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                            FURTHER REMARKS
                                ON THE
                           POLICY OF LENDING
                               BODLEIAN
                    PRINTED BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS.

                                  BY
                        HENRY W. CHANDLER, M.A.

                  FELLOW OF PEMBROKE COLLEGE, OXFORD;
       WAYNFLETE PROFESSOR OF MORAL AND METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY,
                AND A CURATOR OF THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY.

                                Oxford:
                           B. H. BLACKWELL,
                       50 AND 51, BROAD STREET.
                                 1887.

                            Price Sixpence.




               _Further Remarks on the Policy of Lending
               Bodleian printed Books and Manuscripts._


There are several reasons why it is in the highest degree improbable
that I should take any part in the debate on the Bodleian Statute, but
I reserve the right to handle in my own fashion any arguments that may
be used, and to supplement, if need be, any facts or supposed facts
that may be brought forward during the discussion.

Those who are in favour of changing the whole character of the
Bodleian, and who wish to convert it from a library of reference into
a library of circulation, do not seem to feel much confidence in the
strength of their case; at all events, they have made no serious
attempt to meet the facts and arguments with which they are confronted,
but show a disposition to wander off into side issues of little or no
importance. Before examining the letters of Mr. Sanday, Mr. Ellis,
and Dr. Rost (as far as I know the only advocates of lending that
have yet ventured into print), it may be well to add some further
evidence on the lending system, which was omitted from the ‘Remarks’
by inadvertence. The Advocates’ Library is, as we all know, a lending
library, and in 1852, or thereabouts, the librarian informed Dr.
Bandinel that they had already _lost_ nearly _seven thousand_ works.
In 1849 Mr. Maitland told a Committee of the House of Commons that
‘all the ordinary readable books, for which there is a great demand,
are now reduced into a state and condition so bad that it is perfectly
disgraceful’; and he was of opinion that ‘the only satisfactory and
practical reform in the Advocates’ Library would be to put an end to
the circulation of the books.’ Mr. Panizzi--a splendid librarian and
a man with a head on his shoulders--addressed a string of queries to
thirty-six large continental libraries, and asked, _inter alia_,
whether they lent their books, whether those books were in consequence
lost or damaged, whether the practice was complained of, and whether
readers were inconvenienced by it. Six libraries out of the thirty-six
never lent under any circumstances whatever; thirteen returned either
no answer or no clear answer as to the consequences of the practice;
_three_ (the Public Library at Basle, the University Library at Turin,
and St. Mark’s, Venice) reported ‘no inconvenience as resulting’; but
the remaining _fourteen_ told a very different tale--from the Royal
Library, Berlin, ‘few books were lost,’ but books were damaged; at
the City Library, Berne, ‘books do certainly suffer,’ and readers are
inconvenienced; at the Royal Library, Copenhagen, ‘many inconveniences
are the consequences of such a practice’; ‘books are lost, &c.’--a
very eloquent ‘&c.’ especially if it be compared with the evidence of
Molbech the librarian there, see ‘Remarks,’ p. 59; at the City Library,
Frankfurt, ‘books are not entirely lost, but are often damaged’; at
the Public Library, Geneva, ‘books are lost and damaged’; at the
Brera, Milan, ‘generally speaking books are not injured,’ but readers
are inconvenienced; at the National Library, Paris, it is hoped that
rules have been adopted which would ‘prevent the great losses and
just complaints of the public.’ (I may parenthetically observe that
forty years ago or more the losses of this one library were estimated
at _fifty thousand volumes_); at St. Geneviève, ‘the principle is
acknowledged to be liable to many abuses’; at the Mazarene Library,
‘the system is found very dangerous’; at the Library of the Institute,
the practice was condemned as ‘highly pernicious and practically liable
to the abuses implied in the question’; at the Ducal Library, Parma,
books are not lost and ‘few slightly damaged,’ but readers complain
of inconvenience; at the Imperial Library, Prague, ‘readers were
inconvenienced’; and at Wolfenbüttel, ‘all the inconveniences mentioned
in the question are the consequence of the system’; that is to say,
books were lost and damaged, and readers were inconvenienced.

