time, when the army was northward,' the books were packed up in trunks, and sent into Surrey; and when the army was in the west, in apprehension of its return that way, they were hastily sent back again; but the poor collector, not daring to keep them, forwarded them to a friend in Essex, and soon, hearing of the famous march to Triploe Heath, again was feign to send for them back.' He then planned to transmit them to Scotland, but 'thinking what a precious treasure it was, durst not venture them ' at sea,' and so caused tables, with false tops, to be constructed, in which he concealed them in his warehouse, continuing his collection the while without intermission. But even now, these peregrinations were not ended; as a final precaution, they were sent to Oxford, and a colourable transfer of them to the University was effected, in the belief that so powerful a body would be better able to protect them than a private individual.* The collector lived till 1666, and is said to have refused £4000 for his books, which he had bound, in strict chronological series, in 2220 vols., containing probably 34,000 separate works. They remained at Oxford, in the charge of Dr. Barlow, Bodleian Librarian, and afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, and thus escaped the perils of the great fire. Barlow attempted in vain to induce the trustees of the Bodleian Library to purchase them. About 1680, they appear to have been bought by Henry Mearne, 'the king's stationer,' at the instance of Sir Joseph Williamson, and by command of his majesty,' according to Mearne's widow, who, in 1684, petitioned for leave to resell them. They seem, however, to have remained in the possession of Mearne's representatives until after the accession of George III., and to have been considered as a sort of domestic grievance and burthen, gladly got rid of on the receipt from the king of £300-less than a thirteenth part of the sum said to have been refused by the collector himself. George III. was, it seems, induced to purchase them for the purpose of presenting them to the British Museum, by the exertions of that lover of literature and of his country, Thomas Hollis, who obtained the acquiescence of Lord Bute,f and thus preserved them from the fate which Coleridge tells us attended in his day a similar though smaller collection, that plied the chandlers' and druggists' shops of Penrith and Kendal for many years.‡ * Thomason, note prefixed to his MS. catalogue. † Memoirs of Thomas Hollis, p. 121. 6 sup The late Sir Wilfred Lawson's predecessor, from some pique or other, left a large unique [?] collection of pamphlets, published from the commencement of the Civil War to the Restoration, to his butler, and it supplied the chandlers' and druggists' shops of Penrith and Kendal for many years.-The Friend, vol. iii. p. 55, note, (third edition.) A celebrated writer-whose genius and other high qualities are disfigured by a perverse affectation of superciliousness, manifestly foreign to the natural bent of his mind-seems to think the benefit thus conferred upon literature a very doubtful one. In a recent work he has been elaborately jocose about the ' rubbish-mountains of the British Museum,' and the 'huge piles ' of mouldering wreck, wherein, at the rate perhaps of one penny'weight per ton, lie things memorable."* But, despite these sarcasms, we venture to assert that this collector's plan of preserving everything, from the surreptitiously printed notice, scarce as large as one's hand, to the goodly tomes of Caryl on Job, was really at that period, and for his purpose, the best of all possible plans. Had he attempted to value and select, however wisely and comprehensively, we should most certainly have lost much precious information. As it is, we have such a picture of the national mind, during a great crisis in its history, as, in all probability, exists nowhere else, and such as no industry and no expenditure could create now with any approach to completeness. The period whose history is thus illustrated, was the age of Milton, of Jeremy Taylor, of Ussher, of Fuller, of Baxter, of Owen, of Bunyan, of Roger Williams, of Eliot (the apostle of the Indians'), and of many more, the great and excellent of the earth. Here are their works in impressions, the proof-sheets of which passed under their own eyes. Here are the argumentative and convincing writings of the Nyes, Burroughes, Goodwins, Vanes, who laid a broad foundation for the ultimate recognition of liberty of conscience as the inherent right of all men, and courageously stood up to assert that principle in the uncongenial Assembly of Divines, and in the scarcely less uncongenial Parliament; thus bringing the lofty speculations of Milton and Taylor to bear upon the deliberations and struggles of the church and the state, and upon the affairs of daily life. Here are also the not uninstructive writings of their fierce and pertinacious opponents, from the ponderous Gangræna of shallow Edwards, with its attendant train of thirty-five or forty refutations, replies, and rejoinders, to that strange utterance from across the Atlantic,The bloudy tenent washed and made white in the bloud of the Lamb,'-which John Cotton sent to the rescue of his Presbyterian brethren in Britain. Theological and ecclesiastical controversy may be regarded as the staple of this collection, as it is indeed the key-note to the history of the period. And next to the works of this class may * Carlyle, Letters of Oliver Cromwell, with Elucidations, vol. i. p. 5, (first edit.) be ranked the extraordinary series of Mercuries, Diurnals, Intelligencers, Informers, Posts, Scouts, Doves, &c., the newspapers and newsletters of the period, full of curious information hitherto little used, and needing great care and discrimination in their use, but which will yet, in competent hands, help to rectify many current mistakes and prejudices. In the letters, despatches, and speeches of Cromwell, some of which have been exclusively preserved in the pamphlets of the period,* history has at once its faithful records, and its triumphal monuments. And even the ribald attacks upon the fame of that king of men,' by the hireling scribes of the Restoration, like the outrages inflicted by their fellows upon his disinterred body, have their lesson of profound instruction. Nor is poetry without its fitting representatives in this assemblage. Besides many of Milton's minor pieces in their original editions, we have the exquisite lyrics of Herrick, the thoughtful and devout poems of George Herbert, the graceful effusions of the accomplished and ill-fated cavalier, Lovelace, to say nothing of those of the courtly and versatile Waller, of the ingenious Mr. Cowley,' of the prolific satirist and scape-grace, Major George Wither,' or of that truer poet than either, though he wrote in prose, honest and loveable Izaak Walton. The very ballads contained in this collection, (about 270 in number,) however humble their poetical merit, are amongst the most curious of political songs, and are real illustrations of English history. 