The Private Library Part 5

_Feb. 4, 1666-67._--'Mightily pleased with the play, we home by coach, and there a little to the office, and then to my chamber, and there finished my catalogue of my books with my own hand, and so to supper and to bed, and had a good night's rest, the last night's being troublesome, but now my heart light and full of resolution of standing close to my business.'

_Feb. 8, 1667-68._--'Thence away to the Strand, to my bookseller's, and there staid an hour, and bought the idle, rogueish book, _L'escholle des filles_, which I have bought in plain binding, avoiding the buying of it better bound, because I resolve, as soon as I have read it, to burn it, that it may not stand in the list of books, nor among them, to disgrace them if it should be found. Thence home, and busy late at the office, and then home to supper and to bed.'

[32] _Index Rhetoricus_, of Thomas Farnaby, was a book which went through several editions. The first was published at London, by R.

Allot, in 1633.

[33] The first edition of Butler's _Hudibras_ is dated 1663, and it probably had only been published a few days when Pepys bought it and sold it at a loss. He subsequently endeavoured to appreciate the work, but was not successful. The edition in the Pepysian Library is dated 1689.

[34] This was Speght's edition of 1602, which is still in the Pepysian Library. The book is bound in calf, with bra.s.s clasps and bosses. It is not lettered.

[35] These presses still exist, and, according to Pepys' wish, they are placed in the second court of Magdalene College, in a room which they exactly fit, and the books are arranged in the presses just as they were when presented to the college.

[36] _Tatler_, No. 158.

_Weeding Out._

It is necessary that a large country-house library should occasionally be weeded out and overhauled. The libraries which were formed in past generations cannot be expected to suit present-day requirements. In a great many country-house libraries there is little else than a great ma.s.s of turgid theology, but very often buried among these are really valuable books. Upon the death of the head of a family, the library should be carefully gone over in order that the new owner may get an idea of the books--a collection which he may be excused from knowing much of as he did not collect it. The books should then be re-arranged to suit the views of those who are most likely to use them, and certain rejected volumes should be disposed of and others put in their places.

How much this is necessary might be ill.u.s.trated by many anecdotes.

_The Catalogue._

I have said, under the heading 'Cla.s.sification,' that it is not advisable or necessary to attempt any rigid cla.s.sification upon the shelves. One good reason for this is that by so doing you are trying to do what can so much better be done by a catalogue. No one who uses books very much but sooner or later becomes grateful for the existence of an alphabet and an arrangement by A B C. Carlyle once said, 'A library is not worth anything without a catalogue; it is a Polyphemus without any eye in his head, and you must confront the difficulties, whatever they may be, of making proper catalogues.'

'The cla.s.sification of Pepys' library was to be found in the catalogues, and as Pepys increased in substance he employed experts to do this work for him.'[37]

No catalogue is of any use unless you can tell from it (1) All that the library possesses of the known books of a known author at one view, as well as (2) All that it possesses, by whomsoever written, on a known and definite subject.

The old catalogues were mostly very bad. Old methods have now given way to newer and better bibliographical systems, and, to take the case of a large country house, where books are scattered about in many rooms, a catalogue is most essential. The catalogue should, in most cases, be in MS., and not typewritten. Such an arrangement admits of additions being made more easily. The printed catalogue is adopted where the library is of special value, or if it has any particular cla.s.s of books predominating to make it of use as a bibliography of a special subject.

Lord Crawford's sectional catalogues of his library, already referred to, are the most valuable lists I know of for student purposes, but I believe very few people have ever seen them.

The catalogue of Lord Crawford's Proclamations, at Haigh Hall, is a marvel of industry and accuracy. Mr. Locker Lampson's Rowfant Library was catalogued, and the catalogue printed and sold, because it had special value as a collection of Elizabethan poetry. Mr. Edmund Gosse's Library catalogue was printed because it contained special collections of seventeenth-century literature. Whether the library be a student's library or a general library, a catalogue is essential. Gibbon had a catalogue of his books. I have seen so many amateur attempts at cataloguing private libraries that I am bound to say I do not think the plan of cataloguing one's own books in any way answers. Any catalogue may be better than no catalogue, but, if a catalogue is to be done, it is better by far to call in the a.s.sistance of some one whose work it is.

