The Book-Hunter, John Hill Burton [essential reading TXT] 📗
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[54] I am not aware that in the blue-books, or any other source of public information, there is any authenticated statement of the quantity of literature which the privileged libraries receive through the Copyright Act. The information would afford a measure of the fertility of the British press. It is rather curious, that for a morsel of this kind of ordinary modern statistics, one must have recourse to so scholarly a work as the quarto volume of the Præfationes et Epistolæ Editionibus Principibus Auctorum Veterum præpositæ, curante Beriah Botfield, A.M. The editor of that noble quarto obtained a return from Mr Winter Jones, of the number of deposits in the British Museum from 1814 to 1860. Counting the "pieces," as they are called—that is, every volume, pamphlet, page of music, and other publication—the total number received in 1814 was 378. It increased by steady gradation until 1851, when it reached 9871. It then got an impulse, from a determination more strictly to enforce the Act, and next year the number rose to 13,934, and in 1859 it reached 28,807. In this great mass, the number of books coming forth complete in one volume or more is roundly estimated at 5000, but a quantity of the separate numbers and parts which go to make up the total are elementary portions of books, giving forth a certain number of completed volumes annually. From the same authority, it appears that the total number of publications which issued from the French press in 1858 was estimated at 13,000; but this includes "sermons, pamphlets, plays, pieces of music, and engravings." In the same year the issues from the German press, Austria not included, are estimated at 10,000, all apparently actual volumes, or considerable pamphlets. Austria in 1855 published 4673 volumes and parts. What a contrast to all this it must be to live in sleepy Norway, where the annual literary prowess produces 146 volumes! In Holland the annual publications approach 2000. "During the year 1854, 861 works in the Russian language, and 451 in foreign languages were printed in Russia; besides 2940 scientific and literary treatises in the different periodicals." The number of works anywhere published is, however, no indication of the number of books put in circulation, since some will have to be multiplied by tens, others by hundreds, and others by thousands. We know that there is an immense currency of literature in the American States, yet, of the quantity of literature issued there, the Publishers' Circular for February 1859 gives the following meagre estimate:—"There were 912 works published in America during 1858. Of these 177 were reprints from England, 35 were new editions, and 10 were translations from the French or German. The new American works thus number only 690, and among them are included sermons, pamphlets, and letters, whereas the reprints are in most cases bonâ fide books."
[55] The most complete mass of information which we probably possess in the English language about the history of libraries, both home and foreign, is in the two octavos called Memoirs of Libraries, including a Handbook of Library Concerns, by Edward Edwards.
[56] "Indeed, although we had obtained abundance both of old and new works, through an extensive communication with all the religious orders, yet we must in justice extol the Preachers with a special commendation in this respect; for we found them, above all other religious devotees, ungrudging of their most acceptable communications, and overflowing with a certain divine liberality; we experienced them not to be selfish hoarders, but meet professors of enlightened knowledge. Besides all the opportunities already touched upon, we easily acquired the notice of the stationers and librarians, not only within the provinces of our native soil, but of those dispersed over the kingdoms of France, Germany, and Italy, by the prevailing power of money; no distance whatever impeded, no fury of the sea deterred them; nor was cash wanting for their expenses, when they sent or brought us the wished-for books; for they knew to a certainty that their hopes reposed in our bosoms could not be disappointed, but ample redemption, with interest, was secure with us. Lastly, our common captivatrix of the love of all men (money), did not neglect the rectors of country schools, nor the pedagogues of clownish boys, but rather, when we had leisure to enter their little gardens and paddocks, we culled redolent flowers upon the surface, and dug up neglected roots (not, however, useless to the studious), and such coarse digests of barbarism, as with the gift of eloquence might be made sanative to the pectoral arteries. Amongst productions of this kind, we found many most worthy of renovation, which, when the foul rust was skilfully polished off, and the mask of old age removed, deserved to be once more remodelled into comely countenances, and which we, having applied a sufficiency of the needful means, resuscitated for an exemplar of future resurrection, having in some measure restored them to renewed soundness. Moreover, there was always about us in our halls no small assemblage of antiquaries, scribes, bookbinders, correctors, illuminators, and, generally, of all such persons as were qualified to labour advantageously in the service of books.