6 There also exists in the British Museum a vast collection of books and pamphlets, published (chiefly in Paris) during the first French Revolution; and, in some respects, scarcely less extraor dinary than that on the English Commonwealth. The French collection, brought together at three different periods, consists of about 4000 volumes and cartons, and contains at least 40,000 distinct works and tracts, (exclusive of duplicates.) The bulk of this collection was obtained, by purchase, of the Right Hon. J. W. Croker. A third great collection of pamphlets came to the Museum with the library of George III. Its contents are miscellaneous, and amount to about 19,000 distinct pieces. It includes an *Even Mr. Carlyle, with his scorn of the 'rubbish-mountains,' and their poor collector, has to make 100 references (direct or indirect) to them, in the course of 350 pages of his work. But he makes a large portion of these at second-hand, to 'Cromwelliana,' which is itself a compilation from them. A more thorough examination of the collection would have furnished him with at least seven of the Cromwell Letters, which were omitted in his first edition. extensive series of political and historical tracts, both English and foreign, chiefly published during the eighteenth century. Above 4000 pamphlets, including a great number on the natural sciences, formed part of the Banksian bequest in 1820. A very curious collection of lives, memoirs, funeral sermons, and other biographical tracts, about 3000 in number, were bequeathed by Sir William Musgrave. Garrick's rich collection of English plays, from which Charles Lamb compiled his Specimens of the English Dramatic Poets," was also added to the Museum Library after the death of his widow. 6 Besides these collections, each of which is preserved apart, there is a miscellaneous collection of pamphlets, obtained, partly under the copyright act, partly by purchase, and partly by donation, which amounts to above 30,000 articles. The aggregate number of pamphlets, presented or bequeathed, is at least 70,000, independently of those in the Grenville Library. Such repeated instances of an enlightened appreciation by individuals of the value of a great public library, and of a most liberal willingness to aid in the creation of one, would surely, it might be thought, have roused a spirit of zealous co-operation on the part of the government and legislature of the day. For it needed but little inquiry to show that, great and valuable as were these accessions, they were far indeed from constituting a national library worthy of the British people. But such did not prove to be the case, until a very recent period. The whole sum granted by parliament for the purchase of printed books from the year 1812, when the first grant was made, to the year 1836, when the committee of the commons, appointed in 1835, presented its report, (inclusive of the sums already mentioned for the acquisition of the Hargrave and Burney libraries, &c., and deducting monies obtained by the sale of duplicate books,) amounted to 28,3767., or 11357. a year. The committee above alluded to reported to the house that the British Museum deserved 'increased liberality on the part of 'parliament, both with respect to its establishment, and also, to a much greater extent, for the augmentation of the collections. in the different departments;' and they expressed their confident reliance on the readiness of the representatives of the 'people to make full and ample provision, for the improvement of an establishment which already enjoys a high reputation in the world of science, and is an object of daily increasing interest 'to the people of this country." *Report, &c. (1836) p. v. In the evidence which had been adduced before this committee, much was said respecting the great deficiencies in the library, especially by Sir Harris Nicolas, by Mr. Robert Brown, the eminent botanist, by Mr. A. Panizzi, then extra-assistantlibrarian, and now keeper of the printed books, by Professor R. Owen, and by Mr. E. Edwards. The two last-named witnesses laid before the committee various lists illustrative of the deficiencies in the Museum Library, which were printed in the Minutes of evidence: Professor Owen's list, under the title of Desiderata in the zoological department of the national Library,** (filling nearly eight folio pages;) and Mr. Edwards' six lists, under the title of Examples of deficiencies... in the library of the British Museum, from an examination of the ⚫ catalogues in Oct. 1835,'-viz., in history-Greek history, in 'particular - fine arts — architecture, in particular - German literature-French literature-miscellaneous works, published ' in London.'t 6 These investigations established the fact that the acquisition of contemporary works, both scientific and literary, published on the Continent, was almost totally neglected; that there existed a remarkable deficiency of artistic works, both British and foreign, and a very imperfect execution of that provision of the copyright law, which was intended to secure to the British Museum a copy of every work published within the British dominions. The poverty of the library of printed books was also shown by a statistical comparison of it with the chief Continental libraries. Lord Palmerston, having addressed a circular letter to the several British ambassadors and ministers abroad, requesting information as to public libraries and museums in the countries to which they were respectively accredited, obtained a series of valuable reports on that subject; and some additional information was obtained by means of a set of questions which Mr. Panizzi had privately circulated in most of the capital cities of Europe. From these various sources it appeared that the principal European libraries might then be ranked in the following order, as to the number of printed volumes in each : 1. PARIS, Bibliothèque du Roi * Second Report (1836), pp. 563-570. 650,000 volumes. 300,000 + Ibid. pp. 378-386. |