It frequently happens that a family inherits a large library, and the inheritors, not having formed the collection, naturally can know but little, if anything, of its contents. Now, in such a case, and in many other cases, the best plan is to have your books overhauled, sifted, certain volumes weeded out, if necessary, others rebound, and the whole remainder carefully catalogued and described, the cases being numbered and the shelves lettered.

Very often the owner of a library sets out to catalogue his or her own books, and makes the initial mistake of entering them one by one in a MS. volume already bound up. Such a plan must end in failure and disorder, because it is impossible by this means to get the t.i.tles strictly alphabetical. Others I have seen commence writing the t.i.tles from the backs of the books. Other difficulties which are encountered are with anonymous books, and with such authors as used pseudonyms, and, in some cases, many pseudonyms. Such was Henri Beyle, whose books bear various disguises, such as De Stendhal, Cotonet, Salviati, Viscontini, Birkbeck, Strombeck, Cesar Alexandre Bombet. The British Museum Library has ninety-one rules of cataloguing, forming, perhaps, the best cataloguing code in the world; but for private libraries such elaboration and detail is not necessary. The following are the main rules to be adopted in private libraries:--[38]

1. The catalogue should be arranged in one general alphabet, this being the most useful and the readiest form for reference. To render it, as nearly as possible, a correct representation of the contents of the library, each work has but one princ.i.p.al descriptive entry. The shelfmark is confined to this entry--duplicate shelfmark references, when the position of books is likely to be often altered, from the accession of additions to the library, &c., leading to frequent and unavoidable errors.

2. This entry is under the author's name when given on the t.i.tle-page, or otherwise known, as being the only arrangement which allows one general rule to be followed throughout the catalogue.

3. Anonymous works, whose authors' names are unknown, are placed under the subjects to which they relate.

4. Cross references are made:

from the subjects of biographies to the authors; from the princ.i.p.al anonymous and pseudonymous works to the writer's real names where known; from works included in, or noticed in the t.i.tle-pages of other publications, to those publications.

5. To obviate the imperfections necessarily attendant on an alphabetical arrangement, and for the greater facility of reference, short cla.s.sifications are introduced of the chief subjects on which the books in the library treat, referring to the names of the authors in the same general alphabet; thereby uniting the advantages of the alphabetical and cla.s.sified systems, and acting in some measure as a key to the prevailing character of the library.

6. All authors' names are followed by full stops: any articles placed under a writer's name, of which he is not the author, but which are anonymous answers to, or criticisms on, his works; anonymous memoirs placed under the subjects; or any entries whatever, in which the heading name prefixed is not that of the author, are distinguished by a line following the name.

7. The headings of the short cla.s.sifications are distinguished by being doubly underlined with red ink. The name to be referred to is singly underlined, but when the reference is to another heading, and not to an author, it is doubly underlined.

In preparing t.i.tles for the catalogue (whether it be intended to transcribe or print them), it should be an imperative instruction that they be written on slips of paper (or on cards) of uniform size. It is also useful to include in them a word or two which may serve to identify the origin of the books--whether by purchase, by copyright, or by gift--and to indicate the date of their respective acquisition.

FOOTNOTES:

[37] Wheatley, _Pepys and the World he Lived in_, p. 84.

[38] I believe these rules were originally drawn up by Mr. B. R.

Wheatley.

