determined than Mazarin or Naudé, but much less known to fame, unknown,
in fact, were it not for our good Nicius Erythræus. Prosper Podianus, a
Perugian, but living at Rome, cared, says Nicius, from his youth upwards
but to find out who had written a book upon any subject, at what price
it was to be had, and how he was to get it. His life was consequently
spent in frequenting booksellers' shops and stalls, which latter seem to
have become an established institution in Nicius's time, although, as
would appear, the dealers were not always sufficiently civilised to have
actual stalls, but merely strewed the books upon the ground. (It would
be highly interesting could we ascertain when and where the art of
printing first acquired sufficient development to make it practicable
and profitable to set up a second-hand bookstall.) As Podianus really
was a connoisseur, and knew well what he was about, he frequently picked
up some precious volume for a trifle, and was far from imitating the
conscientiousness of Giovenale Ancina, Bishop of Saluzzo. This excellent
prelate, it is credibly reported, having observed a valuable book amid a
pile heaped upon the ground, as above mentioned, on learning that it was
to be had for a penny, turned short upon the bookseller, rated him
soundly for his ignorance, and gave him a scudo. Different indeed from
the conduct of a lady narrated to me the other day, who, seeing a copy
of the first edition of George Meredith's Poems, commercially worth ten
or twelve guineas, priced at two shillings, and knowing its value right
well, marched with it into the shop and beat the bookseller down to
eighteenpence. I know not whether I more admire or execrate that woman.
Podianus could hardly be expected to emulate the magnanimity of Bishop
Ancina, considering that if he had often had to give scudi for his
books, he would have been reduced to the necessity of stealing them. He
was rich, however, in a thrifty wife, to whom her husband's goings-on
were an enigma and an abomination. Finding that remonstrances availed
nothing, whenever money for housekeeping was absolutely necessary, she
would lay hold of a book, and pledge it with the butcher or baker or
candlestick-maker, when Podianus would be necessitated to redeem it
somehow. He himself rarely dined and did not always sleep at home, being
sure of free quarters from other bibliophiles, who hoped that he would
one day bequeath them his library. At length he was persuaded to make a
donation of it in his lifetime, on condition that the books should
remain in his possession until his death. Either oblivious of this, or
wishing to secure other patrons, he made another prospective donation of
the books to the fathers of a certain monastery, who inscribed the
record of his benefaction upon a marble tablet, to be put up in their
chapel after his death. When this event took place, they swooped down
upon the prize, only to find a still more recent beneficiary in
possession. In their mortification they effaced the laudatory
inscription from the tablet, only leaving the initial letters D. O. M.,
which were commonly interpreted, Daturis Opes Majores—to those who
shall leave us a more substantial legacy.
Nicius mentions one more mighty book-hunter, Cardinal Peranda, of whom,
however, beyond the fact that he was enthusiastic and indefatigable in
the pursuit, we learn nothing bibliographically memorable but his
misadventure with a pet monkey, which, having got hold of the cotton
stopper of the ink-bottle (for so I must render _gossypium_ according to
my present lights) saturated with ink, must needs employ it upon the
most precious book in his whole library. An enemy of books this which
has escaped the attention of Mr. Blades. I will conclude with an
anecdote not strictly bibliographic or bibliopolic, but not unconnected
with the special objects of our Association, inasmuch as it proves the
use in Italy, early in the seventeenth century, of a minor invention
serviceable to bookmen—blotting-paper. It is the story of Muzio Oddi,
mathematician and engineer, who, though debarred from pen and ink,
solaced his imprisonment at Pesaro by the composition of mathematical
treatises, written on sheets of blotting-paper, at first by charcoal cut
to a point, afterwards, having given more stability to his paper by
pressing several sheets together, by a reed-pen dipped in ink made from
charcoal and water, and kept in a walnut shell. Sir Edward Thompson has
shown from an old record that blotting-paper was known in England in
the middle of the fifteenth century; yet sand was in more common use to
a comparatively recent date. It is a remarkable circumstance that sand
was used instead of blotting-paper in the Reading Room of the British
Museum as late as 1838, and was then only discontinued on the
representation of Mr. Panizzi that it got into the books. If, however,
Oddi was able to procure so many sheets of it when he could not get
writing-paper, it must have been common in Italy at the period of his
imprisonment, which would probably be about 1620. I must not omit to add
that this ingenious man made the compasses he required out of twigs of
olive wood, that the books he composed under such difficulties were
actually published, and that he was eventually liberated, and died in
wealth and honour.
