AMATEUR LIBRARIANS.
WE would suggest to the Professional Librarians of the world, who have now formed themselves into an Association, and hold "Conferences," and possess a journal of their own, that at their next meeting they might do a little to encourage the for- mation and maintenance of Private Libraries, those small but good collections of books of which there are comparatively so few in England. Private libraries, and especially private libraries of modest dimensions, containing from two to eight thousand volumes, cannot, of course, be compared in utility with public libraries of any kind, and especially with public libraries access to which is easy ; but they confer benefits of their own, nevertheless. Each family which possesses one tends to grow up cultivated, to take and to diffuse an interest in literature, and to add to the number of that useful class which publishers know to be so extremely limited, that of the buyers of serious books. These people are very meritorious in the eyes of authors, publishers, and booksellers ; they are the mainstay of serious literature, and they ought to have an interest even for librarians, though the latter may look upon their efforts with contempt. Amateurs are useful, if only because they diffuse the ideas of profes- sionals ; and there are amateur librarians, as well as amateur painters, musicians, and drivers of four-in-hand. The pro- fessional librarians should encourage them a little, and help them a little, and popularise their own knowledge a little, for their benefit, and this they have as yet scarcely begun to do. There is much information about libraries in the splendidly printed quarto of " Transactions " in which the proceedings of the London Con- ference of Librarians are reported, many valuable papers on the form- ation of libraries, at least one brilliant burst of rhetoric—a sort of hymn, sung by Mr. Harrison over the glorious First Editions which would have been in the British Museum, if the copy-tax had been enforced in England from the invention of printing—and some interesting statistics ; but there are very few hints by which amateur librarians can hope to profit. One grand temptation is indeed held out to them. They are informed that the professional librarians of the world confide to them one sacred trust,—that of conveying the torch of high art in the matter of Bookbinding from hand to hand through the ages. Otherwise it will go out. What with the prevalent views of utility, and the poverty of many libraries, and the stinginess of all Governments, and the public preference for the insides of books, as compared with their outsides, the Librarians despair of themselves doing very much for bookbinding as an Art, and devolve the duty avowedly upon wealthy amateurs. That, no doubt, is a real encouragement to the amateur. He has always had a sneaking kindness for pretty bindings. He has always wanted to waste more of his disposable money on the outsides of his books, and to limit his purchases to the number he could afford to rebind, and now he has a magnificent excuse for his graceful "fad." He is a preserver of an art which otherwise might perish. He may feel, if he likes, like a Prior of Monte Cassino, that he is protecting civilisation, for the professional librarians have not only given up the work, but have gone in for asceticism, and preach all through this beautiful quarto the virtues of buckram, that sackcloth of the binders' art. Buckram, they say, and almost sing, is the true binding for books in a great library. Buckram, a sort of canvas of linen, costs hardly anything, will take any colour, and does take six, never heats, never spoils under the fumes of gas, and will out-last any kind of leather, except, perhaps, good, sound morocco. Buckram is the binding for the sovereign people, and its sway in popular libraries ought to be universal. When the professional turns ascetic the amateur must be luxurious, and as he is inclined so to be, that is so far encouragement for him. He gets praise instead of blame for his pet vice, and moreover, may plead that he has eternal principle on his side. Squalid ugliness will never be a good, even if it is durable as well as nasty, and the amateur who will bind one shelf of books in buckram will at once perceive that in resisting the innovation he is performing a high duty to Art. There are one or two hints in the quarto for the Amateurs' benefit besides. It is nice for them to know that the binding they like best—good, dear, whole-coloured morocco—lasts longer than any other, except vellum, which, from its ghastly monotony of dirty ugliness, may be considered out of court. Gold is thrown away on vellum, or rather, only makes its ghoul-like pallor more conspicuous ; while stamps of elaborate design and labels of glorious colour would each only add to it a new horror, were that physically possible. Morocco, however, will last, and as all wives understand that a lasting article is cheap, morocco may be used without fear of a scolding for the bills. Then amateurs are told something, not specially for their benefit, but incidentally, which it is really important for them to know. Lofty shelves of books perish. It is not gas, as many people suppose, which is the librarians' foe, but heat, and as heat rises, the books on the top of tall shelves perish at a frightful rate. No book-shelves meant to keep books for ever should be above six feet high, but if that limitation is impossible, as it is in all private houses, then keep the books you care least about on the top shelves, and ventilate your libraries from above. Let the hot air out, if you want your " letterings " to last.