_Cla.s.sification of Books._

The cla.s.sification of books, according to any set system, or according to subjects upon the shelves of a library, is not easy, and for many reasons it is not worth attempting. Unless the library is a very large one, say, ten to twenty thousand volumes, with ample and adaptable shelving, it is not to be desired. The main difficulty in shelf cla.s.sification lies in the fact that books on similar and kindred subjects are issued in all sizes. There are books on Furniture, for instance, in folio, in quarto, and in octavo. When shelf cla.s.sification is imperative, the folios are all put together, the quartos together, and the octavos together. This is the nearest realisation of a shelf cla.s.sification, and by this method the folios may be far separated from the quartos, and the quartos from the octavos. Moreover, if appearance count for anything, as indeed it should in the most modest library, it will be impossible to carry out any plan of shelf cla.s.sification and preserve at the same time an appearance of method and fitness. In planning out how your books are to be placed, a great consideration is the placing of them, so that books likely to be frequently referred to shall be easy of access, and books less likely to be in request shall be housed higher up.[39] Reference books should, as far as possible, be placed together, and all easy of access. The main divisions into which a private library cla.s.ses itself are History and Biography, Fiction, Poetry and Drama, Theology, Travel, Art, Belles lettres; but there are so many considerations besides those of subject in any general cla.s.sification which should determine the position of a volume that I must emphasise what has already been said about actual personal convenience being first studied, and the library as arranged on the shelves should be the result of personal convenience and graceful effect. This is more particularly necessary when a library is in course of expansion. The subjects which will expand quickest, and the s.p.a.ce they will require, can never be accurately gauged, and frequent upheavals and readjustments will be necessary if any rigid plan is aimed at. I would suggest that a separate shelf--or, if necessary, a separate case--be reserved for unbound periodicals and for accessions, which are, as it were, _sub judice_. Often, too, a separate case is necessary for rare and handsome books, and a locked case for _facetiae_. It is worth while to observe that Pepys found that the best way to find his numerous books was to number them consecutively throughout the library.[40]

Numerous elaborate plans of book cla.s.sification have been put forward, princ.i.p.ally by Americans, but in no way are they adaptable to the requirements of private libraries, and I doubt very much the possibility of comprehending them in such a way as to apply them in an intelligible manner even to public libraries.

Mr. B. R. Wheatley, in an admirable paper upon Library arrangement,[41]

gives the following excellent practical advice:--

'If I had the planning of rooms for a private library, I should select as the best possible arrangement a suite of three rooms, or one long room or gallery divided by columns into three compartments, of which the centre should be the largest, with several small contiguous ante-rooms, the entrances to which, if so desired, might be concealed, for uniformity or completeness of appearance, by filling them with sham or dummy book-backs, the t.i.tles of which may be made an occasion for witticism or joking allusion to local and family history.

'A good library arrangement is not achieved at once, but is a slow growth through difficulties met and conquered. Some of the best portions of it will be those which have flashed across your mind when there seemed no pathway out of the thicket of difficulty in which you were struggling. The arrangement of books, where the shelves are not made to order to suit your plans, must naturally be of a progressive character in its development in your mind.

'In some old libraries, collected mostly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there is such a preponderance of those portly tomes in folio in which our st.u.r.dy ancestors delighted, that they materially affect and disconcert our ordinary plans. I have known an instance in which the library shelves projected slightly in their upper part, and, there thus being an appropriate depth, I arranged on these shelves two long parallel rows, completely round the room, of these n.o.ble volumes of our old divines, State papers, Statutes, Treaties, Trials, and our County histories; and the effect in strength and power (as Ruskin might have said) of these long lines of large stout books of nearly equal height and size was really magnificent. Sometimes you meet with such a valuable and ma.s.sive body of topography as will not allow of its cavalierly being made a subsidiary section of the cla.s.s of history, and the form and weighty character of the folios suggest that some deep and separate bookcases should be chosen in which it may a.s.sume the important individuality that it deserves.

'Folios of a modern date, being of very unequal sizes, would have a raggedness of outline which would be less observed nearer to the ground than in the elevated position just referred to. As a general rule, a row of folios on the lowest shelf will be succeeded by one of quartos, and then above the ledge the octavos and duodecimos will be placed, but they should not ascend in too rigid a law of gradual decrease. Rows of small books at the top of a bookcase look as petty to the mind as to the eyes, and, indeed, are in general more appropriately placed in dwarf bookcases specially fitted for their reception.