FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38  
39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   >>   >|  
ered meed of admiration. You wander through their gardens, and pace their quadrangles with no sense of co-ownership; not for you are their clustered memories. In the Bodleian every lettered heart feels itself at home. Bodley drafted with his own hand the first statutes or rules to be observed in his library. Speaking generally, they are wise rules. One mistake, indeed, he made--a great mistake, but a natural one. Let him give his own reasons: 'I can see no good reason to alter my rule for excluding such books as Almanacks, Plays, and an infinite number that are daily printed of very unworthy matters--handling such books as one thinks both the Keeper and Under-Keeper should disdain to seek out, to deliver to any man. Haply some plays may be worthy the keeping--but hardly one in forty.... This is my opinion, wherein if I err I shall err with infinite others; and the more I think upon it, the more it doth distaste me that such kinds of books should be vouchsafed room in so noble a library.'[A] [Footnote A: See correspondence in _Reliquiae Bodleianae_, London, 1703.] 'Baggage-books' was the contemptuous expression elsewhere employed to describe this 'light infantry' of literature--_Belles Lettres_, as it is now more politely designated. One play in forty is liberal measure, but who is to say out of the forty plays which is the one worthy to be housed in a noble library? The taste of Vice-Chancellors and Heads of Houses, of keepers and under-keepers of libraries--can anybody trust it? The Bodleian is entitled by imperial statutes to receive copies of all books published within the realm, yet it appears, on the face of a Parliamentary return made in 1818, that this 'noble library' refused to find room for Ossian, the favourite poet of Goethe and Napoleon, and labelled Miss Edgeworth's _Parent's Assistant_ and Miss Hannah More's _Sacred Dramas_ 'Rubbish.' The sister University, home though she be of nearly every English poet worth reading, rejected the _Siege of Corinth_, though the work of a Trinity man; would not take in the _Thanksgiving Ode_ of Mr. Wordsworth, of St. John's College; declined Leigh Hunt's _Story of Rimini_; vetoed the _Headlong Hall_ of the inimitable Peacock, and, most wonderful of all, would have nothing to say to Scott's _Antiquary_, being probably disgusted to find that a book with so promising a title was only a novel. Now this is altered, and everything is co
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38  
39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

library

 

mistake

 

infinite

 

keepers

 
worthy
 

Keeper

 

Bodleian

 

statutes

 

favourite

 

Ossian


Parliamentary
 

return

 
refused
 
Napoleon
 

Hannah

 

Assistant

 
Sacred
 

Dramas

 
Parent
 
admiration

Goethe

 

labelled

 

Edgeworth

 

wander

 
Houses
 
libraries
 

Chancellors

 

housed

 

quadrangles

 

published


appears

 
gardens
 

copies

 

entitled

 

imperial

 
receive
 

University

 

Peacock

 
wonderful
 

inimitable


Rimini

 

vetoed

 

Headlong

 
Antiquary
 

altered

 

promising

 

disgusted

 

reading

 

rejected

 

Corinth