Appendix A.
INEPTIÆ BODLEIANÆ.
The reader will not understand this allusion (Foreword, p. ix.) without
some _connaissance de cause_. I would apologise for deforming the
beautiful serenity and restfulness of The Nights by personal matter of a
tone so jarring and so discordant a sound, the chatter and squabble of
European correspondence and contention; but the only course assigned to
me perforce is that of perfect publicity. The first part of the
following papers appeared by the editor’s kindness in “The Academy” of
November 13, 1886. How strange the contrast of “doings” with “sayings,”
if we compare the speech reported to have been delivered by Mr.
Librarian Nicholson at the opening of the Birmingham Free Public Central
Lending and Reference Libraries, on June 1, 1882:—
“As for the Bodleian, I claim your sympathies, not merely because we are
trying to do as much for our readers as you are for yours, but because,
if the building which you have opened to-day is the newest free public
library in the world, the building which I left earlier in the morning
is the oldest free public library in the world. (_No!_) I call it a free
public library because any Birmingham artizan who came to us with a
trustworthy recommendation might ask to have _the rarest gem_ in our
collection placed before him, and need have no fear of asking in vain;
and because, if a trusty Birmingham worker wanted the _loan of a MS._
for three months, it would be lent to the Central Free Library for his
use.” See Twentieth and Twenty-first Annual Reports of the Free
Libraries Committee (Borough of Birmingham), 1883.