679,615 to 1.) Dr. Rost has lent MSS. thou- 
 sands of times, and they have always come back safely, 
 not perhaps quite as fresh and sound as they went out, 
 still they have come back ; let no other librarian expect 
 that the fickle goddess will treat him with like favour. 
 Consider for a moment the evidence produced above as 
 to the experience of other lending libraries, and you will 
 find it impossible to believe that the Bodleian can meet 
 with luck so entirely exceptional as that which has befallen
 
 the India Office. It is so uncanny that, were I Secretary 
 of State for India, I should certainly follow the example 
 of Polycrates, and sacrifice something very valuable, only 
 not a manuscript; the safest thing, however, would be 
 to stop the hazardous practice of lending, and tempt Fate 
 no more. The second part of Dr. Host's letter merely 
 re-echoes an argument used by Mr. Sanday and Mr. Ellis. 
 
 Mr. Sanday's letter is printed in the Oxford Magazine 
 of February 23, 1887. He sees two great, if not fatal, 
 flaws' in my argument against lending out books. They 
 are: 1. that I 'look only at one of the uses of a MS,' 
 and 2. that I 'immensely under-estimate the value of 
 the work that has been done upon MSS. in recent years.' 
 I plead an emphatic not-guilty to both these charges. 
 On what evidence do they rest? As to the first, the 
 evidence offered is that 'my idea of a MS. appears to 
 be that it should exist beautifully, occasionally inspected 
 by a connoisseur who strolls down to the library purely 
 for his own amusement and with no further result worth 
 speaking of.' Then I am told that a great number of 
 manuscripts are 'valuable chiefly for their text,' and 
 that when 'they have been collated and the collation 
 thoroughly tested their work in the world is to a great 
 extent done.' Very good: now let us dismiss as ex- 
 traneous to the present question manuscripts which are 
 ' works of art,' and calligraphic or palaeographical specimens 
 or curiosities, and then let me ask whence my kindly 
 opponent derives his information as to 'my idea of a 
 MS.' ? I am curious to know, because he certainly cannot 
 have got it out of my ' Remarks ; ' he must have other 
 sources of information, only, I can assure him, that he 
 has been most woefully misled : in short, his notion of 
 'my idea' is wholly fictitious. That a great number 
 of manuscripts are 'valuable chiefly for their text' is 
 a proposition so self-evidently true, that it might have 
 been thought difficult to find any one out of a lunatic asylum 
 who ever doubted it. Will Mr. Sanday point out to 
 me in anything I have ever written any passage which, 
 by any interpretation however forced, could be made to
 
 8 
 
 say that the great proportion of manuscripts are valuable 
 for much except their texts ? In the greatest libraries 
 even in the Bodleian the number of splendid manuscripts 
 of manuscripts valuable as works of art or as palaeo- 
 graphic monuments is comparatively small. 
 
 But let us suppose the fiction to be a fact; let it 
 be assumed that 'my idea of a MS. is that it should 
 exist beautifully ' ; how would that be a flaw in the 
 argument against lending Bodleian books ? The argu- 
 ment to put it in its baldest form is, that Nothing 
 that tends to damage a library ought to be done by 
 those who really care for it ; but lending tends to damage 
 a library, ergo. Minor probatur : Whatever unnecessarily 
 damages the books tends to damage a library ; lending 
 does so, ergo. Again, Whatever deters would-be benefactors 
 from giving books tends to damage a library; lending 
 does so ; ergo, and so on and so on. The ' Remarks * 
 can be run out into mood and figure with no trouble 
 at all. How is this argument or any part of it vitiated, 
 if I were to say (what I never have said), that 'a MS. 
 should exist beautifully ' ? Let us clench the absurdity : 
 suppose I had been fool enough to say that no book 
 should ever be looked at in the library for more than 
 an hour a day ; even that would not vitiate the argument 
 against lending books out of it. Have we forgotten in 
 this once famous University what a contradictory pro- 
 position is? Have we as completely lost the art of 
 clear disputation as we have forgotten the use of the 
 rapier ? There are times when I think so. 
 
