[Illustration: PLAN OF BODLEIAN READING ROOMS AND PICTURE GALLERY]
THE
BODLEIAN LIBRARY
AT OXFORD
BRIEFLY DESCRIBED BY
FALCONER MADAN, M.A.
HONORARY FELLOW OF BRASENOSE COLLEGE, OXFORD,
LATE BODLEY’S LIBRARIAN
[Illustration]
DUCKWORTH & CO.
3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN
_First published 1919_
PREFACE
The present volume is a short description of a great library, and forms
part of a series of treatises on educational subjects which may, it is
hoped, constitute some vindication of a classical and liberal education.
The author trusts that this sketch of the history and contents of the
Bodleian, which ranks first among the institutions of the University, may
be of use to encourage the “studies of good learning,” and thereby to
carry forward in some measure the ideals of Oxford. The chief difficulty
has been to compress the subject within the necessary limits of the
series, but the list of authorities on p. 64 will indicate sources of
further information.
Permission to make use of the plan which forms the frontispiece was
courteously granted by Dr. Cowley, the present Librarian of the Bodleian.
_November, 1919._
LIST OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. LIBRARIES AND THEIR KINDS 7
II. SIR THOMAS BODLEY AND HIS FOUNDATION, 1598-1613 14
III. THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY, 1613-1860 23
IV. THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY IN MODERN TIMES 34
V. THE MANUSCRIPT AND OTHER TREASURES OF THE LIBRARY 43
VI. METHODS AND MATERIALS OF MODERN STUDY 57
INDEX 65
ILLUSTRATION
PLAN OF BODLEIAN READING ROOMS AND PICTURE GALLERY
BODLEIAN LIBRARY
(THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD)
NOTICE TO READERS
(_All readers must at their first coming be entered in the Admission
Registers and make the usual declaration._)
The Bodleian Library was founded in 1602, and for size and importance
(together) ranks first among University libraries, second among
English-speaking peoples, and about eighth in the world. Readers are
therefore requested to use it, not for trivial purposes, but for _study_
and _research_.
The Old Reading Boom (O.R.R.) and Upper Reading Room (U.R.R.) are open
from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Jan. Nov. Dec.; to 4 p.m. in Feb. Mar. Aug.
Sept. Oct.; to 5 p.m. in Apr. May, June, July. The Camera Reading Room
is open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. The Camera contains most books printed
since 1883, except Bibliography, Law, Music, English Drama, British
Topography and Antiquities, with a few other sections. At Bodley there
is a Reference library (books marked R and Ψ), and at the Camera a large
Select and Reference library (marked S).
_General Catalogue of Printed Books._ There is a copy in the U.R.R.
(Bodley), and at the Camera. _Catalogues of MSS._ The official copies are
in the O.R.R.: working copies are also in the O.R.R. and in the Cam. R.R.
Forms for ordering Books and MSS. are in each Reading Room.
_Seats._ Any unoccupied desk may be taken by a reader, except that twelve
desks at the Selden End are assigned by the Librarian. The number of
seats is, in O.R.R. 63, in U.R.R. 24, in Cam. R.R. 74 (+ 12 for Music
students and 12 in the Science Room).
_Reserving books._ MSS. and rare books should be used in the O.R.R. and
cannot be reserved, but should be given up each time that the reader
leaves. An ordinary book or an orderly pile of books, if reserved by a
slip of paper bearing name and date, is left in O.R.R. 3 days at seat, 7
days more in an adjacent reserve (but at Selden End, 10 days at seat):
in U.R.R. 3 days at seat, 7 in reserve: in the Cam. R.R. books to be
reserved should be brought to the Assistant’s table (each work with the
reserving slip), and will there be reserved for 7 days. Unreserved books
and all Reference and Select books are cleared away daily. A reasonable
limit for reserved books is in general twenty volumes.
_Tracing_ and _painting_ need special permission. Photography is
undertaken by the Clarendon Press: order forms are supplied on
application.
For further information see a _Manual for Readers_, supplied gratis on
application.
THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY AT OXFORD
CHAPTER I
LIBRARIES AND THEIR KINDS
[Sidenote: Speech and Writing.]
The two most important human inventions are perhaps Speech and Writing.
