The passion for forming vast collections of books has necessarily
existed in all periods of human curiosity; but long it required regal
munificence to found a national library. It is only since the art of
multiplying the productions of the mind has been discovered, that men of
letters themselves have been enabled to rival this imperial and
patriotic honour. The taste for books, so rare before the fifteenth
century, has gradually become general only within these four hundred
years: in that small space of time the public mind of Europe has been
created.
Of LIBRARIES, the following anecdotes seem most interesting, as they
mark either the affection, or the veneration, which civilised men have
ever felt for these perennial repositories of their minds. The first
national library founded in Egypt seemed to have been placed under the
protection of the divinities, for their statues magnificently adorned
this temple, dedicated at once to religion and to literature. It was
still further embellished by a well-known inscription, for ever grateful
to the votary of literature; on the front was engraven,--"The
nourishment of the soul;" or, according to Diodorus, "The medicine of
the mind."
The Egyptian Ptolemies founded the vast library of Alexandria, which was
afterwards the emulative labour of rival monarchs; the founder infused a
soul into the vast body he was creating, by his choice of the librarian,
Demetrius Phalereus, whose skilful industry amassed from all nations
their choicest productions. Without such a librarian, a national library
would be little more than a literary chaos; his well exercised memory
and critical judgment are its best catalogue. One of the Ptolemies
refused supplying the famished Athenians with wheat, until they
presented him with the original manuscripts of Æschylus, Sophocles, and
Euripides; and in returning copies of these autographs, he allowed them
to retain the fifteen talents which he had pledged with them as a
princely security.
When tyrants, or usurpers, have possessed sense as well as courage, they
have proved the most ardent patrons of literature; they know it is their
interest to turn aside the public mind from political speculations, and
to afford their subjects the inexhaustible occupations of curiosity, and
the consoling pleasures of the imagination. Thus Pisistratus is said to
have been among the earliest of the Greeks, who projected an immense
collection of the works of the learned, and is supposed to have been the
collector of the scattered works, which passed under the name of Homer.
The Romans, after six centuries of gradual dominion, must have possessed
the vast and diversified collections of the writings of the nations they
conquered: among the most valued spoils of their victories, we know that
manuscripts were considered as more precious than vases of gold. Paulus
Emilius, after the defeat of Perseus, king of Macedon, brought to Rome a
great number which he had amassed in Greece, and which he now
distributed among his sons, or presented to the Roman people. Sylla
followed his example. Alter the siege of Athens, he discovered an entire
library in the temple of Apollo, which having carried to Rome, he
appears to have been the founder of the first Roman public library.
After the taking of Carthage, the Roman senate rewarded the family of
Regulus with the books found in that city. A library was a national
gift, and the most honourable they could bestow. From the intercourse of
the Romans with the Greeks, the passion for forming libraries rapidly
increased, and individuals began to pride themselves on their private
collections.
Of many illustrious Romans, their magnificent taste in their _libraries_
has been recorded. Asinius Pollio, Crassus, Cæsar, and Cicero, have,
among others, been celebrated for their literary splendor. Lucullus,
whose incredible opulence exhausted itself on more than imperial
luxuries, more honourably distinguished himself by his vast collections
of books, and the happy use he made of them by the liberal access he
allowed the learned. "It was a library," says Plutarch, "whose walks,
galleries, and cabinets, were open to all visitors; and the ingenious
Greeks, when at leisure, resorted to this abode of the Muses to hold
literary conversations, in which Lucullus himself loved to join." This
library enlarged by others, Julius Cæsar once proposed to open for the
public, having chosen the erudite Varro for its librarian; but the
daggers of Brutus and his party prevented the meditated projects of
Cæsar. In this museum, Cicero frequently pursued his studies, during the
time his friend Faustus had the charge of it; which he describes to
Atticus in his 4th Book, Epist. 9. Amidst his public occupations and his
private studies, either of them sufficient to have immortalised one man,
we are astonished at the minute attention Cicero paid to the formation
of his libraries and his cabinets of antiquities.
The emperors were ambitious, at length, to give _their names_ to the
_libraries_ they founded; they did not consider the purple as their
chief ornament. Augustus was himself an author; and to one of those
sumptuous buildings, called _Thermæ_, ornamented with porticos,
galleries, and statues, with shady walks, and refreshing baths,
testified his love of literature by adding a magnificent library. One of
these libraries he fondly called by the name of his sister Octavia; and
the other, the temple of Apollo, became the haunt of the poets, as
Horace, Juvenal, and Persius have commemorated. The successors of
Augustus imitated his example, and even Tiberius had an imperial
library, chiefly consisting of works concerning the empire and the acts
of its sovereigns. These Trajan augmented by the Ulpian library,
denominated from his family name. In a word, we have accounts of the
rich ornaments the ancients bestowed on their libraries; of their floors
paved with marble, their walls covered with glass and ivory, and their
shelves and desks of ebony and cedar.
The first _public library_ in Italy was founded by a person of no
considerable fortune: his credit, his frugality, and fortitude, were
indeed equal to a treasury. Nicholas Niccoli, the son of a merchant,
after the death of his father relinquished the beaten roads of gain, and
devoted his soul to study, and his fortune to assist students. At his
death, he left his library to the public, but his debts exceeding his
effects, the princely generosity of Cosmo de' Medici realised the
intention of its former possessor, and afterwards enriched it by the
addition of an apartment, in which he placed the Greek, Hebrew, Arabic,
Chaldaic, and Indian MSS. The intrepid spirit of Nicholas V. laid the
foundations of the Vatican; the affection of Cardinal Bessarion for his
country first gave Venice the rudiments of a public library; and to Sir
T. Bodley we owe the invaluable one of Oxford. Sir Robert Cotton, Sir
Hans Sloane, Dr. Birch, Mr. Cracherode, Mr. Douce, and others of this
race of lovers of books, have all contributed to form these literary
treasures, which our nation owe to the enthusiasm of individuals, who
have consecrated their fortunes and their days to this great public
object; or, which in the result produces the same public good, the
collections of such men have been frequently purchased on their deaths,
by government, and thus have been preserved entire in our national
collections.[5]
LITERATURE, like virtue, is often its own reward, and the enthusiasm
some experience in the permanent enjoyments of a vast library has far
outweighed the neglect or the calumny of the world, which some of its
votaries have received. From the time that Cicero poured forth his
feelings in his oration for the poet Archias, innumerable are the
testimonies of men of letters of the pleasurable delirium of their
researches. Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, and Chancellor of England
so early as 1341, perhaps raised the first private library in our
country. He purchased thirty or forty volumes of the Abbot of St. Albans
for fifty pounds' weight of silver. He was so enamoured of his large
collection, that he expressly composed a treatise on his love of books,
under the title of _Philobiblion_; and which has been recently
translated.[6]
He who passes much of his time amid such vast resources, and does not
aspire to make some small addition to his library, were it only by a
critical catalogue, must indeed be not more animated than a leaden
Mercury. He must be as indolent as that animal called the Sloth, who
perishes on the tree he climbs, after he has eaten all its leaves.
Rantzau, the founder of the great library at Copenhagen, whose days were
dissolved in the pleasures of reading, discovers his taste and ardour in
the following elegant effusion:--
Salvete aureoli mei libelli,
Meæ deliciæ, mei lepores!
Quam vos sæpe oculis juvat videre,
Et tritos manibus tenere nostris!
Tot vos eximii, tot eruditi,
Prisci lumina sæculi et recentis,
Confecere viri, suasque vobis
Ausi credere lucubrationes:
Et sperare decus perenne scriptis;
Neque hæc irrita spes fefellit illos.