I have said that the answer returned from St. Mark’s, Venice (where
lending on a very small scale prevailed), was that no inconvenience was
felt, but it is well deserving of notice that the respondent continues
thus, ‘_if librarians were asked all over the world_, AND THEY WOULD
CANDIDLY ANSWER THE QUESTION, _one and all would deprecate the system
of lending, being liable to every one of the abuses mentioned in the
question_.’ Unfortunately librarians, like other people, will not
always answer questions candidly. There is plenty more evidence of
this sort, but what has been already adduced here and in the ‘Remarks’
is surely enough to prove the mischief inseparable from this silly
practice even to the most obtuse of mankind.

Here too is a very significant fact, which ought to speak trumpet-tongued
to the Bodleian Curators. In 1827 Mr. Kerrich, the Public Librarian at
Cambridge, possessed an Arabic Manuscript (a history of the Berbers),
which was in the strictest sense of the word unique. In one sense all
manuscripts are unique, for no two are or can be exactly alike, but
Mr. Kerrich’s book was the only known copy of the work in existence
anywhere. He was strongly urged to give or sell it to the University
Library over which he presided, but he utterly declined to do either
the one or the other, because the Cambridge Library is a lending
library. Few men, he said, know the value of manuscripts; and he
declared that there were only two libraries in England where his
book would be open to the use of scholars and at the same time safe,
the British Museum and the Bodleian. This manuscript now reposes on
our shelves, and we got it simply and solely because in 1827 (and for
many years after) we still possessed common sense. Kerrich would never
have let us have this unique volume, had he supposed it possible that
we should ever have been so forgetful of our duty as to lend Bodleian
books. We might learn something from the Persians, who, as I was
informed the other day, on what seemed to be very good authority, have
a saying which runs thus:--‘The man who lends a book is a fool, but
that man is a greater fool who returns a book that has been lent to
him’--a fearful mixture of true with false doctrine.

Now for the letters, and as Dr. Rost is a librarian he shall have
precedence. His epistle will be found in the _Academy_ (March 5, 1887),
and it is a real contribution to the facts of the case. It is reducible
to two statements:--

1. During nearly eighteen years there have been from the India Office
‘thousands of loans’ and ‘there has not been a single loss to record.’
In February, 1887, there were ‘337 Oriental MSS. out on loan, 47 of
which are in the hands of scholars in India.’

2. ‘Numerous editions of texts and other works based on our collections
of MSS. would either have been impossible, or at least not possible, to
their actual extent except for the existing arrangement.’

Here we have lending on a truly gigantic and imperial scale, ‘thousands
of loans’ and ‘not a single loss’: nothing is said, however, about
damage and deterioration, which must have been considerable. Still
‘thousands of loans’ and ‘not a single loss’ is a mighty strong fact,
so strong indeed that Dr. Rost may be congratulated on a surprising
run of luck. But his marvellous good fortune is no argument in favour
of lending; it is rather an argument against it. A man has been known
once in his life to throw double sixes four times running in a game
of backgammon; no other player, however, who has seen this done need
expect to do the like, for the chances against him, if we merely
consider the single and simple chance, are more than a million and
a half to one: (strictly 1,679,615 to 1.) Dr. Rost has lent MSS.
thousands of times, and they have always come back safely, not perhaps
quite as fresh and sound as they went out, still they _have_ come
back; let no other librarian expect that the fickle goddess will treat
him with like favour. Consider for a moment the evidence produced
above as to the experience of other lending libraries, and you will
find it impossible to believe that the Bodleian can meet with luck so
entirely exceptional as that which has befallen the India Office.
It is so uncanny that, were I Secretary of State for India, I should
certainly follow the example of Polycrates, and sacrifice something
very valuable, only not a manuscript; the safest thing, however, would
be to stop the hazardous practice of lending, and tempt Fate no more.
The second part of Dr. Rost’s letter merely re-echoes an argument used
by Mr. Sanday and Mr. Ellis.

