I
Let us hark back, Gentlemen, to our original problem, and
consider if our dilatory way have led us to some glimpse of a
practical solution.
We may re-state it thus: Assuming it to be true, as men of
Science assure us, that the weight of this planet remains
constant, and is to-day what it was when mankind carelessly laid
it on the shoulders of Atlas; that nothing abides but it goes,
that nothing goes but in some form or other it comes back; you
and I may well indulge a wonder what reflections upon this
astonishing fact our University Librarian, Mr Jenkinson, takes to
bed with him. A copy of every book printed in the United Kingdom
is--or I had better say, should be--deposited with him. Putting
aside the question of what he has done to deserve it, he must
surely wonder at times from what other corners of the earth
Providence has been at pains to collect and compact the
ingredients of the latest new volume he handles for a moment
before fondly committing it to the cellars.
'Locked up, not lost.'
Or, to take it in reverse--When the great library of Alexandria
went up in flames, doubtless its ashes awoke an appreciable and
almost immediate energy in the crops of the Nile Delta. The more
leisurable process of desiccation, by which, under modern
storage, the components of a modern novel are released to fresh
unions and activities admits, as Sir Thomas Browne would say, a
wide solution, and was just the question to tease that good man.
Can we not hear him discussing it? 'To be but pyramidally extant
is a fallacy in duration.... To burn the bones of the King of
Edom for lime seems no irrational ferity: but to store the back
volumes of Mr Bottomley's "John Bull" a passionate prodigality.'