I. 'IN THE NAME OF THE BODLEIAN'
II. BOOKWORMS
III. CONFIRMED READERS
IV. FIRST EDITIONS
V. GOSSIP IN A LIBRARY
VI. LIBRARIANS AT PLAY
VII. LAWYERS AT PLAY
VIII. THE NON-JURORS
IX. LORD CHESTERFIELD
X. THE JOHNSONIAN LEGEND
XI. BOSWELL AS BIOGRAPHER
XII. OLD PLEASURE GARDENS
XIII. OLD BOOKSELLERS
XIV. A FEW WORDS ABOUT COPYRIGHT IN BOOKS
XV. HANNAH MORE ONCE MORE
XVI. ARTHUR YOUNG
XVII. THOMAS PAINE
XVIII. CHARLES BRADLAUGH
XIX. DISRAELI _EX RELATIONE_ SIR WILLIAM FRASER
XX. A CONNOISSEUR
XXI. OUR GREAT MIDDLE CLASS
XXII. TAR AND WHITEWASH
XXIII. ITINERARIES
XXIV. EPITAPHS
XXV. 'HANSARD'
XXVI. CONTEMPT OF COURT
XXVII. 5 EDWARD VII., CHAPTER 12
'IN THE NAME OF THE BODLEIAN'
With what feelings, I wonder, ought one to approach in a famous
University an already venerable foundation, devoted by the last will
and indented deed of a pious benefactor to the collection and housing
of books and the promotion of learning? The Bodleian at this moment
harbours within its walls well-nigh half a million of printed volumes,
some scores of precious manuscripts in all the tongues, and has become
a name famous throughout the whole civilized world. What sort of a
poor scholar would he be whose heart did not beat within him when, for
the first time, he found himself, to quote the words of 'Elia,' 'in
the heart of learning, under the shadow of the mighty Bodley'?
Grave questions these! 'The following episode occurred during one of
Calverley's (then Blayds) appearances at "Collections," the Master
(Dr. Jenkyns) officiating. _Question_: "And with what feelings, Mr.
Blayds, ought we to regard the decalogue?" Calverley who had no very
clear idea of what was meant by the decalogue, but who had a due sense
of the importance both of the occasion and of the question, made the
following reply: "Master, with feelings of devotion, mingled with
awe!" "Quite right, young man; a very proper answer," exclaimed the
Master.'[A]
[Footnote A: _Literary Remains of C.S. Calverley_, p. 31.]
'Devotion mingled with awe' might be a very proper answer for me to
make to my own questions, but possessing that acquaintance with the
history of the most picturesque of all libraries which anybody can
have who loves books enough to devote a dozen quiet hours of
rumination to the pages of Mr. Macray's _Annals of the Bodleian
Library_, second edition, Oxford, 'at the Clarendon Press, 1890,' I
cannot honestly profess to entertain in my breast, with regard to it,
the precise emotions which C.S.C. declared took possession of him when
he regarded the decalogue. A great library easily begets affection,
which may deepen into love; but devotion and awe are plants hard to
rear in our harsh climate; besides, can it be well denied that there
is something in a huge collection of the ancient learning, of
mediaeval folios, of controversial pamphlets, and in the thick black
dust these things so woefully collect, provocative of listlessness and
enervation and of a certain Solomonic dissatisfaction? The two writers
of modern times, both pre-eminently sympathetic towards the past, who
have best described this somewhat melancholy and disillusioned frame
of mind are both Americans: Washington Irving, in two essays in _The
Sketch-Book_, 'The Art of Bookmaking' and 'The Mutability of
Literature'; and Nathaniel Hawthorne, in many places, but notably in
that famous chapter on 'The Emptiness of Picture Galleries,' in _The
Marble Faun_.
It is perhaps best not to make too great demands upon our slender
stock of deep emotions, not to rhapsodize too much, or vainly to
pretend, as some travellers have done, that to them the collections
of the Bodleian, its laden shelves and precious cases, are more
attractive than wealth, fame, or family, and that it was stern Fate
that alone compelled them to leave Oxford by train after a visit
rarely exceeding twenty-four hours in duration.
Sir Thomas Bodley's Library at Oxford is, all will admit, a great and
glorious institution, one of England's sacred places; and springing,
as it did, out of the mind, heart, and head of one strong, efficient,
and resolute man, it is matter for rejoicing with every honest
gentleman to be able to observe how quickly the idea took root,
how well it has thriven, by how great a tradition it has become
consecrated, and how studiously the wishes of the founder in all their
essentials are still observed and carried out.