These few anecdotes from a restricted field of human activity may afford
some idea of the opulence of Nicius Erythræus in humorous, and at the
same time urbane gossip. He was a quaint, pleasant man, something
between Pepys and Aubrey, not of the highest intellectual powers, but a
fair judge of other men, a good scholar and Latinist, and with quite
sufficient sense to know when a story was worth repeating. He has
preserved much that would have been lost without him, and has made a
sunshine in that very shady place, the Rome of the seventeenth century.
His main defect, ornate prolixity when simple brevity would have been
more appropriate, is the besetting sin of most Jesuit prose writers. He
seems just the sort of useful, entertaining, neglected writer, whom the
presses of our Universities might advantageously reproduce, and the
illustration of his text would afford congenial employment to an
accomplished editor.
FOOTNOTES:
[161:1] Read before the Monthly Meeting of the Library Association,
London, April 1898.
LIBRARIANSHIP IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY[174:1]
The natural reaction against over-statements respecting the darkness of
the dark ages, has led to the counter-statement that they were not dark
at all. We librarians know better. We know that they must have been in
darkness, inasmuch as our body did not exist to enlighten them. There
can have been no librarians where there were no libraries; and the lists
of collections of manuscripts preserved to our times sufficiently prove
that no set of men professionally interested in the custody of stores so
diminutive can have been required. The function of librarian must have
been one of the numerous offices discharged cumulatively by a single
monk, upon whom it may sometimes have been imposed by way of penance. It
was otherwise in classical antiquity. To say nothing of the Alexandrian
Library, and its connection with men as distinguished as Callimachus and
Apollonius, so late as near the close of the third century of our era
the decree of the Emperor Tacitus, that the historical works of his
illustrious namesake should be transcribed and placed in the public
libraries throughout the empire, indicates the existence of numerous
institutions of this description, under responsible officers, servants
of the State, or the municipality.
Almost all personal trace, however, of the famous librarians of
antiquity has disappeared; but the interest attaching to the slow
emergence of their modern representatives from the flood of ignorance
and barbarism rivals that which the history of their prototypes would
excite, could this be recovered. It would be interesting to know when
and where in Renaissance, or post-Renaissance times, the accumulation of
books first became so considerable as to demand the whole time of the
officer entrusted with their custody, and thus to give birth to
librarianship as a distinct profession. Into this inquiry I do not
propose to enter. I wish merely, on the present occasion, to direct your
attention to the evidence borne about the middle of the seventeenth
century to the development at that period attained by librarianship, and
the conception of its duties and possibilities entertained by John Dury,
a man in advance of his times.
Dury was by birth a Scotchman, and by profession a divine. He had
signalised his appreciation of libraries at an early age by repairing to
Oxford with the object of studying in the Bodleian. He is entitled to
figure on the roll of librarians himself, having been appointed
deputy-keeper of the Royal Library after the execution of Charles I.,
which charge may very probably have suggested to him those thoughts on
the duties of librarians and the standard of librarianship, of which I
am to give you an account. The main object of his life, however, was the
even more important but certainly less hopeful undertaking of allaying
the acrimony of religious zealots. In pursuance of this mission we find
him almost more abroad than at home; ever labouring to appease the
dissensions of Protestants, now negotiating with Gustavus Adolphus, now
with the Synod of Transylvania; now at Utrecht, now at Brandenburgh, now
at Metz, where he submitted to the loss of his "great, square, white
beard," as a peace offering to the prejudices of French Protestantism.