Mr. Sanday’s letter is printed in the _Oxford Magazine_ of February
23, 1887. He sees ‘two great, if not fatal, flaws’ in my argument
against lending out books. They are: 1. that I ‘look only at one of
the uses of a MS.,’ and 2. that I ‘immensely under-estimate the value
of the work that has been done upon MSS. in recent years.’ I plead an
emphatic not-guilty to both these charges. On what evidence do they
rest? As to the first, the evidence offered is that ‘my idea of a MS.
appears to be that it should exist beautifully, occasionally inspected
by a _connoisseur_ who strolls down to the library purely for his
own amusement and with no further result worth speaking of.’ Then I
am told that a great number of manuscripts are ‘valuable chiefly for
their text,’ and that when ‘they have been collated and the collation
thoroughly tested their work in the world is to a great extent
done.’ Very good: now let us dismiss as extraneous to the present
question manuscripts which are ‘works of art,’ and calligraphic or
palæographical specimens or curiosities, and then let me ask whence
my kindly opponent derives his information as to ‘my idea of a MS.’?
I am curious to know, because he certainly cannot have got it out
of my ‘Remarks’; he must have other sources of information, only,
I can assure him, that he has been most woefully misled: in short,
his notion of ‘my idea’ is wholly fictitious. That a great number of
manuscripts are ‘valuable chiefly for their text’ is a proposition so
self-evidently true, that it might have been thought difficult to find
any one out of a lunatic asylum who ever doubted it. Will Mr. Sanday
point out to me in anything I have ever written any passage which, by
any interpretation however forced, could be made to say that the great
proportion of manuscripts are valuable for much except their texts? In
the greatest libraries--even in the Bodleian--the number of splendid
manuscripts--of manuscripts valuable as works of art or as palæographic
monuments--is comparatively small.

But let us suppose the fiction to be a fact; let it be assumed that
‘my idea of a MS. is that it should exist beautifully’; how would
that be a flaw in the argument against lending Bodleian books? The
argument--to put it in its baldest form--is, that Nothing that tends to
damage a library ought to be done by those who really care for it; but
lending tends to damage a library, _ergo_. _Minor probatur_: Whatever
unnecessarily damages the books tends to damage a library; lending does
so, _ergo_. Again, Whatever deters would-be benefactors from giving
books tends to damage a library; lending does so; _ergo_, and so on
and so on. The ‘Remarks’ can be run out into mood and figure with
no trouble at all. How is this argument or any part of it vitiated,
if I were to say (what I never have said), that ‘a MS. should exist
beautifully’? Let us clench the absurdity: suppose I had been fool
enough to say that no book should ever be looked at in the library
for more than an hour a day; even that would not vitiate the argument
against lending books out of it. Have we forgotten in this once famous
University what a contradictory proposition is? Have we as completely
lost the art of clear disputation as we have forgotten the use of the
rapier? There are times when I think so.

Come we now to the second flaw: I ‘immensely under-estimate the value
of the work that has been done upon MSS. in recent years’. Suppose for
a moment that I do, how does that constitute a flaw in my argument?
It beats me altogether: I cannot see it. Do not lend your books, says
the argument, for five or six different reasons; and I ask again with
positive wonder in what way any of these reasons are contradicted,
even if I do under-estimate the work that has been done on MSS.? What
has the one thing to do with the other? I could understand it if it
were impossible to examine a MS. _in_ the library; but that cannot be
Mr. Sanday’s meaning. Or does he mean this? If you do not let your
MSS. go out of the Library, and occasionally out of the country, they
will not be examined or collated at all? I hope that this is not his
meaning; for badly as I think of the state of learning here, I have
never thought so badly of it as this supposition would imply. If after
thirty years of constant ‘reform’ we are sunk so low that we neither
can, nor will, use the treasures of the Bodleian Library ourselves, why
in that case I say let us give the whole of it away to some country
where scholars are yet to be found. A library in which no man works--a
library such as the Bodleian is in the hands of men too ignorant or
too idle to use it--is dreadful to think of. I, however, hoped better
of the place, and I argued that we should not send our books out of
the library, because--as one reason amongst others--it would then be
impossible for us to use those books in the library. I wished to think
of this University as still living, and of its members as still lovers
of learning for its own sake, though I admit that this last effort cost
me almost all the faith I possess.

But I trust that I have completely misunderstood the way in which my
good-tempered critic would connect my under-estimate of the work done
on MSS. with the argument against lending. All this, be it observed, is
on the supposition that I actually have under-estimated that work; this
I do not admit to be the fact, but whether I have or have not it in no
way affects the argument against lending.