Saith the prophet Isaiah, 'The liberal deviseth liberal things; and by
liberal things he shall stand.' The name of Thomas Bodley still stands
all the world over by the liberal thing he devised.
A few pages about this 'second Ptolemy' will be grudged me by none but
unlettered churls.
He was a west countryman, an excellent thing to be in England if you
want backing through thick and thin, and was born in Exeter on March
2nd, 1544--a most troublesome date. It seems our fate in the old home
never to be for long quit of the religious difficulty--which is very
hard upon us, for nobody, I suppose, would call the English a
'religious' people. Little Thomas Bodley opened his eyes in a land
distracted with the religious difficulty. Listen to his own words;
they are full of the times: 'My father, in the time of Queen Mary,
being noted and known to be an enemy to Popery, was so cruelly
threatened and so narrowly observed by those that maliced his
religion, that for the safeguard of himself and my mother, who was
wholly affected as my father, he knew no way so secure as to fly into
Germany, where after a while he found means to call over my mother
with all his children and family, whom he settled for a time in Wesel
in Cleveland. (For there, there were many English which had left their
country for their conscience and with quietness enjoyed their meetings
and preachings.) From thence he removed to the town of Frankfort,
where there was in like sort another English congregation. Howbeit we
made no longer tarriance in either of these two towns, for that my
father had resolved to fix his abode in the city of Geneva.'
Here the Bodleys remained 'until such time as our Nation was
advertised of the death of Queen Mary and the succession of Elizabeth,
with the change of religion which caused my father to hasten into
England.'
In Geneva young Bodley and his brothers enjoyed what now would be
called great educational advantages. Small creature though he was, he
yet attended, so he says, the public lectures of Chevalerius in
Hebrew, Bersaldus in Greek, and of Calvin and Beza in Divinity. He
had also 'domestical teachers,' and was taught Homer by Robert
Constantinus, who was the author of a Greek lexicon, a luxury in those
days.
On returning to England, Bodley proceeded, not to Exeter College, as
by rights he should have done, but to Magdalen, where he became a
'reading man,' and graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1563. The next year
he shifted his quarters to Merton, where he gave public lectures on
Greek. In 1566 he became a Master of Arts, took to the study of
natural philosophy, and three years later was Junior Proctor. He
remained in residence until 1576, thus spending seventeen years in the
University. In the last-mentioned year he obtained leave of absence to
travel on the Continent, and for four years he pursued his studies
abroad, mastering the French, Spanish, and Italian languages. Some
short time after his return home he obtained an introduction to Court
circles and became an Esquire to Queen Elizabeth, who seems to have
entertained varying opinions about him, at one time greatly commending
him and at another time wishing he were hanged--an awkward wish on
Tudor lips. In 1588 Bodley married a wealthy widow, a Mrs. Ball, the
daughter of a Bristol man named Carew. As Bodley survived his wife and
had no children, a good bit of her money remains in the Bodleian to
this day. Blessed be her memory! Nor should the names of Carew and
Ball be wholly forgotten in this connection. From 1588 to 1596 Bodley
was in the diplomatic service, chiefly at The Hague, where he did good
work in troublesome times. On being finally recalled from The Hague,
Bodley had to make up his mind whether to pursue a public life. He
suffered from having too many friends, for not only did Burleigh
patronize him, but Essex must needs do the same. No man can serve two
masters, and though to be the victim of the rival ambitions of greater
men than yourself is no uncommon fate, it is a currish one. Bodley
determined to escape it, and to make for himself after a very
different fashion a name _aere perennius_.
'I resolved thereupon to possess my soul in peace all the residue
of my days, to take my full farewell of State employments, to
satisfy my mind with the mediocrity of worldly living that I had of
mine own, and so to retire me from the Court.'
But what was he to do?
'Whereupon, examining exactly for the rest of my life what course I
might take, and having sought all the ways to the wood to select
the most proper, I concluded at the last to set up my staff at the
Library door in Oxford, being thoroughly persuaded that in my
solitude and surcease from the Commonwealth affairs I could not
busy myself to better purpose than by reducing that place (which
then in every part lay ruined waste) to the publick use of
students.'