"To conclude. All of either sex, of every degree, estate, or dignity, whose pursuits were in any way connected with books, could, with a knock, most easily open the door of our heart, and find a convenient reposing place in our bosom. We so admitted all who brought books, that neither the multitude of first-comers could produce a fastidiousness of the last, nor the benefit conferred yesterday be prejudicial to that of to-day. Wherefore, as we were continually resorted to by all the aforesaid persons, as to a sort of adamant attractive of books, the desired accession of the vessels of science, and a multifarious flight of the best volumes were made to us. And this is what we undertook to relate at large in the present chapter."
[57] Edwards on Libraries, vol. i. p. 586.
[58] Edwards on Libraries, vol. i. p. 609.
[59] Edwards on Libraries, vol. ii. p. 272.
[60] One of the latest inquirers who has gone over the ground concludes his evidence thus: "Omar ne vint pas à Alexandrie; et s'il y fut venu, il n'eut pas trouvé des livres à brûler. La bibliothèque n'existait plus depuis deux siècles et demi."—Fournier, L'Esprit dans l'Histoire. What shall we say to the story told by Zonaras and repeated by Pancirole, of the burning, in the reign of the Emperor Basilisc, of the library of Constantinople, containing one hundred and twenty thousand volumes, and among them a copy of the Iliad and the Odyssey, written in golden letters on parchment made from the intestines of the dragon?
[61] I question if Toy Literature, as it may be called, has received the consideration it deserves, when one remembers how great an influence it must have on the formation of the infant mind. I am not prepared to argue that it should be put under regulation—perhaps it is best that it should be left to the wild luxuriance of nature—but its characteristics and influence are surely worthy of studious observation. It happened to me once to observe in the library of an eminent divine a large heap of that class of works which used to be known as "penny bookies." My reverend friend explained, in relation to them, that they were intended to counteract some pernicious influences at work—that he had made the important and painful discovery that the influence of this class of literature had been noticed and employed by the enemies of the Church. In confirmation of this view, he showed me some passages, of which I remember the following:—
"B was a Bishop who loved his repose,
C was a Curate who had a red nose,"
D was a Dean, but how characterised I forget. I did not think, however, that the proposed antidote, in which the mysteries of religion and the specialties of a zealous class in the English Church were mixed up with childish prattle, was much more decorous or appropriate than what it was intended to counteract.
[62] There is something exceedingly curious, not only in its bearing on the matter of the text, but as a record of some peculiar manners and habits of the fourteenth century, in Richard of Bury's injunctions as to the proper treatment of the manuscripts which were read in his day, and the signal contrast offered by the practice both of the clergy and laity to his decorous precepts:—
"We not only set before ourselves a service to God in preparing volumes of new books, but we exercise the duties of a holy piety, if we first handle so as not to injure them, then return them to their proper places and commend them to undefiling custody, that they may rejoice in their purity while held in the hand, and repose in security when laid up in their repositories. Truly, next to the vestments and vessels dedicated to the body of the Lord, holy books deserve to be most decorously handled by the clergy, upon which injury is inflicted as often as they presume to touch them with a dirty hand. Wherefore, we hold it expedient to exhort students upon various negligencies which can always be avoided, but which are wonderfully injurious to books.
"In the first place, then, let there be a mature decorum in opening and closing of volumes, that they may neither be unclasped with precipitous haste, nor thrown aside after inspection without being duly closed; for it is necessary that a book should be much more carefully preserved than a shoe. But school folks are in general perversely educated, and, if not restrained by the rule of their superiors, are puffed up with infinite absurdities; they act with petulance, swell with presumption, judge of everything with certainty, and are unexperienced in anything.
"You will perhaps see a stiff-necked youth, lounging sluggishly in his study, while the frost pinches him in winter time, oppressed with cold, his watery nose drops, nor does he take the trouble to wipe it with his handkerchief till it has moistened the book beneath it with its vile dew. For such a one I would substitute a cobbler's apron in the place of his book. He has a nail like a giant's, perfumed with stinking filth, with which he points out the place of any pleasant subject. He distributes innumerable straws in various places, with the ends in sight, that he may recall by the mark what his memory cannot retain. These straws, which the stomach of the book never digests, and which nobody takes out, at first distend the book from its accustomed closure, and, being carelessly left to oblivion, at last become putrid. He is not ashamed to eat fruit and cheese over an open book, and to transfer his empty cup from side to side upon it; and because he has not his alms-bag at hand, he leaves the rest of the fragments in his books. He never ceases to chatter with eternal garrulity to his companions; and while he adduces a multitude of reasons void of physical meaning, he waters the book, spread out upon his lap, with the sputtering of his saliva. What is worse, he next reclines with his elbows on the book, and by a short study invites
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