In no adequate way could man fully express his mental activities except
by speech: nor could he adequately record them except by writing. And to
some extent the development of the two ran a parallel course, for just as
early Speech is largely an imitation of natural sounds (Onomatopœia), so
early Writing is probably, in the first instance, entirely from pictures
(pictograms), which from the need of acceleration became worn down to
simpler forms, and finally to letters; the sense similarly declining from
the plain or derivative ideas arising from pictures, to mere syllables
with no intrinsic meaning, and finally to simple sounds corresponding to
letters. But even this latest stage was reached in the Valley of the Nile
by, or not long after, 3000 B.C., as is testified by a stelè representing
the cult of Send, a king of the second Egyptian Dynasty (now in the
Ashmolean Museum at Oxford), in which the letters S, N, D occur in a
cartouche; while in 1750 the North American Indians used pictograms, and
the practice is not yet extinct, for we use the symbol ☞
[Sidenote: Early Libraries.]
As soon as Writing occurs in a portable form, whether as cylinders of
baked clay in Assyria, or as tablets of bark, wood or wax, or as sheets
of parchment or paper, there is a volume, and there is the possibility
of a collection of books which forms a Library. The earliest library of
which a plan can be reconstructed was discovered at Nineveh by Layard
and dates from about 700 B.C. Of early Egyptian libraries no trace
has been found; but under the Macedonian dynasty of the Ptolemies the
great library at Alexandria in Egypt was founded about 285 B.C. About
libraries in Greece information is very scant until the time of Euripides
(fifth century B.C.) In Italy, the earliest public library was founded
soon after 39 B.C. by C. Asinius Pollio, and under Augustus at least
two more were instituted at Rome; and by the fourth century at least
twenty-five or so were there erected, but all of them are stated to have
been closed down, “bybliothecis sepulcrorum ritu in perpetuum clausis”
(_Ammianus Marcellinus_). Of course these public libraries had been
preceded by private collections, of which records are few and far between.
Before the second century B.C. the contents of Greek and Roman libraries
were not books in the form to which we are accustomed, but rolls of
papyrus, and the fittings of libraries were accordingly shelves with
vertical divisions forming pigeon-holes, into which a roll or rolls were
thrust. But the advantages of parchment as a material to bear writing
were so obvious that the long rolls wrapped round a stick (_rotuli_) gave
way gradually to the well-known form appropriate to parchment or paper,
namely sewn and bound leaves (_codices_) either quarto—which was found at
first to be the most convenient size—or folio or octavo. The receptacles
in libraries (at Rome) were no longer pigeon-holes (_nidi_, _foruli_) or
long narrow boxes (_loculamenta_), but undivided shelves (either fixed to
the wall, _pegmata_, or standing against it, _plutei_). The wall space
above these various forms of shelving was usually filled with decorative
portraits or busts of great authors. Perhaps it is not accidental that
in the great library collected by Sir Robert Cotton (now in the British
Museum) the various parts were called (as they are still referred to) by
the names of the Roman Emperors whose busts surmounted each division,
and in the Bodleian, after the Civil War, the wall divisions of the
Picture Gallery were surmounted by a series of ornamental medallions and
portraits above the ordinary pictures on the walls. The books, whether
disposed in regular book cases or in cupboards (_armaria_) with doors,
were in Roman times laid on their side.
[Sidenote: Mediæval Libraries.]
The classical tradition concerning the care of books was apparently
carried on with little change during the first five centuries of the
Christian era. Ecclesiastical libraries were kept in churches, as
classical libraries were usually connected with temples. It is usual
to date the organization of mediæval collections from the Rule of St.
Benedict in the sixth century; and the Order which he founded, with
its direct offshoots, the Cluniacs, Carthusians and Cistercians, were
foremost in assigning a place to literature in the daily duties of the
monk. The gradual evolution of the library can be traced from the time
when a few volumes could be accommodated in a press or presses in a
recess or small room, usually at the north-east corner of the cloister
near the chapter-house, to the fully developed collections of the
fifteenth century, housed in a large separate room, which was almost
always on the first floor, perhaps to avoid damp and to secure a good
light.
The following figures will illustrate the size of some considerable
mediæval libraries in various places and times.
_Date._ _Place._ _Volumes._
A.D. 831 St. Riquier (French abbey) 250
10th cent. Bobbio (Italian monastery) 700
12th cent. Durham Cathedral about 700
1300 Christ Church Cathedral, Canterbury about 1850
1395 Durham Cathedral 921
1418 Peterhouse, Cambridge 380
1424 University Library, Cambridge 122
1472 Queens’ College, Cambridge 199
1473 University Library, Cambridge 330
[Sidenote: Library Fittings.]