It is pleasant to be admitted into the birth-chamber of a great idea
destined to be translated into action. Bodley proceeds to state the
four qualifications he felt himself to possess to do this great bit of
work: first, the necessary knowledge of ancient and modern tongues and
of 'sundry other sorts of scholastical literature'; second, purse
ability; third, a great store of honourable friends; and fourth,
leisure.
Bodley's description of the state of the old library as lying in every
part ruined and in waste was but too true.
Richard of Bury, the book-loving Bishop of Durham, seems to have been
the first donor of manuscripts on anything like a large scale to
Oxford, but the library he founded was at Durham College, which stood
where Trinity College now stands, and was in no sense a University
library. The good Bishop, known to all book-hunters as the author of
the _Philobiblon_, died in 1345, but his collection remained intact,
subject to rules he had himself laid down, until the dissolution of
the monasteries, when Durham College, which was attached to a
religious house, was put up for sale, and its library, like so much
else of good learning at this sad period, was dispersed and for the
most part destroyed.
Bodley's real predecessor, the first begetter of a University library,
was Thomas Cobham, Bishop of Worcester, who in 1320 prepared a chamber
above a vaulted room in the north-east corner of St. Mary's Church for
the reception of the books he intended to bestow upon his University.
When the Bishop of Worcester (as a matter of fact, he had once been
elected Archbishop of Canterbury; but that is another story, as
Laurence Sterne has said) died in 1327, it was discovered that he had
by his will bequeathed his library to Oxford, but he was insolvent! No
rich relict of a defunct Ball was available for a Bishop in those
days. The executors found themselves without sufficient estate to pay
for their testator's funeral expenses, even then the first charge upon
assets. They are not to be blamed for pawning the library. A good
friend redeemed the pledge, and despatched the books--all, of course,
manuscripts--to Oxford. For some reason or another Oriel took them in,
and, having become their bailee, refused to part with them, possibly
and plausibly alleging that the University was not in a position to
give a valid receipt. At Oriel they remained for ten years, when all
of a sudden the scholars of the University, animated by their
notorious affection for sound learning and a good 'row,' took Oriel by
storm, and carried off the books in triumph to Bishop Cobham's room,
where they remained in chests unread for thirty years. In 1367 the
University by statute ratified and confirmed its title to the books,
and published regulations for their use, but the quarrel with Oriel
continued till 1409, when the Cobham Library was for the first time
properly furnished and opened as a place for study and reference.
The librarian of the old Cobham Library had an advantage over Mr.
Nicholson, the Bodley librarian of to-day. Being a clerk in Holy
Orders before the time when, in Bodley's own phrase, already quoted,
we 'changed' our religion, he was authorized by the University to say
masses for the souls of all dead donors of books, whether by gifts
_inter vivos_ or by bequest.
The first great benefactor of Cobham's Library was Duke Humphrey of
Gloucester, the youngest son of Henry IV., and perhaps the most
'pushful' youngest son in our royal annals. Though a dissipated and
unprincipled fellow, he lives in history as 'the good Duke Humphrey,'
because he had the sense to patronize learning, collect manuscripts,
and enrich Universities. He began his gifts to Oxford as early, so say
some authorities, as 1411, and continued his donations of manuscripts
with such vivacity that the little room in St. Mary's could no longer
contain its riches. Hence the resolution of the University in 1444 to
build a new library over the Divinity School. This new room, which
was completed in 1480, forms now the central portion of that great
reading-room so affectionately remembered by thousands of still living
students.
Duke Humphrey's Library, as the new room was popularly called,
continued to flourish and receive valuable accessions of manuscripts
and printed books belonging to divinity, medicine, natural science,
and literature until the ill-omened year 1550. Oxford has never loved
Commissioners revising her statutes and reforming her schools, but
the Commissioners of 1550 were worse than prigs, worse even than
Erastians: they were barbarians and wreckers. They were deputed by
King Edward VI., 'in the spirit of the Reformation,' to make an end of
the Popish superstition. Under their hands the library totally
disappeared, and for a long while the tailors and shoemakers and
bookbinders of Oxford were well supplied with vellum, which they found
useful in their respective callings. It was a hard fate for so
splendid a collection. True it is that for the most part the contents
of the library had been rescued from miserable ill-usage in the
monasteries and chapter-houses where they had their first habitations,
but at last they had found shelter over the Divinity School of a great
University. There at least they might hope to slumber. But our
Reformers thought otherwise. The books and manuscripts being thus
dispersed or destroyed, a prudent if unromantic Convocation exposed
for sale the wooden shelves, desks, and seats of the old library, and
so made a complete end of the whole concern, thus making room for
Thomas Bodley.