 Come we now to the second flaw: I 'immensely under- 
 estimate the value of the work that has been done upon 
 MSS. in recent years'. Suppose for a moment that I 
 do, how does that constitute a flaw in my argument ? 
 It beats me altogether : I cannot see it. Do not lend 
 your books, says the argument, for five or six different 
 reasons ; and 1 ask again with positive wonder in what 
 way any of these reasons are contradicted, even if I do 
 under-estimate the work that has been done on MSS ? 
 What has the one thing to do with the other? I could
 
 understand it if it were impossible to examine a MS 
 in the library ; but that cannot be Mr. Sanday's meaning! 
 Or does he mean this ? If you do not let your MSS. go 
 out of the Library, and occasionally out of the country, 
 they will not be examined or collated at all? I hope 
 that this is not his meaning; for badly as I think of 
 the state of learning here, I have never thought so badly 
 of it as this supposition would imply. If after thirty 
 years of constant 'reform' we are sunk so low that we 
 neither can, nor will, use the treasures of the Bodleian 
 Library ourselves, why in that case I say let us give 
 the whole of it away to some country where scholars 
 
 are yet to be found. A library in which no man works 
 
 a library such as the Bodleian is in the hands of men 
 too ignorant or too idle to use it is dreadful to think 
 of. I, however, hoped better of the place, and I argued 
 that we should not send our books out of the library, 
 because as one reason amongst others it would then 
 be impossible for us to use those books in the library. 
 I wished to think of this University as still living, and 
 of its members as still lovers of learning for its own 
 sake, though I admit that this last effort cost me almost 
 all the faith I possess. 
 
 But I trust that I have completely misunderstood the 
 way in which my good-tempered critic would connect 
 my under-estimate of the work done on MSS. with the 
 argument against lending. All this, be it observed, is 
 on the supposition that I actually have under-estimated 
 that work ; this I do not admit to be the fact, but whether 
 I have or have not it in no way affects the argument 
 against lending. 
 
 Mr. Sanday's next point is, that if we do not lend 
 our books to foreigners, foreigners will not lend their 
 books to us, which will greatly inconvenience English 
 scholars ; and, lastly, that it is a great inconvenience not 
 to be permitted to have Bodleian printed books in our 
 rooms. ' The purpose,' he says, ' with which one borrows 
 books is mainly to complete a collection : one has, perhaps, 
 ten or twelve of the books one wants, but just some two or
 
 10 
 
 three are needed which no other library but the Bodleian 
 can supply '. What does all this amount to ? Why, 
 that it is a great convenience to have books and MSS. 
 out of the Bodleian. Quis negavit? Everybody admits 
 it; but the point and it is really astonishing how few 
 people there seem to be now-a-days who can see the point 
 of any thing the point is this: which on the whole is 
 the greater convenience to the greatest number of serious 
 students, letting books go out of the library or keeping them 
 in it ? Never to lend entails inconveniences ; lending also 
 entails inconveniences; on which side does the balance 
 of inconvenience lie ? People feel, as Mr. Sanday confesses 
 that he feels, how convenient it is ( lo complete a collection* ; 
 they never for one moment consider that their convenience 
 is another man's inconvenience. Provided they can get 
 what they want, they really seem to care not one farthing 
 for anybody else in the universe. It is almost needless 
 to add that this remark does not apply to Mr. Sanday. 
 
 If we did not send our books abroad, it is certain that 
 foreign libraries might, and, if they were wise, would, 
 decline to lend us their books. And a very good thing 
 too. It benefits us to visit foreign libraries, and it will 
 benefit foreigners to visit ours. In these days of rapid 
 and cheap locomotion, there is less reason than ever for 
 sending books racing about all over the world. If you 
 go to Simancas, to Venice, or to the Public Record Office, 
 you may consult and copy the records of Spain, of Venice, 
 and of England, for yourself. If you had rather not go, 
 you can get attested copies of any document which you 
 desire to have, but you cannot borrow. And it should 
 be the same with all great libraries. If a man wishes for 
 a partial or a complete collation of a Bodleian book, or for 
 a complete transcript, he most certainly ought to be able 
 to get it accurately done, and I should hope that in this 
 University he would get it done gratis, though it would 
 be no hardship or injustice if such work were charged for 
 at a modest rate. If a man unable to visit us is willing 
 to pay for a transcript or collation, and there is no one 
 here either able or willing to make it, then there is a
 