These three bits of counsel,—to bind well, because nobody but amateurs will do it ; to use morocco, whenever you can ; and to recollect that the heated air which destroys books hangs in a stratum, many feet thick, from the top of the room,—are the main facts we have collected, for the benefit of Amateurs, from the " Transactions " forwarded to us. Perhaps we may add one more, because it is so useful, and is so often forgotten,—when you bind, put as much information about your book as you can into the lettering on the back. The practice saves you and your friends endless trouble, and when your books are sold, as they always are, will increase their selling value, by making them more acceptable to other amateurs. That, however, is a minute detail, and we want the professional librarians of the world to give to amateurs, and especially to intending amateurs, much more definite help. In the first place, could they not publish three, or four, or more catalogues of modest English libraries as they ought to be, —catalogues which may enable half-ignorant men to lay the foundations of their libraries on something like system? They will smile, and ask if it is their business to find Mr. Brangh- ton in culture ; but they do not know how hopelessly ignorant moat men are of books, how little they know what they want, how absolutely their memories fail them when they try to fill up lacunas. Why should men who wish to fill a large room with books—furniture to them, perhaps, but cultivation to their sons —be reduced to rely on publishers, who, of course, recommend
the books they publish ; or booksellers, who are guided by the catalogues of their own stock ; or the questionable taste of the auctioneer, who recommends some country collection as "very choice "? Why not begin with some decent collection chosen by experienced librarians, and varied afterwards according to their own tastes? Why should there 'not be the "historian's Library," the " Litterateur's Library," the " Library of Science," and so on, catalogues of really good small libraries, drawn out carefully by librarians, for the assistance of amateurs ? The Associated Librarians very naturally wish their "Transactions" to be beautifully printed, and as the process is very expensive, and they cannot always rely on "the liberal enterprise of the Chis- wick Press," they want them to sell. Why not add such lists as we have suggested, which would, we can assure them, sell for years ? And then why not try a still more spirited experiment, and confer on every amateur librarian, and indeed every student in England, a direct and appreciable boon by publishing in the form of these "Transactions" with the same perfect paper, and greedy but legible type, an anticipatory Subject Index of English, or English, German, aud French books ? We do not mean that they should attempt to realise Mr. John Ashton Cross's magni- ficent idea, expounded at page 104, in a paper which might have taken away the breath even of the Mr. Watts who was said by his enemies to have known of the existence of every book in the world. That mighty project, the preparation of a Universal Index of Subjects, the record of all that human beings have ever written upon anything, must be left for the German Government when it has conquered the world, or for that scion of the Rothschilds, or the Asters, or the Vanderbilts who is one day to appear, and who to a fortune of twenty millions is to add burning philanthropy and acute bibliomania. He has not come yet, and till he comes, we fear Mr. Cross's magnificent specula- tion must remain a dream, even though he does tell us how much of the work has been done :—" There are indexes to all works by Italian travellers and by Italian mathematicians, to German Mathematics, German Poetry, and German Philosophy ; to English and to American Poetry ; to Spanish Philosophy and to Spanish Agriculture ; to Swiss History, to Alpine Literature, to English Topography, to Irish Periodical Literature, and to French, Belgian, and English Law Books. All the works on Russia, on Africa and Arabia, on Palestine, on the American Indians, on the American Pacific Coast, have been indexed. And great men like Dante, Shakspere, Moliere, Goethe, Schiller, Columbus, Montesquieu, and Spinoza have their own special bibliographies. Even one so recent as Abraham Lincoln has been thus honoured." But pending this cosmic book, which, when finished, will require a library, a librarian, half-a-dozen interpreters, and an endowment all to itself, could not the Librarians give us something very small, a quarto volume, say, of a thousand closely printed pages, a dictionary of subjects, with lists of the best books tasily accessible upon them ? it would sell, we believe, better than any Cycloptedia. They, with their re- sources all round them, have no conception of the difficulty ordinary men, whether amateur librarians or students, have in finding out what good books have been written, even on ordinary subjects, or in making a collection, not complete, but toler-
ably full, on any given topic. The present writer, for example, has tried, and tried in vain, to draw up a list of the Inspired Books, the books believed at various times to have come down from Heaven ready bound, a list which six or eight considerable librarians could in concert furnish in an hour. The work of such a catalogue, carefully distributed, say, over 250 libraries for three years, could not be uneudurably heavy, would be of the highest service to investigation, and would, we believe, if attempted, be helped with small grants of money by many of the Governments of the wdrld. Of course the very principle of the undertaking would be to exclude the idea of completeness, to give no book not readily accessible, and to omit as far as possible unimportant or technical subjects, such as the Law of Con- veyancing, the books on which are sure to be well known by many experts. It should be to Mr. Ashton Cross's grand project what Bellows is to Littre, a mere introduction to the mightier Index, something of which the British Museum would speak with contempt, the Bibliotheque National with levity, and all German savans with a sacred horror, but still a useful little work, say, of 1,000 quarto pages or so, and called by the humble name of "The Guide to the Amateur Librarian." It would sell, 0 Associated Librarians and Messrs. Cassell, it would sell!
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