A startling literary prophecy, recently sent forth from our oracular
literature, threatens the annihilation of public libraries, which are
one day to moulder away!
Listen to the vaticinator! "As conservatories of mental treasures, their
value in times of darkness and barbarity was incalculable; and even in
these happier days, when men are incited to explore new regions of
thought, they command respect as depots of methodical and well-ordered
references for the researches of the curious. But what in one state of
society is invaluable, may at another be worthless; and the progress
which the world has made within a very few centuries has considerably
reduced the estimation which is due to such establishments. We will say
more--"[231] but enough! This idea of striking into dust "the god of his
idolatry," the Dagon of his devotion, is sufficient to terrify the
bibliographer, who views only a blind Samson pulling down the pillars of
his temple!
This future universal inundation of books, this superfluity of
knowledge, in billions and trillions, overwhelms the imaginnation! It
is now about four hundred years since the art of multiplying books has
been discovered; and an arithmetician has attempted to calculate the
incalculable of these four ages of typography, which he discovers have
actually produced 3,641,960 works! Taking each work at three volumes,
and reckoning only each impression to consist of three hundred copies,
which is too little, the actual amount from the presses of Europe will
give to 1816, 3,277,764,000 volumes! each of which being an inch thick,
if placed on a line, would cover 6069 leagues! Leibnitz facetiously
maintained that such would be the increase of literature, that future
generations would find whole cities insufficient to contain their
libraries. We are, however, indebted to the patriotic endeavours of our
grocers and trunkmakers, alchemists of literature! they annihilate the
gross bodies without injuring the finer spirits. We are still more
indebted to that neglected race, the bibliographers!
The science of books, for so bibliography is sometimes dignified, may
deserve the gratitude of a public, who are yet insensible of the useful
zeal of those book-practitioners, the nature of whose labours is yet so
imperfectly comprehended. Who is this vaticinator of the uselessness of
public libraries? Is he a _bibliognoste_, or a _bibliographe_, or a
_bibliomane_, or a _bibliophile_, or a _bibliotaphe_? A
_bibliothecaire_, or a _bibliopole_, the prophet cannot be; for the
_bibliothecaire_ is too delightfully busied among his shelves, and the
_bibliopole_ is too profitably concerned in furnishing perpetual
additions to admit of this hyperbolical terror of annihilation![232]
Unawares, we have dropped into that professional jargon which was
chiefly forged by one who, though seated in the "scorner's chair," was
the Thaumaturgus of books and manuscripts. The Abbe Rive had acquired a
singular taste and curiosity, not without a fermenting dash of singular
_charlatanerie_, in bibliography: the little volumes he occasionally put
forth are things which but few hands have touched. He knew well, that
for some books to be noised about, they should not be read: this was one
of those recondite mysteries of his, which we may have occasion farther
to reveal. This bibliographical hero was librarian to the most
magnificent of book-collectors, the Duke de la Valliere. The Abbe Rive
was a strong but ungovernable brute, rabid, surly, but _tres-mordant_.
His master, whom I have discovered to have been the partner of the cur's
tricks, would often pat him; and when the _bibliognostes_, and the
_bibliomanes_ were in the heat of contest, let his "bull-dog" loose
among them, as the duke affectionately called his librarian. The
"bull-dog" of bibliography appears, too, to have had the taste and
appetite of the tiger of politics, but he hardly lived to join the
festival of the guillotine. I judge of this by an expression he used to
one complaining of his parish priest, whom he advised to give "une messe
dans son ventre!" He had tried to exhaust his genius in _La Chasse aux
Bibliographes et aux Antiquaires mal avises_, and acted Cain with his
brothers! All Europe was to receive from him new ideas concerning books
and manuscripts. Yet all his mighty promises fumed away in projects; and
though he appeared for ever correcting the blunders of others, this
French Ritson left enough of his own to afford them a choice of revenge.
His style of criticism was perfectly _Ritsonian_. He describes one of
his rivals as _l'insolent et tres-insense auteur de l'Almanach de
Gotha_, on the simple subject of the origin of playing-cards!
The Abbe Rive was one of those men of letters, of whom there are not a
few who pass all their lives in preparations. Dr. Dibdin, since the
above was written, has witnessed the confusion of the mind and the
gigantic industry of our _bibliognoste_, which consisted of many trunks
full of _memoranda_. The description will show the reader to what hard
hunting these book-hunters voluntarily doom themselves, with little hope
of obtaining fame! "In one trunk were about _six thousand_ notices of
MSS. of all ages. In another were wedged about _twelve thousand_
descriptions of books in all languages, except those of French and
Italian; sometimes with critical notes. In a third trunk was a bundle of
papers relating to the _History of the Troubadours_. In a fourth was a
collection of memoranda and literary sketches connected with the
invention of arts and sciences, with pieces exclusively bibliographical.
A fifth trunk contained between _two_ and _three thousand_ cards,
written upon each side, respecting a collection of prints. In a sixth
trunk were contained his papers respecting earthquakes, volcanoes, and
geographical subjects."[233] This _Ajax flagellifer_ of the
bibliographical tribe, who was, as Dr. Dibdin observes, "the terror of
his acquaintance, and the pride of his patron," is said to have been in
private a very different man from his public character; all which may be
true, without altering a shade of that public character. The French
Revolution showed how men, mild and even kind in domestic life, were
sanguinary and ferocious in their public.
The rabid Abbe Rive gloried in terrifying, without enlightening his
rivals; he exulted that he was devoting to "the rods of criticism and
the laughter of Europe the _bibliopoles_," or dealers in books, who
would not get by heart his "Catechism" of a thousand and one questions
and answers: it broke the slumbers of honest De Bure, who had found life
was already too short for his own "Bibliographie Instructive."