He eventually, long after the Restoration, died in Hesse, where he was
entertained and protected by the Regent. It is to be feared that nothing
came of his well-meant endeavours but the witness of a good conscience
and the blessing that rests upon peace-makers. It may, perhaps, have
been inferred that he was not in all respects the most practical of men,
and this, indeed, appears from his works on education rather than from
his suggestions on libraries. But his utopianism was less owing to
infirmity of judgment than to the habitual elevation of his moral and
intellectual standard. He thought better of his fellow-men than they
deserved, and was himself a man of eminent desert. If his own writings
did not survive to speak for him, it would be sufficient to record that
he was the intimate friend of Samuel Hartlib, the foreign guest to whom
England is so greatly indebted as philanthropist and practical
agriculturist, and to whom several of his own treatises are inscribed.
The tract in which Dury published his ideas respecting the duties of a
librarian is entitled "The Reformed Library Keeper; with a Supplement to
the Reformed School, as subordinate to Colleges in Universities"
(London, 1650). It appears with a brief preface by Samuel Hartlib, to
whom the "Library Keeper" is addressed in the form of two letters, and
who had already published Dury's "Reformed School," to which another
portion of the tiny pamphlet is a supplement.
From the general drift of Dury's observations, it would appear that in
his view, which was very probably correct, librarianship had in his day
reached such a degree of development as to have become an independent
profession, but not such a degree as to be a very useful one. It was
necessary to have librarians, but librarians, as such, had not enough to
do to constitute them very important or valuable members of the
community. The remedy for this state of things was destined to come
slowly, partly by increase of books, and even more by an increase of
readers. We know that the profession at present finds ample employment
for well-nigh all the energies of its most active members. This was far
from the case in Dury's day, and being unable so to accelerate the march
of intellect as to find sufficing occupation for the librarian, and at
the same time hating to see a functionary potentially so important
comparatively useless, he not unnaturally sought to provide him with
other vocations in which the more technical work of librarianship would
have been merged. In so doing he anticipated the modern idea, especially
rife in America, that the librarian should not only be a custodian and
distributor of books, but a missionary of culture. Hence came the
further idea that more being expected of the librarian more should be
given him, and the office thus made worthy of the acceptance of men of
parts and learning. Thus we find Dury, from a comparative outsider's
point of view, coming to magnify the librarian's office and demand
generous treatment for its incumbent, very much in the tone now held by
the organs and representatives of the profession itself. It must be
borne in mind that he speaks not so much in the interest of librarians
as of the public; and pleads for them less in their capacity as
custodians of books than with reference to the educational functions
which he wishes to see superadded to their ordinary duties.
It will now be well to let him speak for himself.
"The library keeper's place and office in most countries are looked upon
as places of profit and gain."
Rather a startling statement to us, who have been accustomed to look
upon librarianship as under the special influence of the planet Saturn,
which is said to preside over all occupations in which money is obtained
with very great difficulty. It would seem, however, that mean as the
prizes of librarianship might be, they were yet scrambled for.
"And so," he continues, "accordingly sought after and valued in that
regard and not in regard of the service which is to be done by them unto
the Commonwealth of Israel. For the most part men look after the
maintenance and livelihood settled upon their places more than upon the
end and usefulness of their employments. They seek themselves and not
the public therein, and so they subordinate all the advantages of their
places to purchase mainly two things thereby, viz., an easy subsistence
and some credit in comparison of others, nor is the last much regarded
if the first may be had. To speak in particular of library keepers in
most universities that I know, nay, indeed, in all, their places are but
mercenary, and their employment of little or no use further than to look
to the books committed to their custody, that they may not be lost or
embezzled by those that use them, and this is all."