Mr. Sanday’s next point is, that if we do not lend our books to
foreigners, foreigners will not lend their books to us, which will
greatly inconvenience English scholars; and, lastly, that it is a great
inconvenience not to be permitted to have Bodleian printed books in
our rooms. ‘The purpose,’ he says, ‘with which one borrows books is
mainly to _complete a collection_: one has, perhaps, ten or twelve of
the books one wants, but just some two or three are needed which no
other library but the Bodleian can supply’. What does all this amount
to? Why, that it is a great convenience to have books and MSS. out of
the Bodleian. _Quis negavit?_ Everybody admits it; but the point--and
it is really astonishing how few people there seem to be now-a-days who
can see the point of any thing--the point is this: which on the whole
is the greater convenience to the greatest number of serious students,
letting books go out of the library or keeping them in it? Never to
lend entails inconveniences; lending also entails inconveniences; on
which side does the balance of inconvenience lie? People feel, as Mr.
Sanday confesses that he feels, how convenient it is ‘_to complete a
collection_’; they never for one moment consider that their convenience
is another man’s inconvenience. Provided they can get what they want,
they really seem to care not one farthing for anybody else in the
universe. It is almost needless to add that this remark does not apply
to Mr. Sanday.

If we did not send our books abroad, it is certain that foreign
libraries might, and, if they were wise, would, decline to lend us
their books. And a very good thing too. It benefits us to visit foreign
libraries, and it will benefit foreigners to visit ours. In these days
of rapid and cheap locomotion, there is less reason than ever for
sending books racing about all over the world. If you go to Simancas,
to Venice, or to the Public Record Office, you may consult and copy
the records of Spain, of Venice, and of England, for yourself. If you
had rather not go, you can get attested copies of any document which
you desire to have, but you cannot borrow. And it should be the same
with all great libraries. If a man wishes for a partial or a complete
collation of a Bodleian book, or for a complete transcript, he most
certainly ought to be able to get it accurately done, and I should hope
that in this University he would get it done gratis, though it would
be no hardship or injustice if such work were charged for at a modest
rate. If a man unable to visit us is willing to pay for a transcript
or collation, and there is no one here either able or willing to make
it, then there is a substantial grievance; but in no seat of learning
ought such a thing to be possible. In any University that deserves
the name, and especially in a University so richly endowed as ours
is, there ought to be, and if funds were not wasted there might be, a
number of keen-eyed men skilled in every ordinary language of Europe
and of Asia, able and willing for the mere love of learning to do this
sort of work thoroughly well. It should be the same in London. It is
shameful to us as Englishmen, considering what our Eastern Empire is,
that there should be the least difficulty in getting any MS. properly
transcribed or properly collated either here or at the India Office.
Let us reform ourselves in very deed, and not in name only, as quickly
as may be. Although a University does not mean a place where the
_omne scibile_ is either known or taught, it is certain that such a
University as Oxford pretends to be (and might have been) ought to
contain even amongst its College fellows men skilled in all but the
most outlandish tongues.

Mr. Ellis’ letter appeared in the _Academy_ of February 26, 1887. It
consists of two parts more or less intertwined, that is to say, of
objections to opinions which he believes me to hold though I do not,
and of an attempt to justify the lending out of books. The personal
part (I do not mean this in any disagreeable sense) has been answered,
so far as it required an answer, in the _Academy_ of March 5, 1887, and
need not be repeated here.