The earliest fittings for the convenience of readers which still exist
suggest that at any rate in collegiate institutions the first kind of
desk was on what Mr. J. Willis Clark termed the Lectern system. One has
to imagine a double lectern (that is, two plain lecterns placed back to
back) so prolonged as to hold say five to fifteen volumes on each side,
every volume lying on its side and being chained to the desk. The reader
stood or sat, and the open book lay before him at a convenient angle,
as in church lecterns. The system was obviously very wasteful of space,
and was evolved from the time when one or two books only were brought
out of the cupboard (_armarium_) for a reader’s use on a desk resembling
a lectern, near a window. In the fifteenth century the normal type of
library was a narrow room of considerable length, lighted by narrow
windows at short intervals. From the wall-spaces between the windows
there projected into the room at right angles to the wall the lectern
desks described above, the desks by this time being probably fitted
beneath with shelves on which the (chained) books could stand upright,
and be pulled out on to the lectern for purposes of reading.
Next came the “Stall system.” In this, the cases projecting from the wall
are just book-cases, of three or four or even more shelves on each side
of the case, and the lectern part is superseded by a flat desk in front
of, and attached to, the shelves at which a reader sits, and on which
he places the (chained) book he takes down from a shelf above him. The
earliest example of these is at Corpus Christi College, Oxford (1517),
and they are still in use in the Old Reading Room (“Duke Humphrey”) of
the Bodleian; and in the Chapter library at Hereford, the very chains of
the books are still preserved.
The modern practice of lining the walls of our rooms with book-shelves,
though in one sense a reversion to an ancient type, in another is a
definite change of system, of which examples are found in the sixteenth
century abroad, but the first in England is in the Bodleian. In the Old
Reading Room Sir Thomas Bodley reproduced the stall system. But when in
his last days he erected an additional room (the Arts End) his choice
fell on the newer idea that a wide space should be left in the middle
of the room, and the books be all placed against the walls (1613). The
lower books (folios) were still chained, and could only be used at the
desks attached; such was the case, for instance, with the First Folio
of Shakespeare, marked S. 2.17 Art. (see p. 46). The Gallery books were
quartos and octavos, not chained, and given out to readers below by one
of the officers of the Library. This arrangement was imitated in the
Selden End, which was completed in 1640.
[Sidenote: Kinds of Libraries.]
So far an attempt has been made to sketch briefly the evolution of a
library in ancient and mediæval times. The plan of the present chapter
of generalities now requires that we should consider the kinds of modern
library, and the position which the Bodleian holds among them.
There are libraries and libraries. There are libraries of Reference or,
as they are sometimes termed, Deposit; and there are libraries of the
second rank, adapted for local and popular use. These two kinds are
typical, and fall apart, as will be seen, by the application of a simple
test.
The first public literary need of a district is a library of the latter
type, one in which it is more important that the books should be in
general use by lending and by free access to the shelves, than that
they should be invested with a fictitious importance and too jealously
guarded. This is the way to fan the faint sparks of literary instinct,
and is still the common condition of most villages and even towns. But
wherever literature has taken a long and firm hold there is a desire for
a public library of another kind. By this time private libraries abound,
and every serious student surrounds himself with the ordinary books
on his special subject. And the public library shares in this general
elevation of the personal standard; it becomes a necessary complement
to individual effort. It supplies not only the ordinary works on every
subject, but also the extraordinary and special books, and owing to the
value of its contents has to restrict or abolish the custom of lending,
in order that there may be continuous accessibility to its volumes. This
division into two kinds is deep and real. The two fall apart according
to their answer to the question, _Do you in any real sense aim at being
complete?_ All libraries of the second order confess that, in cases where
they aim at any completeness, it is in a special subdivision or set of
subdivisions of literature—_incunabula_, local books, and so on, or a
working series of general reference volumes, or a departmental library
rich in books on a particular science. But every library of the first
class must have universality and completeness (within human limitations)
as its theoretical aim, and must have made substantial progress towards
its goal. In countries like Great Britain and the United States there are
almost numberless libraries, many of them really large ones; but above
them there tower the few, the very few, Libraries of Deposit. These are
the super-Dreadnoughts of the literary world, and the Bodleian claims to
be among them. It is an especial glory of Sir Thomas Bodley that he, a
man of the world as well as a genuine scholar, planned from the first a
library of the highest order.