Dury has, no doubt, here put his finger upon the main cause of the low
condition of the librarianship of his day. The general conception of the
librarian's functions was far too narrow. He was allowed no share in the
government of his own library. He had not necessarily anything to do
with the selection of new books, nor was it expected of him that he
should advise and direct the studies of those resorting to the
collections committed to his care. In fact he was not usually qualified
for such activity, or even for the minor task of making these
collections serviceable by means of catalogues and indexes. The
development of literature had advanced so far as to necessitate the
library custodian, but had not yet produced the library
administrator—the Denis and Audiffredi of the succeeding century. Dury
saw this, and also saw that the ideal librarian he had conceived in his
own mind would need better pay that he might do better work. One
exception to his apparently sweeping statements must be noted. Bodley's
librarians in the seventeenth century were undoubtedly men of high
literary distinction. Yet even here the arrangements for the librarian's
remuneration were unsatisfactory, and wrong in principle.
"I have been informed," says Dury, "that in Oxford the settled
maintenance of the library keeper is not above fifty or sixty pounds per
annum, but that it is accidentally _viis et modis_, sometimes worth a
hundred pound. What the accidents are, and the ways and means by which
they come, I have not been curious to search after."
So we are not to know by what shifts Mr. Nicholson's seventeenth-century
predecessor mended his salary. "Hay and oats," says Dean Swift, "in the
hands of a skilful groom will make excellent wine, as well as ale, but
_this_ I only _hint_."
Dury now proceeds to develop his ideas in a fine and wise passage:—
"I have thought that if the proper employments of library keepers were
taken into consideration as they are, or may be made useful to the
advancement of learning; and were ordered and maintained
proportionately to the ends which ought to be intended thereby, they
would be of exceeding great use to all scholars, and have an universal
influence upon all the parts of learning, to produce and propagate the
same into perfection. For if library keepers did understand themselves
in the nature of their work, and would make themselves, as they ought to
be, useful in their places in a public way, they ought to become agents
for the advancement of universal learning; and to this effect I could
wish that their places might not be made, as everywhere they are,
mercenary, but rather honorary; and that with the competent allowance of
two hundred pounds a year [equivalent to about six hundred nowadays],
some employments should be put upon them further than a bare keeping of
the books. It is true that a fair library is not only an adornment and
credit to the place where it is, but an useful commodity by itself to
the public; yet in effect it is no more than a dead body as now it is
constituted, in comparison of what it might be, if it were animated with
a public spirit to keep and use it, and ordered as it might be for
public service. For if such an allowance were settled upon the
employment as might maintain a man of parts and generous thoughts, then
a condition might be annexed to the bestowing of the place; that none
should be called thereunto but such as had approved themselves zealous
and profitable in some public ways of learning to advance the same, or
that should be bound to certain tasks to be prosecuted towards that end,
whereof a list might be made, and the way to try their abilities in
prosecuting the same should be described, lest in after times
unprofitable men creep into the place to frustrate the public of the
benefit intended by the donors towards posterity. The proper charge,
then, of the honorary library keeper in a university should be thought
upon, and the end of that employment, in my conception, is to keep the
public stock of learning, which is in books and manuscripts; to increase
it, and to propose it to others in the way which may be most useful unto
all; his work, then, is to be a factor and trader for helps to learning,
and a treasurer to keep them, and a dispenser to apply them to use, or
to see them well used, or at least not abused."
This established, Dury proceeds to point out how the library should be
made useful. His main idea is that a library should be a kind of
factory, and it is astonishing how often he contrives to introduce the
word "trade" into his proposals. Underlying this peculiar phraseology is
the thought that so long as the library only exists for the advantage of
those who may choose to resort to it, it is like a talent buried in a
napkin; that to be really useful it must go to the public, and that the
librarian must place himself in active communication with men of
learning. It was hardly conceived in Dury's day that any but scholars
could have occasion for libraries, but translating his proposals into
the language of our time, it will appear that they contemplate such an
ideal of librarianship as is professed in America, and is realised with
no small success in many of our leading free libraries. The first
condition is a good catalogue:—
"That is," says Dury, "all the books and manuscripts according to the
titles whereunto they belong, are to be ranked in an order most easy and
obvious to be found, which I think is that of sciences and languages,
when first all the books are divided into their _subjectam materiam_
whereof they treat, and then every kind of matter subdivided into their
several languages."