On February 23, 1597/8, Thomas Bodley sat himself down in his London
house and addressed to the Vice-Chancellor of his University a certain
famous letter:
'SIR,
'Altho' you know me not as I suppose, yet for the farthering of an
offer of evident utilitie to your whole University I will not be
too scrupulous in craving your assistance. I have been alwaies of
a mind that if God of his goodness should make me able to do
anything for the benefit of posteritie, I would shew some token of
affiction that I have ever more borne to the studies of good
learning. I know my portion is too slender to perform for the
present any answerable act to my willing disposition, but yet to
notify some part of my desire in that behalf I have resolved thus
to deal. Where there hath been heretofore a public library in
Oxford which you know is apparent by the room itself remaining and
by your statute records, I will take the charge and cost upon me to
reduce it again to its former use and to make it fit and handsome
with seats and shelves and desks and all that may be needful to
stir up other mens benevolence to help to furnish it with books.
And this I purpose to begin as soon as timber can be gotten to the
intent that you may be of some speedy profit of my project. And
where before as I conceive it was to be reputed but a store of
books of divers benefactors because it never had any lasting
allowance for augmentation of the number or supply of books
decayed, whereby it came to pass that when those that were in being
were either wasted or embezzled, the whole foundation came to ruin.
To meet with that inconvenience, I will so provide hereafter (if
God do not hinder my present design) as you shall be still assured
of a standing annual rent to be disbursed every year in buying of
books, or officers stipends and other pertinent occasions, with
which provision and some order for the preservation of the place
and the furniture of it from accustomed abuses, it may perhaps in
time to come prove a notable treasure for the multitude of volumes,
an excellent benefit for the use and ease of students, and a
singular ornament of the University.'
The letter does not stop here, but my quotation has already probably
wearied most of my readers, though for my own part I am not ashamed to
confess that I seldom tire of retracing with my own hand the
_ipsissima verba_ whereby great and truly notable gifts have been
bestowed upon nations or Universities or even municipalities for the
advancement of learning and the spread of science. Bodley's language
is somewhat involved, but through it glows the plain intention of an
honest man.
Convocation, we are told, embraced the offer with wonderful alacrity,
and lost no time in accepting it in good Latin.
From February, 1598, to January, 1613 (when he died), Bodley was happy
with as glorious a hobby-horse as ever man rode astride upon. Though
Bodley, in one of his letters, modestly calls himself a mere
'smatterer,' he was, as indeed he had the sense to recognise,
excellently well fitted to be a collector of books, being both a good
linguist and personally well acquainted with the chief cities of the
Continent and with their booksellers. He was thus able to employ
well-selected agents in different parts of Europe to buy books on his
account, which it was his pleasure to receive, his rapture to unpack,
his pride to despatch in what he calls 'dry-fats'--that is,
weather-tight chests--to Dr. James, the first Bodley librarian.
Despite growing and painful infirmities (stone, ague, dropsy), Bodley
never even for a day dismounted his hobby, but rode it manfully to the
last. Nor had he any mean taint of nature that might have grudged
other men a hand in the great work. The more benefactors there were,
the better pleased was Bodley. He could not, indeed--for had he not
been educated at Geneva and attended the Divinity Lectures of Calvin
and Beza?--direct Dr. James to say masses for the souls of such donors
of money or books as should die, but he did all a poor Protestant can
do to tempt generosity: he opened and kept in a very public place in
the library a great register-book, containing the names and titles of
all benefactors. Bodley was always on the look-out for gifts and
bequests from his store of honourable friends; and in the case of Sir
Henry Savile he even relaxed the rule against lending books from the
library, because, as he frankly admits to Dr. James, he had hopes
(which proved well founded) that Sir Henry would not forget his
obligations to the Bodleian.
The library was formally opened on November 8, 1602, and then
contained some 2,000 volumes. Two years later its founder was knighted
by King James, who on the following June directed letters patent to be
issued styling the library by the founder's name and licensing the
University to hold land in mortmain for its maintenance. The most
learned and by no means the most foolish of our Kings, this same James
I., visited the Bodleian in May, 1605. Sir Thomas was not present.
