"Hail, tree of knowledge! thy leaves fruit; which well
Dost in the midst of Paradise arise,
Oxford, the Muses' paradise,
From which may never sword the blest expel.
Hail, bank of all past ages! where they lie
To enrich, with interest, posterity."
COWLEY.
"The appearance of the library" (at Merton), says the great Cambridge
scholar, J. Willis Clark, in his /Care of Books/, "is so venerable,
so unlike any similar room with which I am acquainted, that it must
always command admiration."
He classes it with the libraries at Oxford of Corpus, St. John's,
Jesus, and Magdalen, and he regretfully adds that no college library
in his own University has retained the same old features as these
have done. But none of the four can compare with Merton, either in
antiquarian interest or in picturesqueness; it stands in a class by
itself.
The Library was built by the munificence of Bishop Reed of Chichester
between 1377 and 1379; the dormer windows, however (seen in Plate
VII), are later in date. The bookcases in the larger room were made
in 1623; one of the original half cases, however, was spared, that
nearest to the entrance on the north side, and this is the most
interesting single feature in the whole library. It need hardly be
said that the reading-desk in early times was actually attached to
the bookcase; the library then was a place to read in, not one from
which books were taken to be read. The books were to be kept "in some
common and secure place," and they were "chained in the library
chamber for the common use of the fellows" (J. W. Clark).
The old case that has been retained still has its chained books, and
traces of the arrangement for chains can be seen in the other cases.
Merton was one of the last libraries in Oxford to keep its books in
chains; these were only removed in 1792; in the Bodleian the work had
been begun a generation earlier (in 1757).
Not all books, however, were chained; by special arrangements in old
college statutes, some of them were allowed out to the fellows. The
register of Merton contains interesting entries as to how the books
were distributed, e.g. on August 26, 1500, "choice was made of the
books on philosophy; it was found there were in all 349 books, which
were then distributed." This was a large number: at King's,
Cambridge, less than half a century before, there were only 174 books
on all subjects, and in the Cambridge University Library in 1473,
only 330.
If a book was borrowed, great precautions were taken; the Warden of
Merton in 1498 had to obtain the leave of the college to take out a
book which he wanted; then, "in the presence of the four seniors," he
received his book, depositing two volumes of St. Jerome's
Commentaries as pledges for its safe return. A similar ceremony, with
a similar entry in the register, marked the replacement of the book
in the library. Though printing was already beginning to multiply
books, yet then, and for long after, a book was a most valuable
possession. The features of these venerable tomes are well described
by Crabbe:
"That weight of wood, with leathern coat o'erlaid,
Those ample clasps, of solid metal made,
The close pressed leaves, unclosed for many an age,
The dull red edging of the well-filled page,
On the broad back the stubborn ridges rolled,
Where yet the title shines in tarnished gold,
These all a sage and laboured work proclaim,
A painful candidate for lasting fame."
Such books are numbered by hundreds in every college library, and it
is only too true of them that:
"Hence in these times, untouched the pages lie
And slumber out their immortality."
The reception of such a book in a library was an event, and the
record of one gift occupies six whole lines in the Merton Register;
its donors are named as "two venerable men," and the entry sweetly
concludes, "Let us, therefore, pray for them."
The library, problem, acute everywhere, is perhaps especially so in a
college library. How can it keep pace with the multiplicity of
studies? How should it deal with books indispensable for a short
time, perhaps for one generation, and then superseded? Even apart
from the question of the cost of purchase, the amount of space
available is small, considering modern needs. These problems and such
as these have not yet been solved by college librarians; but the
college library, quite apart from the books in it, is an education in
itself. The old days of neglect are past, the days reflected in the
scandalous story--told of more than one college--about the old fellow
who was missing for two months, and, after being searched for high
and low, was found hanging dead in the college library. Now the
libraries everywhere are being used continually, and men can realize
in them, perhaps better than anywhere else, how great the past of
Oxford has been, and can form some idea of the labours of forgotten
generations, which have made the University what it was and what it
is.
Every library has its treasures, to show the present generation how
beautiful an old book can be which was produced in days when its
production was not a mere publisher's speculation, but the work of a
scholar seeking to promote knowledge and advance the cause of Truth.
And it does not require much imagination for a student, in a building
like Merton Library, to conjure up the picture of his mediaeval
predecessor, sitting on his hard wooden bench, with his chained MSS.
volume on the shelf above, and poring over the crabbed pages in the
unwarmed, half-lighted chamber. If the picture brings with it the
thought of the transitoriness of human endeavour, and if the words of
the Teacher seem doubly true, "Of making of books there is no end,
and much study is a weariness of the flesh," yet in the fresh life of
young Oxford, such reflections are only salutary; pessimism, despair
of humanity, are not vices likely to flourish among undergraduates in
the healthy society of modern colleges.
Those only, it might be said, can properly reform the present who
understand the past, and it is perhaps the spirit of the Merton
Library, at once old and new, which has inspired the statesmen whom
Merton has sent to take part in the government of Britain during the
last half-century. Lord Randolph Churchill, the founder of Tory
democracy, his present-day successor in the same role, Lord
Birkenhead, and the ever young Lord Halsbury are men of the type
which Walter de Merton wished to train, "for the service of God in
Church and State," men who champion the existing order, but who are
willing to develop and improve it on the old lines.