 11 
 
 substantial grievance ; but in no seat of learning ought 
 such a thing to be possible. _ In any University that 
 deserves the name, and especially in a University so richly 
 endowed as ours is, there ought to be, and if funds were 
 not wasted there might be, a number of keen-eyed men 
 skilled in every ordinary language of Europe and of Asia, 
 able and willing for the mere love of learning to do this 
 sort of work thoroughly well. It should be the same 
 in London. It is shameful to us as Englishmen, con- 
 sidering what our Eastern Empire is, that there should 
 be the least difficulty in getting any MS. properly tran- 
 scribed or properly collated either here or at the India 
 Office. Let us reform ourselves in very deed, and not 
 in name only, as quickly as may be. Although a University 
 does not mean a place where the omne scibile is either 
 known or taught, it is certain that such a University as 
 Oxford pretends to be (and might have been) ought to 
 contain even amongst its College fellows men skilled in 
 all but the most outlandish tongues. 
 
 Mr. Ellis' letter appeared in the Academy of February 
 26, 1887. It consists of two parts more or less intertwined, 
 that is to say, of objections to opinions which he believes 
 me to hold though I do not, and of an attempt to justify 
 the lending out of books. The personal part (I do not 
 mean this in any disagreeable sense) has been answered, 
 so far as it required an answer, in the Academy of 
 March 5, 1887, and need not be repeated here. 
 
 Mr. Ellis thinks that the tone of my pamphlet 'is, 
 to say the very least, reactionary ', and he describes me 
 as the exponent of 'a reactionary movement against the 
 study and use of MSS.' The pamphlet says in effect 
 that the Curators have for years past been doing a wrong 
 thing, and a thing for which they had no statutable 
 warrant; it gives reasons why the thing is both wrong 
 and foolish, and it begs the University to put a stop 
 to the wrong doing. This Mr. Ellis calls 'reactionary'; 
 a violent misuse of an adjective, as it seems to me. Then 
 he makes out entirely to his own satisfaction, though 
 hardly, it is to be thought, to that of his readers, that
 
 12 
 
 I object to the presence of an undergraduate in the 
 Bodleian. Anybody who reads the ' Remarks ' with 
 ordinary attention will see that in the passage where 
 alone the word occurs (p. 46) it is used to denote a 
 species of the unlearned, and surely no one will deny 
 that it is rightly so used ; for not one undergraduate 
 in five hundred could be properly described as learned. 
 But if any undergraduate is learned, I have never objected 
 to his presence in the library. How could I object when 
 I have said more than once that the Bodleian was founded 
 and endowed by learned men for learned men ? Not 
 a year ago I introduced to the library a very young 
 Cambridge man, whom I firmly believed to be an under- 
 graduate ; and I congratulated myself on having turned 
 loose into that glorious place exactly the sort of person 
 that Bodley, Laud, and Selden would have welcomed, for 
 he was at once a scholar and a lover of books. It turned 
 out that my young friend was not an undergraduate at 
 all, but a recently made Bachelor of Arts ; but that 
 makes no difference as far as I am concerned ; I believed 
 him to be an undergraduate when I offered to be his 
 sponsor. So much for the charge that I would exclude 
 undergraduates from the Bodleian. I would exclude 
 (just as Bodley ordered) all unlearned people, and there- 
 fore almost all undergraduates ; I would welcome all learned 
 men (and women too), and therefore any one, graduate 
 or undergraduate, who is learned; nor should I take 
 ' learned ' in a very strict sense. 
 