There it was that the royal pun was made that the founder's name
should have been Godly and not Bodley. King James handled certain old
manuscripts with the familiarity of a scholar, and is reported to have
said, I doubt not with perfect sincerity, that were he not King James
he would be an University man, and that were it his fate at any time
to be a captive, he would wish to be shut up in the Bodleian and to be
bound with its chains, consuming his days amongst its books as his
fellows in captivity. Indeed, he was so carried away by the atmosphere
of the place as to offer to present to the Bodleian whatever books Sir
Thomas Bodley might think fit to lay hands upon in any of the royal
libraries, and he kept this royal word so far as to confirm the gift
under the Privy Seal. But there it seems to have stopped, for the
Bodleian does not contain any volumes traceable to this source. The
King's librarians probably obstructed any such transfer of books.
Authors seem at once to have recognised the importance of the library,
and to have made presentation copies of their works, and in 1605 we
find Bacon sending a copy of his _Advancement of Learning_ to Bodley,
with a letter in which he said: 'You, having built an ark to save
learning from deluge, deserve propriety [ownership] in any new
instrument or engine whereby learning should be improved or advanced.'
The most remarkable letter Bodley ever wrote, now extant, is one to
Bacon; but it has no reference to the library, only to the Baconian
philosophy. We do not get many glimpses of Bodley's habits of life or
ways of thinking, but there is no difficulty in discerning a
strenuous, determined, masterful figure, bent during his later years,
perhaps tyrannously bent, on effecting his object. He was not, we
learn from a correspondent, 'hasty to write but when the posts do urge
him, saying there need be no answer to your letters till more leisure
breed him opportunity.' 'Words are women, deeds are men,' is another
saying of his which I reprint without comment.
By an indenture dated April 20, 1609, Bodley, after reciting how he
had, out of his zealous affection to the advancement of learning,
lately erected upon the ruins of the old decayed library of Oxford
University 'a most ample, commodious, and necessary building, as well
for receipt and conveyance of books as for the use and ease of
students, and had already furnished the same with excellent writers on
all sorts of sciences, arts, and tongues, not only selected out of his
own study and store, but also of others that were freely conferred by
many other men's gifts,' proceeded to grant to trustees lands and
hereditaments in Berkshire and in the city of London for the purpose
of forming a permanent endowment of his library; and so they, or the
proceeds of sale thereof, have remained unto this day.
Sir Thomas Bodley died on January 20, 1613, his last days being
soothed by a letter he received from the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford
University condoling his sickness and signifying how much the Heads of
Houses, etc., prayed for his recovery. A cynical friend--not much of a
friend, as we shall see--called John Chamberlain, was surprised to
observe what pleasure this assurance gave to the dying man. 'Whereby,'
writes Chamberlain to Sir Ralph Winwood, 'I perceive how much fair
words work, as well upon wise men as upon others, for indeed it did
affect him very much.'
Bodley was rather put out in his last illness by the refusal of a
Cambridge doctor, Batter, to come to see him, the doctor saying:
'Words cannot cure him, and I can do nothing else for him.' There is
an occasional curtness about Cambridge men that is hard but not
impossible to reconcile with good feeling.
Bodley's will gave great dissatisfaction to some of his friends,
including this aforesaid John Chamberlain, and yet, on reading it
through, it is not easy to see any cause for just complaint. Bodley's
brother did not grumble, there were no children, Lady Bodley had died
in 1611, and everybody who knew the testator must have known that the
library would be (as it was) the great object of his bounty. What
annoyed Chamberlain seems to be that, whilst he had (so he says,
though I take leave to doubt it) put down Bodley for some trifle in
his will, Bodley forgot to mention Chamberlain in his. There is always
a good deal of human nature exhibited on these occasions. I will
transcribe a bit of one of this gentleman's grumbling letters,
written, one may be sure, with no view to publication, the day after
Bodley's death:
'Mr. Gent came to me this morning as it were to bemoan himself of
the little regard hath been had of him and others, and indeed for
ought I hear there is scant anybody pleased, but for the rest it
were no great matter if he had had more consideration or
commiseration where there was most need. But he was so carried away
with the vanity and vain-glory of his library, that he forgot all
other respects and duties, almost of Conscience, Friendship, or
Good-nature, and all he had was too little for that work. To say
the truth I never did rely much upon his conscience, but I thought
he had been more real and ingenuous. I cannot learn that he hath
given anything, no, not a good word nor so much as named any old
friend he had, but Mr. Gent and Thos. Allen, who like a couple of
Almesmen must have his best and second gown, and his best and
second cloak, but to cast a colour or shadow of something upon Mr.