Mr. Ellis thinks that the tone of my pamphlet ‘is, to say the very
least, reactionary’, and he describes me as the exponent of ‘a
reactionary movement against the study and use of MSS.’ The pamphlet
says in effect that the Curators have for years past been doing a
wrong thing, and a thing for which they had no statutable warrant; it
gives reasons why the thing is both wrong and foolish, and it begs
the University to put a stop to the wrong doing. This Mr. Ellis calls
‘reactionary’; a violent misuse of an adjective, as it seems to me.
Then he makes out entirely to his own satisfaction, though hardly,
it is to be thought, to that of his readers, that I object to the
presence of an undergraduate in the Bodleian. Anybody who reads the
‘Remarks’ with ordinary attention will see that in the passage where
alone the word occurs (p. 46) it is used to denote a species of the
unlearned, and surely no one will deny that it is rightly so used; for
not one undergraduate in five hundred could be properly described as
learned. But if any undergraduate is learned, I have never objected
to his presence in the library. How could I object when I have said
more than once that the Bodleian was founded and endowed by learned
men for learned men? Not a year ago I introduced to the library a very
young Cambridge man, whom I firmly believed to be an undergraduate;
and I congratulated myself on having turned loose into that glorious
place exactly the sort of person that Bodley, Laud, and Selden would
have welcomed, for he was at once a scholar and a lover of books. It
turned out that my young friend was not an undergraduate at all, but
a recently made Bachelor of Arts; but that makes no difference as
far as I am concerned; I believed him to be an undergraduate when I
offered to be his sponsor. So much for the charge that I would exclude
undergraduates from the Bodleian. I would exclude (just as Bodley
ordered) all unlearned people, and therefore almost all undergraduates;
I would welcome all learned men (and women too), and therefore any one,
graduate or undergraduate, who is learned; nor should I take ‘learned’
in a very strict sense.

Mr. Ellis declares that he should regard the change of practice which
I advocate ‘not only with grave distrust, but with a quite lively
resentment, as an outrage and desecration’ to the memory of the late
Mr. Coxe. I understand this rather tall talk (and others do the same)
to mean that Mr. Coxe approved of the practice of lending books and
MSS. Now I have uncommonly good authority for saying that Mr. Coxe
viewed the lending system with as much disfavour as I do myself. How
could it have been otherwise? Mr. Coxe was a librarian who knew his
business, and what the practice of such a library as the Bodleian
should be. The Curators, the greater number of whom were profoundly
ignorant both of books and of book management, coerced him; he was
obliged to yield, but I am assured that he detested their barbarism
quite as much as I do.

The rest of the letter merely puts forward the plea of convenience over
again, and, like the rest, the writer does not see that neither I nor
anybody else have ever questioned the convenience of the practice. I
find that some readers of Mr. Ellis’ letter suppose the sentences in
inverted commas to be all mine, but that is not the case; several of
them are expressions which he supposes (wrongly enough) I should or
might use. I have, for instance, nowhere objected to the nasty habit of
biting your nails, though Mr. Ellis puts the objection into my mouth.
So long as a man merely bites his own nails, I should say nothing,
whatever I might think: it would of course be different, if he were to
try to bite my nails.

Every Member of Convocation has a right to criticise the New Statute,
and therefore no apology need be made for the following remarks. For
the first time in the history of the Bodleian it is proposed plainly
and clearly to invest the Curators with the power to lend books. From
the foundation of the library down to 1873 they had no such power, no
such right; nevertheless from 1862 they did as a matter of fact lend
manuscripts and printed books. It was their custom, their ‘_mos_’ to
do so. On February 28, 1873, they resolved that they would ‘proceed
_by statute to take power_ to order the lending out of books under
certain restrictions.’ Now no sane man resolves to ‘take power’ to
do what he already has a right to do. This resolution then was a
distinct confession that for years past the Curators had been acting
unstatutably, and it is probable, perhaps certain, that the words
‘_sicut mos fuit_’ in the extraordinary statute of 1873 were intended
to cover and condone the illegal acts of the previous ten or eleven
years, an intention completely frustrated by the unparalleled bad Latin
in which that Statute is expressed. Whether a permission ‘to borrow
books for learned men’ conveys to the Curators the power to lend them
is very doubtful indeed; if it were not so, it is difficult to see
why the Curators applied for the Statute now before us. Were any one
to maintain that the Curators have now no power to lend books, and
that they never have had it since the Library was founded, he would
not find much difficulty in proving his case to the satisfaction of
all reasonable beings. The present Statute proposes to give them this
power, though not in perfectly unobjectionable terms. For it first
allows them to lend manuscripts, and then declares that no rare book
shall be lent without the consent of Convocation. Now a manuscript is
more than rare; it is unique, no two being exactly alike. There is
an ambiguity here which will be found in practice to breed endless
difficulties. Then, again, who is to judge of the antiquity, rarity,
and so forth of any book, printed or manuscript? Either the Curators
must decide these questions for themselves, or they must act on the
judgment of the Librarian. Knowing what it now knows, is the University
really prepared to say that the existing board shall decide such
questions; and, if not, is it ready to leave matters so complex and
difficult to the judgment of any one man, be he who he may?

