self, in some occult or mysterious way, unknown to the common mind, of
all the knowledge which all the books combine.

The Librarian of the British Museum, speaking to a conference of
librarians in London, quoted a remark of Pattison, in his "Life of
Casaubon," that "the librarian who reads is lost." This was certainly
true of that great scholar Casaubon, who in his love for the contents of
the books under his charge, forgot his duties as a librarian. And it is
to a large degree true of librarians in general, that those who pursue
their own personal reading or study during library hours do it at the
expense of their usefulness as librarians. They must be content with such
snatches of reading as come in the definite pursuit of some object of
research incident to their library work, supplemented by such reading
time as unoccupied evenings, Sundays, and annual vacations may give them.

Yet nothing is more common than for applicants for the position of
librarians or assistant librarians to base their aspiration upon the
foolish plea that they are "so fond of reading", or that they "have
always been in love with books." So far from this being a qualification,
it may become a disqualification. Unless combined with habits of
practical, serious, unremitting application to labor, the taste for
reading may seduce its possessor into spending the minutes and the hours
which belong to the public, in his own private gratification. The
conscientious, the useful librarian, living amid the rich intellectual
treasures of centuries, the vast majority of which he has never read,
must be content daily to enact the part of Tantalus, in the presence of a
tempting and appetizing banquet which is virtually beyond his reach.

But he may console himself by the reflection that comparatively few of
the books upon his shelves are so far worth reading as to be essential.
"If I had read as many books as other men," said Hobbes of Malmesbury, "I
should have been as ignorant as they."

If the librarian, in the precious time which is indisputably his, reads a
wise selection of the best books, the masterpieces of the literature of
all lands, which have been consecrated by time and the suffrages of
successive generations of readers, he can well afford to apply to the
rest, the short-hand method recommended in a former chapter, and skim
them in the intervals of his daily work, instead of reading them. Thus he
will become sufficiently familiar with the new