Gent, he says he forgives him all he owed him, which Mr. Gent
protests is never a penny. I must intreat you to pardon me if I
seem somewhat impatient on his [_i.e._, Gent's] behalf, who hath
been so servile to him, and indeed such a perpetual servant, that
he deserved a better reward. Neither can I deny that I have a
little indignation for myself that having been acquainted with him
for almost forty years, and observed and respected him so much, I
should not be remembered with the value of a spoon, or a mourning
garment, whereas if I had gone before him (as poor a man as I am),
he should not have found himself forgotten.'[A]
[Footnote A: _Winwood's Memorials_, vol. iii., p. 429.]
Bodley did no more by his will, which is dated January 2, 1613, and is
all in his own handwriting, than he had bound himself to do in his
lifetime, and I feel as certain as I can feel about anything that
happened nearly 300 years ago, that Mr. Gent, of Gloucester Hall, did
owe Bodley money, though, as many another member of the University of
Oxford has done with his debts, he forgot all about it.
The founder of the Bodleian was buried with proper pomp and
circumstance in the chapel of Merton College on March 29, 1613. Two
Latin orations were delivered over his remains, one, that of John
Hales (the ever-memorable), a Fellow of Merton, being of no
inconsiderable length. After all was over, those who had mourning
weeds or 'blacks' retired, with the Heads of Houses, to the refectory
of Merton and had a funeral dinner bestowed upon them, 'amounting to
the sum of £100,' as directed by the founder's will.
The great foundation of Sir Thomas Bodley has, happily for all of us,
had better fortune than befell the generous gifts of the Bishops of
Durham and Worcester. The Protestant layman has had the luck, not the
large-minded prelates of the old religion. Even during the Civil War
Bodley's books remained uninjured, at all events by the Parliament
men. 'When Oxford was surrendered [June 24, 1646], the first thing
General Fairfax did was to set a good guard of soldiers to preserve
the Bodleian Library. 'Tis said there was more hurt done by the
Cavaliers [during their garrison] by way of embezzling and cutting of
chains of books than there was since. He was a lover of learning, and
had he not taken this special care that noble library had been utterly
destroyed, for there were ignorant senators enough who would have been
contented to have it so' (see Macray, p. 101).
Oliver Cromwell, while Lord Protector, presented to the library
twenty-two Greek manuscripts he had purchased, and, what is more, when
Bodley's librarian refused the Lord Protector's request to allow the
Portugal Ambassador to borrow a manuscript, sending instead of the
manuscript a copy of the statutes forbidding loans, Oliver commended
the prudence of the founder, and subsequently made the donation just
mentioned.
A great wave of generosity towards this foundation was early
noticeable. The Bodleian got hold of men's imaginations. In those days
there were learned men in all walks of life, and many more who, if not
learned, were endlessly curious. The great merchants of the city of
London instructed their agents in far lands to be on the look-out for
rare things, and transmit them home to find a resting-place in
Bodley's buildings. All sorts of curiosities found their way
there--crocodiles, whales, mummies, and black negro-boys in spirits.
The Ashmolean now holds most of them; the negro-boy has been
conveniently lost.
In 1649 the total of 2,000 printed books had risen to more than
12,000--viz., folios, 5,889; quartos, 2,067; octavos, 4,918; whilst of
manuscripts there were 3,001. One of the first gifts in money came
from Sir Walter Raleigh, who in 1605 gave £50, whilst among the early
benefactors of books and manuscripts it were a sin not to name the
Earl of Pembroke, Archbishop Laud (one of the library's best friends),
Robert Burton (of the _Anatomy of Melancholy_), Sir Kenelm Digby, John
Selden, Lord Fairfax, Colonel Vernon, and Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln.
No nobler library exists in the world than the Bodleian, unless it be
in the Vatican at Rome. The foundation of Sir Thomas Bodley, though of
no antiquity, shines with unrivalled splendour in the galaxy of Oxford
'Amidst the stars that own another birth.'
