On the Value and Use of Libraries.
All round the room my silent servants wait,—
My friends in every season, bright and dim
Angels and seraphim
Come down and murmur to me, sweet and low,
And spirits of the skies all come and go
Early and late;
From the old world’s divine and distant date,
From the sublimer few,
Down to the poet who but yester-eve
Sang sweet and made us grieve,
All come, assembling here in order due.
And here I dwell with Poesy, my mate,
With Erato and all her vernal sighs,
Great Clio with her victories elate,
Or pale Urania’s deep and starry eyes.
BRYAN WALLER PROCTER.
A library is the scholar’s workshop. To the teacher or professional
man, a collection of good books is as necessary as a kit of tools
to a carpenter. And yet I am aware that many persons are engaged in
teaching, who have neither a library of their own, nor access to any
other collection of books suitable to their use. There are others
who, having every opportunity to secure the best of books,—with a
public library near at hand offering them the free use of works most
valuable to them,—yet make no effort to profit by these advantages.
They care nothing for any books save the text-books indispensable to
their profession, and for these only so far as necessity obliges them
to do so. The libraries of many persons calling themselves teachers
consist solely of school-books, many of which have been presented
them by accommodating book-agents, “for examination with a view to
introduction.” And yet we hear such teachers talk learnedly about
the introduction of English literature into the common schools of
the country, and the necessity of cultivating among the children
a wholesome love and taste for reading. If inquiry were made, we
might discover that by a study of English literature these teachers
understand some memoriter exercises in Shaw’s “Manual” or Brooke’s
“Primer,” and that, as to good reading, some there are who are
entertained more deeply by Peck’s “Bad Boy” than by Shakspeare’s
“Merchant of Venice.” Talk not about directing and cultivating the
reading-tastes of your pupils until you have successfully directed
and cultivated your own! And the first step towards doing this is the
selection and purchase of a library for yourself, which shall be all
your own. A very few books will do, if they are of the right kind;
and they must be _yours_. A borrowed book is but a cheap pleasure, an
unappreciated and unsatisfactory tool. To know the true value of books,
and to derive any satisfactory benefit from them, you must first feel
the sweet delight of buying them,—you must know the preciousness of
possession.
You plead poverty,—the insufficiency of your salary? But do you not
spend for other things, entirely unnecessary, much more every year
than the cost of a few books? The immediate outlay need not be large,
the returns which you will realize will be great in proportion to your
good judgment and earnestness. Not only will the possession of a good
library add to your means of enjoyment and increase your capacity for
doing good, it may, if you are worldly-minded,—and we all are,—put you
in the way of occupying a more desirable position and earning a more
satisfactory reward for your labors.
There are two kinds of books that you will need in your library: first,
those which are purely professional, and are in the strictest sense
the tools of your craft; second, those which belong to your chosen
department of literature, and are to be regarded as your friends,
companions, and counsellors. I cannot, of course, dictate to you what
these books shall be. The lists given in the chapters which follow this
are designed simply as suggestive aids. But in a library of fifty or
even thirty well-chosen volumes you may possess infinite riches, and
means for a lifetime of enjoyment; while, on the other hand, if your
selection is injudicious, you may expend thousands of dollars for a
collection of the odds and ends of literature, which will be only an
incumbrance and a hindrance to you.
“I would urge upon every young man, as the beginning of
his due and wise provision for his household,” says John
Ruskin, “to obtain as soon as he can, by the severest
economy, a restricted, serviceable, and steadily—however
slowly—increasing series of books for use through life; making
his little library, of all the furniture in his room, the most
studied and decorative piece; every volume having its assigned
place, like a little statue in its niche, and one of the
earliest and strictest lessons to the children of the house
being how to turn the pages of their own literary possessions
lightly and deliberately, with no chance of tearing or
dog’s-ears.”[17]
And Henry Ward Beecher emphasizes the same thing, remarking that, among
the early ambitions to be excited in clerks, workmen, journeymen,
and indeed among all that are struggling up in life from nothing to
something, the most important is that of forming and continually adding
to a library of good books. “A little library, growing larger every
year, is an honorable part of a man’s history. It is a man’s duty to
have books. A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessaries of
life.”
“How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or
private, as compared with what we spend on our horses?” asks another
enthusiastic lover of books, already quoted. “If a man spends lavishly
on his library, you call him mad,—a bibliomaniac. But you never call
any one a horse-maniac, though men ruin themselves every day by their
horses, and you do not hear of people ruining themselves by their
books.... We talk of food for the mind, as of food for the body: now,
a good book contains such food inexhaustibly; it is a provision for
life, and for the best of us; yet how long most people would look at
the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for
it! Though there have been men who have pinched their stomachs and
bared their backs to buy a book, whose libraries were cheaper to them,
I think, in the end than most men’s dinners are. We are few of us put
to such trial, and more the pity: for, indeed, a precious thing is all
the more precious to us if it has been won by work or economy; and if
public libraries were half as costly as public dinners, or books cost
the tenth part of what bracelets do, even foolish men and women might
sometimes suspect there was good in reading, as well as in munching and
sparkling; whereas the very cheapness of literature is making even wise
people forget that if a book is worth reading, it is worth buying.”
“The truest owner of a library,” says the author of “Hesperides,”
“is he who has bought each book for the love he bears to it,—who is
happy and content to say, ‘Here are my jewels, my choicest material
possessions!’—who is proud to crown such assertion thus: ‘I am content
that this library shall represent the use of the talents given me by
Heaven!’ That man’s library, though not commensurate with his love
for books, will demonstrate what he has been able to accomplish with
his resources; it will denote economy of living, eagerness to possess
the particles that compose his library, and quick watchfulness to
seize them when means and opportunities serve. Such a man has built a
temple, of which each brick has been the subject of curious and acute
intelligent examination and appreciation before it has been placed in
the sacred building.”