Evidently Dury was little troubled with the questions which have so
exercised librarians since his time. "The subject-matter of which a book
treats" is not always easy to ascertain. It might have puzzled Dury
himself to decide whether his own tract should be catalogued along with
books on libraries, or with the "Reformed School" to which it is
professedly an appendix, and to which half its contents have a direct
relation. The suggestion that books should be catalogued by languages
was propounded before the British Museum Commission of 1849, and
promptly dismissed as the fancy of an amateur. It would be curious to
see Pope's Homer in one catalogue, Voss's in another, and the original
in a third.
Dury next judiciously adds that room must be left in the library for the
increase of books, an indispensable condition not always easy of
fulfilment; and that "in the printed catalogue a reference is to be made
to the place where the books are to be found in their shelves or
repositories." That is, the catalogue must have press-marks; in which
suggestion Dury was two centuries ahead of many of the most important
foreign libraries. It will be observed that he takes it for granted that
the catalogue shall be printed, and in this he was ahead of almost all
the libraries of his time, and until lately of the British Museum. In
fact he could not be otherwise, for a printed catalogue is an essential
condition of his dominant idea that the librarian should be a "factor"
to "trade" with learned men and corporations for mutual profit. Hence he
prescribes "a catalogue of additionals, which every year within the
universities is to be published in writing within the library itself,
and every three years to be put in print and made common to those that
are abroad."
The full plan of communication is unfolded in the following passage:—
"When the stock is thus known and fitted to be exposed to the view of
the learned world, then the way of trading with it, both at home and
abroad, is to be laid to heart both for the increase of the stock and
for the improvement of its use. For the increase of the stock both at
home and abroad, correspondence should be held with those that are
eminent in every science to trade with them for their profit, that what
they want and we have, they may receive upon condition; that what they
have and we want, they should impart in that faculty wherein their
eminence doth lie. As for such as are at home eminent in any kind,
because they may come by native right to have use of the library
treasure, they are to be traded with all in another way, viz., that the
things which are gained from abroad, which as yet are not made common
and put to public use, should be promised and imparted to them for the
increase of their private stock of knowledge, to the end that what they
have peculiar, may also be given in for a requital, so that the
particularities of gifts at home and abroad are to meet as in a centre
in the hand of the Library Keeper, and he is to trade with the one by
the other, to cause them to multiply the public stock, whereof he is a
treasurer and factor.
"Thus he should trade with those that are at home and abroad out of the
university, and with those that are within the university, he should
have acquaintance to know all that are of any parts, and how their view
of learning doth lie, to supply helps unto them in their faculties from
without and from within the nation, to put them upon the keeping of
correspondence with men of their own strain, for the beating out of
matters not yet elaborated in sciences; so that they may be as his
assistants and subordinate factors in his trade and in their own for
gaining of knowledge."
Further instructions follow respecting the control to be exercised over
the librarian, who is to give an account of his stewardship once a year
to the doctors of the university, who are themselves, each in his own
faculty, to suggest additional books proper to be added to the library.
Dury seems to have no doubt that funds will always be forthcoming, as
well as for the librarian's "extraordinary expenses in correspondencies
and transcriptions for the public good." It seems to be expected that he
will frequently make advances out of his own pocket. Dury glides lightly
over these ticklish financial details, which, however, remind him of the
existence of a law of copyright, and the probable accumulation of
accessions undesirable from the point of view of mere scholarship. His
observations on this point are full of liberality and good sense:—