I must not say, being myself a Cambridge man, that the Bodleian
dominates Oxford, yet to many an English, American, and foreign
traveller to that city, which, despite railway-stations and motor-cars
and the never-ending villas and perambulators of the Banbury Road,
still breathes the charm of an earlier age, the Bodleian is the
pulsing heart of the University. Colleges, like ancient homesteads,
unless they are yours, never quite welcome you, though ready enough to
receive with civility your tendered meed of admiration. You wander
through their gardens, and pace their quadrangles with no sense of
co-ownership; not for you are their clustered memories. In the
Bodleian every lettered heart feels itself at home.
Bodley drafted with his own hand the first statutes or rules to be
observed in his library. Speaking generally, they are wise rules. One
mistake, indeed, he made--a great mistake, but a natural one. Let him
give his own reasons:
'I can see no good reason to alter my rule for excluding such books
as Almanacks, Plays, and an infinite number that are daily printed
of very unworthy matters--handling such books as one thinks both
the Keeper and Under-Keeper should disdain to seek out, to deliver
to any man. Haply some plays may be worthy the keeping--but hardly
one in forty.... This is my opinion, wherein if I err I shall err
with infinite others; and the more I think upon it, the more it
doth distaste me that such kinds of books should be vouchsafed room
in so noble a library.'[A]
[Footnote A: See correspondence in _Reliquiae Bodleianae_, London,
1703.]
'Baggage-books' was the contemptuous expression elsewhere employed to
describe this 'light infantry' of literature--_Belles Lettres_, as it
is now more politely designated.
One play in forty is liberal measure, but who is to say out of the
forty plays which is the one worthy to be housed in a noble library?
The taste of Vice-Chancellors and Heads of Houses, of keepers and
under-keepers of libraries--can anybody trust it? The Bodleian is
entitled by imperial statutes to receive copies of all books published
within the realm, yet it appears, on the face of a Parliamentary
return made in 1818, that this 'noble library' refused to find room
for Ossian, the favourite poet of Goethe and Napoleon, and labelled
Miss Edgeworth's _Parent's Assistant_ and Miss Hannah More's _Sacred
Dramas_ 'Rubbish.' The sister University, home though she be of nearly
every English poet worth reading, rejected the _Siege of Corinth_,
though the work of a Trinity man; would not take in the _Thanksgiving
Ode_ of Mr. Wordsworth, of St. John's College; declined Leigh Hunt's
_Story of Rimini_; vetoed the _Headlong Hall_ of the inimitable
Peacock, and, most wonderful of all, would have nothing to say to
Scott's _Antiquary_, being probably disgusted to find that a book with
so promising a title was only a novel.
Now this is altered, and everything is collected in the Bodleian,
including, so I am told, Christmas-cards and bills of fare.
Bodley's rule has proved an expensive one, for the library has been
forced to buy at latter-day prices 'baggage-books' it could have got
for nothing.
Another ill-advised regulation got rid of duplicates. Thus, when the
third Shakespeare Folio appeared in 1664, the Bodleian disposed of its
copy of the First Folio. However, this wrong was righted in 1821,
when, under the terms of Edmund Malone's bequest, the library once
again became the possessor of the edition of 1623. Quite lately the
original displaced Folio has been recovered.
Against lending books Bodley was adamant, and here his rule prevails.
It is pre-eminently a wise one. The stealing of books, as well as the
losing of books, from public libraries is a melancholy and ancient
chapter in the histories of such institutions; indeed, there is too
much reason to believe that not a few books in the Bodleian itself
were stolen to start with. But the long possession by such a
foundation has doubtless purged the original offence. In the National
Library in Paris is at least one precious manuscript which was stolen
from the Escurial. There are volumes in the British Museum on which
the Bodleian looks with suspicion, and _vice versa_. But let sleeping
dogs lie. Bodley would not give the divines who were engaged upon a
bigger bit of work even than his library--the translation of the Bible
into that matchless English which makes King James's version our
greatest literary possession--permission to borrow 'the one or two
books' they wished to see.
Bodley's Library has sheltered through three centuries many queer
things besides books and strangely-written manuscripts in old tongues;
queerer things even than crocodiles, whales, and mummies--I mean the
librarians and sub-librarians, janitors, and servants. Oddities many
of them have been. Honest old Jacobites, non-jurors, primitive
thinkers, as well as scandalously lazy drunkards and illiterate dogs.
An old foundation can afford to have a varied experience in these
matters.
