? 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. University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. DC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 000 061 628 4 i?> > I^i^xsgJ* -,