Lastly, the Librarian is permitted to lend books neither rare nor
valuable, and it is left to him alone to decide whether a given book
is or is not rare or valuable. To those ignorant of books it will seem
easy enough to settle this question, though it is one to frighten a
man who does know something about them. Nothing is stranger than the
sudden way in which some books become at first scarce, and then totally
disappear. For nearly forty years I have been on the look-out for
two English books which I read as a child; one a book of voyages and
travels, the other a cheap edition of the Arabian Nights, and never
once in all that time have I had a chance of buying either: they seem
to have vanished. One would have said without hesitation that they
were not rare and certainly not valuable, yet they are absolutely
unprocurable. But this is a technical matter which will hardly
interest Congregation. It is more to the point to insist that the rules
for lending drawn up and approved by the Curators should be revised
and approved by Convocation, and that without its consent they shall
neither be altered nor abrogated. Even so it will be impossible to
prevent frightful mischief. If the thoroughly bad principle of lending
is affirmed, is it not clear that the Paris rule should be adopted?
That rule is that _only duplicates of books neither rare nor valuable_
(the exact words of the regulation are quoted in the ‘Remarks,’ p. 43)
_shall be lent_.

But it is to be hoped that the University will follow the excellent
example of the British Museum. The Oriental Congress have been
moving heaven and earth to get the Trustees to sanction the loan
of Oriental Manuscripts ‘under proper guarantees,’ and they have
brought considerable pressure to bear; but the Trustees, as well
as the responsible officers in the Museum, have given the Oriental
Congress its answer. The authorities in Great Russell Street know
their business, and they utterly decline to lend on any terms. Let us
be as wise as they are. If the present Statute is passed, no one can
be so foolish as to suppose that it will be long obeyed, or that it
will not be soon relaxed. The question really is between lending and
not lending. The lending, if sanctioned in any form, will at first be
limited, it will rapidly become unlimited. A rat-hole in a dyke lets
the water in at first in a dribble, then in a stream, finally away
goes the dyke and irreparable mischief is done. So will it be with
lending, only that the dyke which defends the Bodleian will be bored
in an indefinite number of places. Every borrower will act the part of
a rat. The borrowers’ list which this Statute legalizes for the first
time will soon embrace the name of every graduate in Oxford. It is
so convenient to have the exact book you want in your own room. Yes,
unquestionably most convenient; but what is the price you pay for this
convenience? A ruinous one; you destroy the Bodleian as a library of
reference. ‘Once or twice a year,’ says Mr. Warren (see _Academy_,
March 12, 1887), ‘graduates like myself go up to Oxford on a short
visit with pages of references to verify, anxious to see new or back
numbers of the _Revue Celtique_, Palæographical Society publications,
&c. It is both inconvenient and disappointing to be told, as I have
been told more than once, that such-and-such a book is out on loan,
and cannot be had. The inconvenience will become greater as the circle
of privileged borrowers becomes larger’; this is the language of a
student, and the language of common sense. The benefit of a reference
library cannot be exaggerated, and it must be clear to the meanest
capacity that lending and deposit cannot possibly be combined. It is
not difficult to damage or destroy the usefulness of the Bodleian, and
the Statute on which we are now to vote is the first step downwards.
To lend books out of such a library as ours is an act opposed to the
teachings of experience, nor can it be said that the course which
we are invited to take is one sanctioned by those who are eminent
authorities on such a question. The men who for years past have been
persistently trying to force this fatal policy upon the University may
be remarkable on more accounts than one; yet they are assuredly not
remarkable either for their acquaintance with books and libraries,
or for their knowledge of the Bodleian. To them it is merely a large
library, not essentially different from the London Library or from
Mudie’s, and they propose to treat it accordingly. No mistake can be
greater. The Bodleian is no ordinary library; it is one of the wonders
of the world, and are we going to be such Vandals as to sanction a
practice which can only end in its destruction?


                       BAXTER, PRINTER, OXFORD.




 Transcriber’s Notes:

 --Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

 --Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.