One of the most original of these originals was the famous Thomas
Hearne, an 'honest gentleman'--that is, a Jacobite--and one whose
collections and diaries have given pleasure to thousands. He was
appointed janitor in 1701, and sub-librarian in 1712, but in 1716,
when an Act of Parliament came into operation which imposed a fine of
£500 upon anyone who held any public office without taking the oath of
allegiance to the Hanoverians, Hearne's office was taken away from
him; but he shared with his King over the water the satisfaction of
accounting himself still _de jure_, and though he lived till 1735,
he never failed each half-year to enter his salary and fees as
sub-librarian as being still unpaid. He was perhaps a little spiteful
and vindictive, but none the less a fine old fellow. I will write down
as specimens of his humour a prayer of his and an apology, and then
leave him alone. His prayer ran as follows:
'O most gracious and merciful Lord God, wonderful in Thy
Providence, I return all possible thanks to Thee for the care Thou
hast always taken of me. I continually meet with most signal
instances of this Thy Providence, and one act yesterday, _when I
unexpectedly met with three old manuscripts_, for which in a
particular manner I return my thanks, beseeching Thee to continue
the same protection to me, a poor helpless sinner, and that for
Jesus Christ his sake' (_Aubrey's Letters_, i. 118).
His apology, which I do not think was actually published, though kept
in draft, was after this fashion:
'I, Thomas Hearne, A.M. of the University of Oxford, having ever
since my matriculation followed my studies with as much application
as I have been capable of, and having published several books for
the honour and credit of learning, and particularly for the
reputation of the foresaid University, am very sorry that by my
declining to say anything but what I knew to be true in any of my
writings, and especially in the last book I published entituled,
&c, I should incur the displeasure of any of the Heads of Houses,
and as a token of my sorrow for their being offended at truth, I
subscribe my name to this paper and permit them to make what use of
it they please.'
Leaping 140 years, an odd tale is thus lovingly recorded of another
sub-librarian, the Rev. A. Hackman, who died in 1874:
'During all the time of his service in the library (thirty-six
years) he had used as a cushion in his plain wooden armchair a
certain vellum-bound folio, which by its indented side, worn down
by continual pressure, bore testimony to the use to which it had
been put. No one had ever the curiosity to examine what the book
might be, but when, after Hackman's departure from the library, it
was removed from its resting-place of years, some amusement was
caused by finding that the chief compiler of the last printed
catalogue had omitted from his catalogue the volume on which he
sat, of which, too, though of no special value, there was no other
copy in the library' (Macray, p. 388A).
The spectacle in the mind's eye of this devoted sub-librarian and
sound divine sitting on the vellum-bound folio for six-and-thirty
years, so absorbed in his work as to be oblivious of the fact that he
had failed to include in what was his _magnum opus_, the Great
Catalogue, the very book he was sitting upon, tickles the midriff.
Here I must bring these prolonged but wholly insufficient observations
to a very necessary conclusion. Not a word has been said of the great
collection of bibles, or of the unique copies of the Koran and the
Talmud and the _Arabian Nights_, or of the Dante manuscripts, or of
Bishop Tanner's books (many bought on the dispersion of Archbishop
Sancroft's great library), which in course of removal by water from
Norwich to Oxford fell into the river and remained submerged for
twenty hours, nor of many other splendid benefactions of a later date.
One thing only remains, not to be said, but to be sent round--I mean
the hat. Ignominious to relate, this glorious foundation stands in
need of money. Shade of Sir Thomas Bodley, I invoke thy aid to loosen
the purse-strings of the wealthy! The age of learned and curious
merchants, of high-spirited and learning-loving nobles, of
book-collecting bishops, of antiquaries, is over. The Bodleian cannot
condescend to beg. It is too majestical. But I, an unauthorized
stranger, have no need to be ashamed.
Especially rich is this great library in _Americana_, and America
suggests multi-millionaires. The rich men of the United States have
been patriotically alive to the first claims of their own richly
endowed universities, and long may they so continue; but if by any
happy chance any one of them should accidentally stumble across an odd
million or even half a million of dollars hidden away in some casual
investment he had forgotten, what better thing could he do with it
than send it to this, the most famous foundation of his Old Home? It
would be acknowledged by return of post in English and in Latin, and
the donor's name would be inscribed, not indeed (and this is a
regrettable lapse) in that famous old register which Bodley provided
should always be in a prominent place in his library, but in the
Annual Statement of Accounts now regularly issued. To be associated
with the Bodleian is to share its fame and partake of the blessing it
has inherited. 'The liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal
things he shall stand.'