The Abbe Rive had contrived to catch the shades of the appellatives
necessary to discriminate book amateurs; and of the first term he is
acknowledged to be the inventor.
A _bibliognoste_, from the Greek, is one knowing in title-pages and
colophons, and in editions; the place and year when printed; the presses
whence issued; and all the _minutiae_ of a book.
A _bibliographe_ is a describer of books and other literary
arrangements.
A _bibliomane_ is an indiscriminate accumulator, who blunders faster
than he buys, cock-brained, and purse-heavy!
A _bibliophile_, the lover of books, is the only one in the class who
appears to read them for his own pleasure.
A _bibliotaphe_ buries his books, by keeping them under lock, or framing
them in glass cases.
I shall catch our _bibliognoste_ in the hour of book-rapture! It will
produce a collection of bibliographical writers, and show to the
second-sighted Edinburgher what human contrivances have been raised by
the art of more painful writers than himself--either to postpone the day
of universal annihilation, or to preserve for our posterity, three
centuries hence, the knowledge which now so busily occupies us, and
transmit to them something more than what Bacon calls "Inventories" of
our literary treasures.
"Histories, and literary _bibliotheques_ (or bibliothecas), will always
present to us," says La Rive, "an immense harvest of errors, till the
authors of such catalogues shall be fully impressed by the importance of
their art; and, as it were, reading in the most distant ages of the
future the literary good and evil which they may produce, force a
triumph from the pure devotion to truth, in spite of all the disgusts
which their professional tasks involve; still patiently enduring the
heavy chains which bind down those who give themselves up to this
pursuit, with a passion which resembles heroism.
"The catalogues of _bibliotheques fixes_ (or critical, historical, and
classified accounts of writers) have engendered that enormous swarm of
bibliographical errors, which have spread their roots, in greater or
less quantities, in all our bibliographers." He has here furnished a
long list, which I shall preserve in the note.[234]
The list, though curious, is by no means complete. Such are the men of
whom the Abbe Rive speaks with more respect than his accustomed
courtesy. "If such," says he, "cannot escape from errors, who shall? I
have only marked them out to prove the importance of bibliographical
history. A writer of this sort must occupy himself with more regard for
his reputation than his own profit, and yield himself up entirely to the
study of books."
The mere knowledge of books, which has been called an erudition of
title-pages, may be sufficient to occupy the life of some; and while the
wits and "the million" are ridiculing these hunters of editions, who
force their passage through secluded spots, as well as course in the
open fields, it will be found that this art of book-knowledge may turn
out to be a very philosophical pursuit, and that men of great name have
devoted themselves to labours more frequently contemned than
comprehended. Apostolo Zeno, a poet, a critic, and a true man of
letters, considered it as no small portion of his glory to have
annotated Fontanini, who, himself an eminent prelate, had passed his
life in forming his _Bibliotheca Italiana_. Zeno did not consider that
to correct errors and to enrich by information this catalogue of Italian
writers was a mean task. The enthusiasm of the Abbe Rive considered
bibliography as a sublime pursuit, exclaiming on Zeno's commentary on
Fontanini--"He chained together the knowledge of whole generations for
posterity, and he read in future ages."
There are few things by which we can so well trace the history of the
human mind as by a classed catalogue, with dates of the first
publication of books; even the relative prices of books at different
periods, their decline and then their rise, and again their fall, form a
chapter in this history of the human mind; we become critics even by
this literary chronology, and this appraisement of auctioneers. The
favourite book of every age is a certain picture of the people. The
gradual depreciation of a great author marks a change in knowledge or in
taste.
But it is imagined that we are not interested in the history of
indifferent writers, and scarcely in that of the secondary ones. If none
but great originals should claim our attention, in the course of two
thousand years we should not count twenty authors! Every book, whatever
be its character, may be considered as a new experiment made by the
human understanding; and as a book is a sort of individual
representation, not a solitary volume exists but may be personified, and
described as a human being. Hints start discoveries: they are usually
found in very different authors who could go no further; and the
historian of obscure books is often preserving for men of genius
indications of knowledge, which without his intervention we should not
possess! Many secrets we discover in bibliography. Great writers,
unskilled in this science of books, have frequently used defective
editions, as Hume did the castrated Whitelocke; or, like Robertson, they
are ignorant of even the sources of the knowledge they would give the
public; or they compose on a subject which too late they discover had
been anticipated. Bibliography will show what has been done, and suggest
to our invention what is wanted. Many have often protracted their
journey in a road which had already been worn out by the wheels which
had traversed it: bibliography unrolls the whole map of the country we
purpose travelling over--the post-roads and the by-paths.
Every half-century, indeed, the obstructions multiply; and the Edinburgh
prediction, should it approximate to the event it has foreseen, may more
reasonably terrify a far distant posterity. Mazzuchelli declared, after
his laborious researches in Italian literature, that one of his more
recent predecessors, who had commenced a similar work, had collected
notices of forty thousand writers--and yet, he adds, my work must
increase that number to ten thousand more! Mazzuchelli said this in
1753; and the amount of nearly a century must now be added, for the
presses of Italy have not been inactive.
But the literature of Germany, of France, and of England has exceeded
the multiplicity of the productions of Italy, and an appalling
population of authors swarm before the imagination.[235] Hail then the
peaceful spirit of the literary historian, which sitting amidst the
night of time, by the monuments of genius, trims the sepulchral lamps of
the human mind! Hail to the literary Reaumur, who by the clearness of
his glasses makes even the minute interesting, and reveals to us the
world of insects! These are guardian spirits who, at the close of every
century standing on its ascent, trace out the old roads we had pursued,
and with a lighter line indicate the new ones which are opening, from
the imperfect attempts, and even the errors of our predecessors!