THE LOAN OF RARE BOOKS.
[To Tice EDITOR cm yarn ../31WOTATOn....1
SIR,—The question of lending books from the Bodleian is hardly so simple as you represent it. First, it is an overstatement to say that " when once a book or a manuscript has been lent, it shares for the time the risks—and necessarily the far greater -risks—of an ordinary private library." Most of the public libraries do not lend their books to the student, but deposit them at a public library for his use. This is, I believe, the present role of the Boclleiau. Thus the only extra risk incurred is that of the journey.
As to the use of the books, you draw a touching picture of the student waiting till the manuscript he wishes to consult • returns from a series of foreign visits, and ask,—" To how many will the manuscript be of use in the course of the year P" Well, if there are manuscripts of such general and frequent interest they clearly should not be lent. But what of those that have been lying for years (perhaps centuries) undisturbed, but for which an editor has at last offered himself, if only the text may be within his reach P Such is the case, for example, with the books used by the editors of the Wyclif Society. All our editors are busy men, who give their leisure because they wish Wyclif's writings to be printed. They cannot go to Oxford, to Prague, to Vienna, or to Dublin for weeks together, and scarcely one of the works we have published, or have in hand, could have been undertaken but for the custom by which one library allows its treasures to be used in another. This custom obtains every- where abroad, and the Imperial Library at Vienna has allowed its manuscripts to be used at Dresden and elsewhere.
These Wyclif manuscripts, like many others, are quite useless until published, for the most skilful palmographer could not master their contents in manuscript. Yet you advocate that nothing should be done with them until a scholar can be found who to the other needful qualifications, adds that of being able to live in the city where they happen to be. Evidently the ideal use of rare books and manuscripts is that, like Silvandus Schafna- burgensis, they should " dry-rot at ease till the Judgment-Day."
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