 Mr. Ellis declares that he should regard the change of 
 practice which I advocate ' not only with grave distrust, 
 but with a quite lively resentment, as an outrage and 
 desecration' to the memory of the late Mr. Coxe. I 
 understand this rather tall talk (and others do the same) 
 to mean that Mr. Coxe approved of the practice of lending 
 books and MSS. Now I have uncommonly good authority 
 for saying that Mr. Coxe viewed the lending system with 
 as much disfavour as I do myself. How could it have 
 been otherwise ? Mr. Coxe was a librarian who knew 
 his business, and what the practice of such a library as
 
 13 
 
 the Bodleian should be. The Curators, the greater number 
 of whom were profoundly ignorant both of books and 
 of book management, coerced him ; he was obliged to 
 yield, but I am assured that he detested their barbarism 
 quite as much as I do. 
 
 The rest of the letter merely puts forward the plea 
 of convenience over again, and, like the rest, the writer 
 does not see that neither I nor anybody else have ever 
 questioned the convenience of the practice. I find that 
 some readers of Mr. Ellis' letter suppose the sentences 
 in inverted commas to be all mine, but that is not the 
 case ; several of them are expressions which he supposes 
 (wrongly enough) I should or might use. I have, for 
 instance, nowhere objected to the nasty habit of biting 
 your nails, though Mr. Ellis puts the objection into my 
 mouth. So long as a man merely bites his own nails, 
 I should say nothing, whatever I might think : it would 
 of course be different, if he were to try to bite my nails. 
 
 Every Member of Convocation has a right to criticise 
 the New Statute, and therefore no apology need be 
 made for the following remarks. For the first time in 
 the history of the Bodleian it is proposed plainly and 
 clearly to invest the Curators with the power to lend 
 books. From the foundation of the library down to 1873 
 they had no such power, no such right; nevertheless 
 from 1862 they did as a matter of fact lend manuscripts 
 and printed books. It was their custom, their ' mos ' 
 to do so. On February 28, 1873, they resolved that they 
 would 'proceed by statute to take power to order the 
 lending out of books under certain restrictions.' Now 
 no sane man resolves to 'take power' to do what he 
 already has a right to do. This resolution then was a 
 distinct confession that for years past the Curators had 
 been acting unstatutably, and it is probable, perhaps 
 certain, that the words ' sicut mos fait ' in the extraordinary 
 statute of 1873 were intended to cover and condone 
 the illegal acts of the previous ten or eleven years, an 
 intention completely frustrated by the unparalleled bad 
 Latin in which that Statute is expressed. Whether a
 
 14 
 
 permission ' to borrow books for learned men ' conveys 
 to the Curators the power to lend them is very doubtful 
 indeed; if it were not so, it is difficult to see why the 
 Curators applied for the Statute now before us. Were 
 any one to maintain that the Curators have now no power 
 to lend books, and that they never have had it since 
 the Library was founded, he would not find much diffi- 
 culty in proving his case to the satisfaction of all reasonable 
 beings. The present Statute proposes to give them this 
 power, though not in perfectly unobjectionable terms. 
 For it first allows them to lend manuscripts, and then 
 declares that no rare book shall be lent without the consent 
 of Convocation. Now a manuscript is more than rare ; 
 it is unique, no two being exactly alike. There is an 
 ambiguity here which will be found in practice to breed 
 endless difficulties. Then, again, who is to judge of the 
 antiquity, rarity, and so forth of any book, printed or 
 manuscript ? Either the Curators must decide these 
 questions for themselves, or they must act on the judg- 
 ment of the Librarian. Knowing what it now knows, 
 is the University really prepared to say that the existing 
 board shall decide such questions ; and, if not, is it ready 
 to leave matters so complex and difficult to the judgment 
 of any one man, be he who he may ? 
 
 Lastly, the Librarian is permitted to lend books neither 
 rare nor valuable, and it is left to him alone to decide 
 whether a given book is or is not rare or valuable. To 
 those ignorant of books it will seem easy enough to settle 
 this question, though it is one to frighten a man who 
 does know something about them. Nothing is stranger 
 than the sudden way in which some books become at 
 first scarce, and then totally disappear. For nearly forty 
 years I have been on the look-out for two English books 
 which I read as a child ; one a book of voyages and 
 travels, the other a cheap edition of the Arabian Nights, 
 and never once in all that time have I had a chance of 
 buying either: they seem to have vanished. One would 
 have said without hesitation that they were not rare and 
 certainly not valuable, yet they are absolutely unprocurable.
 