Of this highest class it may be said that a really great library
should have Universal scope, Independence, Size, Permanence, Wealth,
and multiform Utility. Its Catalogue is not a mere book-finder, but a
scientific work. Open access and lending are given up, but the Reference
library is large. The aim of the British Museum to possess the largest
French library outside France, and so with other foreign departments, and
to store all local newspapers, is beyond praise.
Within the second class of libraries the manifold and various needs of
modern students have resulted in a large number of kinds, which have been
so seldom and so incompletely methodized that the following first attempt
at their classification may be allowed, though cross-divisions cannot be
entirely avoided.
LIBRARIES
A. PUBLIC—_general_:
e.g. National, Free, Lending, Circulating, Village.
B. PUBLIC—_special_:
e.g. Learned, Theological, Branch, Local.
C. INSTITUTIONAL—_general_:
e.g. Proprietary, Subscription, University, College, Travelling.
D. INSTITUTIONAL—_special_:
e.g. Technical, Professional, Departmental, Museum, Children’s.
E. PRIVATE—_general_:
e.g. Aristocratic or dilettante, Scholarly, working Reference.
F. PRIVATE—_special_:
Libraries of Collectors of special kinds of books.
[Sidenote: Size of Libraries.]
It remains to indicate the place among libraries which the Bodleian
Library, the Library of the University of Oxford, appears to occupy among
the libraries of the world. In the absence of all proper standardization
of statistics, _size_ (as estimated by the reputed number of volumes,
not works) must be first regarded, and next _importance_, such as that
due to manuscripts, _incunabula_ and the like. Mere size may not connote
importance, for the million volumes claimed by Messrs. Foyle, of 121
Charing Cross Road, London, do not raise their twenty miles of shelving
to the rank of a really great library. So too the large collections of
printed books in the United States are as yet wanting in the special
importance derived from the ancient and cardinal manuscripts which enrich
some of the libraries of Europe.
The following libraries of the Old World contain a million or more
volumes, in the opinion of Dr. Fortescue, late Keeper of the Printed
Books in the British Museum, expressed in 1912, and compared with numbers
given in the last edition of _Minerva_ (1913), and with other sources of
information.
_Library._ _Printed volumes._ _MS. volumes._
British Museum, London 3,750,000 _Fort._ 60,000.
National Library, Paris 3,500,000 _Fort._ 111,000 _Min._
3,500,000 _Min._ 111,000 _Min._
Petrograd 1,880,000 _Fort._
2,044,000 _Min._ 124,000 _Min._
Berlin 1,400,000 _Fort._
1,450,000 _Min._ 30,000 _Min._
Munich 1,100,000 _Fort._
1,100,000 _Min._ 50,000 _Min._
Vienna 1,000,000 _Fort._
1,000,000 _Min._ 27,000 _Min._
The value of the MSS. (45,000 _Min._) in the Vatican Library at Rome
raises it to the first rank, though its printed volumes are only reckoned
to be 400,000 (_Min._). The size of the great libraries in the United
States is undoubted, but, as has been remarked, the absence of large and
valuable collections of MSS. reduces their importance. In the Library of
Congress at Washington, where the printed volumes (“books and pamphlets”)
are estimated in the Annual Report for 1915 at 2,364,000, the mileage
of occupied shelves is believed to be eighty or more, which is not far
from double that of the British Museum. The New York Public Library is
estimated to contain about 1,920,000 volumes (_Fort._) or 2,090,000
(_Min._). The Boston Public Library is believed to possess 1,050,000
volumes (_Min._).
A statistical survey of the Bodleian Library was made in 1915, with the
following results:—
_About_
Printed volumes 1,050,000
Of which folios 175,000
quartos 350,000
octavos 525,000
Separate pieces 2,060,000
Separate items (including fly-sheets etc.) 3,000,000
Manuscript volumes 40,000
(Not counting characters, rolls, etc.) 20,000
(Full details are printed in No. 9, Vol. I, of the _Bodleian Quarterly
Record_, April, 1916. The total number of printed books in the world,
i.e. separate works, has been estimated at about 12,000,000.)
The Bodleian may fairly claim to rank in size about ninth, and in size
and importance (together) about eighth. It is the largest and most
important University library in the world, and the largest (at any rate
in the Old World) which is not aided out of State funds. It claims also
to be one of the earliest public libraries of Europe, in the sense that
it has always been open to those who bring a sufficient recommendation,
practically without distinction of class or nationality. In early days a
small charge was made on first admission.