“Every man should have a library!” exclaims William Axon. “The works of
the grandest masters of literature may now be procured at prices that
place them within the reach almost of the very poorest, and we may all
put Parnassian singing-birds into our chambers to cheer us with the
sweetness of their songs. And when we have got our little library we
may look proudly at Shakspeare and Bacon and Bunyan, as they stand in
our bookcase with other noble spirits, and one or two of whom the world
knows nothing, but whose worth we have often tested. These may cheer
and enlighten us, may inspire us with higher aims and aspirations, may
make us, if we use them rightly, wiser and better men.”[18]
Good old George Dyer, the friend of the poet Southey, as learned as
he was benevolent, was wont to say: “Libraries are the wardrobes of
literature, whence men, properly informed, may bring forth something
for ornament, much for curiosity, and more for use.” “Any library is
an attraction,” says the venerable A. Bronson Alcott; and Victor Hugo
writes—
“A library implies an act of faith,
Which generations still in darkness hid
Sign in their night in witness of the dawn.”
John Bright, the great English statesman and reformer, in a speech at
the opening of the Birmingham Free Library a short time ago, remarked:
“You may have in a house costly pictures and costly ornaments, and a
great variety of decoration; yet, so far as my judgment goes, I would
prefer to have one comfortable room well stocked with books to all you
can give me in the way of decoration which the highest art can supply.
The only subject of lamentation is—one feels that always, I think,
in the presence of a library—that life is too short, and I am afraid
I must say also that our industry is so far deficient that we seem to
have no hope of a full enjoyment of the ample repast that is spread
before us. In the houses of the humble a little library, in my opinion,
is a most precious possession.”
Jean Paul Richter, it is said, was always melancholy in a large
library, because it reminded him of his ignorance.
“A library may be regarded as the solemn chamber in which a
man can take counsel of all that have been wise and great and
good and glorious amongst the men that have gone before him,”
said George Dawson, also at Birmingham. “If we come down for
a moment and look at the bare and immediate utilities of a
library, we find that here a man gets himself ready for his
calling, arms himself for his profession, finds out the facts
that are to determine his trade, prepares himself for his
examination. The utilities of it are endless and priceless.
It is, too, a place of pastime; for man has no amusement more
innocent, more sweet, more gracious, more elevating, and more
fortifying than he can find in a library. If he be fond of
books, his fondness will discipline him as well as amuse
him.... A library is the strengthener of all that is great in
life, and the repeller of what is petty and mean; and half the
gossip of society would perish if the books that are truly
worth reading were read.... When we look through the houses
of a large part of the middle classes of this country, we
find there everything but what there ought most to be. There
are no books in them worth talking of. If a question arises
of geography, they have no atlases. If the question be when
a great man was born, they cannot help you. They can give
you a gorgeous bed, with four posts, marvellous adornments,
luxurious hangings, and lacquered shams all round; they can
give you dinners _ad nauseam_, and wine that one can, or
cannot, honestly praise. But useful books are almost the
last things that are to be found there; and when the mind is
empty of those things that books can alone fill it with, then
the seven devils of pettiness, frivolity, fashionableness,
gentility, scandal, small slander, and the chronicling of
small beer come in and take possession. Half this nonsense
would be dropped if men would only understand the elevating
influences of their communing constantly with the lofty
thoughts and high resolves of men of old times.”
The author of “Dreamthorpe,” filled with love and enthusiasm,
discourses thus: “I go into my library, and all history unrolls before
me. I breathe the morning air of the world while the scent of Eden’s
roses yet lingers in it, while it vibrates only to the world’s first
brood of nightingales and to the laugh of Eve. I see the pyramids
building; I hear the shoutings of the armies of Alexander; I feel the
ground shake beneath the march of Cambyses. I sit as in a theatre,—the
stage is time; the play is the play of the world. What a spectacle it
is! What kingly pomp, what processions file past, what cities burn to
heaven, what crowds of captives are dragged at the chariot wheels of
conquerors! I hiss, or cry ‘Bravo,’ when the great actors come on,
shaking the stage. I am a Roman emperor when I look at a Roman coin.
I lift Homer, and I shout with Achilles in the trenches. The silence
of the unpeopled Assyrian plains, the out-comings and in-goings of
the patriarchs,—Abraham and Ishmael, Isaac in the fields at eventide,
Rebekah at the well, Jacob’s guile, Esau’s face reddened by desert
sun-heat, Joseph’s splendid funeral procession, —all these things I
find within the boards of my Old Testament. What a silence in those
old books as of a half-peopled world,—what bleating of flocks, what
green pastoral rest, what indubitable human existence! Across brawling
centuries of blood and war, I hear the bleating of Abraham’s flocks,
the tinkling of the bells of Rebekah’s camels. O men and women, so far
separated yet so near, so strange yet so well-known, by what miraculous
power do I know you all? Books are the true Elysian fields, where
the spirits of the dead converse; and into these fields a mortal may
venture unappalled. What king’s court can boast such company? What
school of philosophy, such wisdom? The wit of the ancient world is
glancing and flashing there. There is Pan’s pipe, there are the songs
of Apollo. Seated in my library at night, and looking on the silent
faces of my books, I am occasionally visited by a strange sense of
the supernatural. They are not collections of printed pages, they are
ghosts. I take one down, and it speaks with me in a tongue not now
heard on earth, and of men and things of which it alone possesses
knowledge. I call myself a solitary, but sometimes I think I misapply
the term. No man sees more company than I do. I travel with mightier
cohorts around me than did ever Timour or Genghis Khan on their fiery
marches. I am a sovereign in my library; but it is the dead, not the
living, that attend my levees.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]