 15 
 
 But this is a technical matter which will hardly interest 
 Congregation. It is more to the point to insist that the 
 rules for lending drawn up and approved by the Curators 
 should be revised and approved by Convocation, and that 
 without its consent they shall neither be altered nor ab- 
 rogated. Even so it will be impossible to prevent frightful 
 mischief. If the thoroughly bad principle of lending 
 is affirmed, is it not clear that the Paris rule should be 
 adopted ? That rule is that only duplicates of books 
 neither rare nor valuable (the exact words of the regulation 
 are quoted in the ' Remarks,' p. 43) shall be lent. 
 
 But it is to be hoped that the University will follow 
 the excellent example of the British Museum. The 
 Oriental Congress have been moving heaven and earth to 
 get the Trustees to sanction the loan of Oriental Manu- 
 scripts 'under proper guarantees,' and they have brought 
 considerable pressure to bear; but the Trustees, as well 
 as the responsible officers in the Museum, have given 
 the Oriental Congress its answer. The authorities in Great 
 Russell Street know their business, and they utterly de- 
 cline to lend on any terms. Let us be as wise as they 
 are. If the present Statute is passed, no one can be so 
 foolish as to suppose that it will be long obeyed, or that 
 it will not be soon relaxed. The question really is between 
 lending and not lending. The lending, if sanctioned in 
 any form, will at first be limited, it will rapidly become 
 unlimited. A rat-hole in a dyke lets the water in at first 
 in a dribble, then in a stream, finally away goes the dyke 
 and irreparable mischief is done. So will it be with 
 lending, only that the dyke which defends the Bodleian 
 will be bored in an indefinite number of places. Every 
 borrower will act the part of a rat. The borrowers* 
 list which this Statute legalizes for the first time will 
 soon embrace the name of every graduate in Oxford. 
 It is so convenient to have the exact book you want in 
 your own room. Yes, unquestionably most convenient; 
 but what is the price you pay for this convenience ? A 
 ruinous one ; you destroy the Bodleian as a library of 
 reference. ' Once or twice a year,' says Mr. Warren (see
 
 16 
 
 Academy, March 12, 1887), 'graduates like myself go 
 up to Oxford on a short visit with pages of references 
 to verify, anxious to see new or back numbers of the 
 Revue Celtique, Palaeographical Society publications, &c. 
 Jt is both inconvenient and disappointing to be told, as 
 I have been told more than once, that such-and-such a 
 book is out on loan, and cannot be had. The inconvenience 
 will become greater as the circle of privileged borrowers 
 becomes larger ; ' this is the language of a student, and 
 the language of common sense. The benefit of a reference 
 library cannot be exaggerated, and it must be clear to 
 the meanest capacity that lending and deposit cannot 
 possibly be combined. It is not difficult to damage or 
 destroy the usefulness of the Bodleian, and the Statute 
 on which we are now to vote is the first step downwards. 
 To lend books out of such a library as ours is an act 
 opposed to the teachings of experience, nor can it be 
 said that the course which we are invited to take is one 
 sanctioned by those who are eminent authorities on such 
 a question. The men who for years past have been per- 
 sistently trying to force this fatal policy upon the University 
 may be remarkable on more accounts than one ; yet they 
 are assuredly not remarkable either for their acquaintance 
 with books and libraries, or for their knowledge of the 
 Bodleian. To them it is merely a large library, not essen- 
 tially different from the London Library or from Mudie's, 
 and they propose to treat it accordingly. No misfake 
 can be greater. The Bodleian is no ordinary library ; 
 it is one of the wonders of the world, and are we going 
 to be such Vandals as to sanction a practice which can 
 only end in its destruction ? 
 
 fiAXTEE, PRINTER, OXFOBD.
 
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