A generation later, in 1734, Johannes Gottfried Unger published a pamphlet entitled De libris bibliothecarum nomine notatis, a classified list of books entitled bibliotheca, and added critical and descriptive comments. Julius Petzholdt, who is often a severe judge, deals with it generously, when he says (p. 79) that it is worth a glance and can then be forgotten. Although he seems to be unaware of any predecessor, Unger's idea was not novel. His execution of the idea leaves much to be desired. Since his list contains few, if any, books that cannot be easily found elsewhere, his list has little value and his comments do not enrich it. His strict adherence to the task of collecting books entitled bibliotheca prevented him from seeing the possible greater usefulness of what he was doing.
After some general remarks on libraries and bibliographies and a definition of the task, Unger cites seven general works: Labbé's Bibliotheca bibliothecarum (he mentions here Teissier's Catalogus and Auctuarium, but he has not seen them); G. M. König, Bibliotheca vetus et nova; Latinus Latinius, Bibliotheca sacra et profana; Jean Leclerc, Bibliothèque universelle et historique (this is the Bibliothèque universelle and its continuation, the Bibliothèque historique); Conrad Gesner, Bibliotheca universalis; Johannes Groeningius, Bibliotheca s[ive] codex operum variorum; and Louis Ellies DuPin, Bibliothèque universelle des historiens. "And these are the books entitled Universal Library or: Bibliography." His comments contain some information but do not on the whole show much familiarity with the books. For example, the remarks on König's late seventeenth-century biobibliographical dictionary are lifted from D. G. Morhof, Polyhistor. He points out that the subtitle of Latinius's Bibliotheca gives a good idea of its contents: "Observationes, correctiones et variae lectiones in sacros et profanos scriptores, ex marginalibus notis codicum ejusdem [Latini Latinii] a Dominco Marco editae." In other words, the book is a miscellany of emendations and critical comments rather than a bibliography. He describes Leclerc's journals by a long quotation from the preface to the first volume. They are, he thinks, a better example of this genre of books than Latinius's collectanea. He dismisses Gesner's Bibliotheca universalis with the remark that it "also deserves mention (praeterea notatu digna est)" and a reference to Morhof, Polyhistor. He does not describe the book by Johannes Groeningius.[118]
Unger's account of forty-one theological bibliographies and collections of texts entitled bibliotheca is not altogether bad. He often quotes the titles of chapters from these books or says that a book is a collection of texts and not a bibliography. Much of this information was even then available in well-organized reference works, and Unger's only contribution is the selecting of the books entitled bibliotheca. His account of legal bibliographies begins with Martin Lipenius, Bibliotheca juridica, "which was published at Frankfurt in 1607 as a folio and was enlarged by F. G. Struve in 1720." This is not a good start, for the first date is wrong (it should be 1679) and he would have found five more legal bibliographies entitled bibliotheca by opening Lipenius. In this category he cites nine more titles, counting three works by Caspar Thurmann as one book. This combination is not particularly objectionable. Thurmann had made a classified legal bibliography and finding no publisher, had printed portions as small bibliographies. Unger then proceeds to historical, medical, and philosophical categories, but we need follow him no further. He finally resigns himself to naming titles in a confused order. His disappointing performance has the merit of naming books called bibliotheca, but it does not suggest, as Labbé and the anonymous author of Die neu-eröffnete Bibliothec had done, that they were primarily interesting as bibliographies.
The sixty folio pages (double columns) filled with entries beginning with the word bibliotheca in Michael a San José, Bibliographia critica (1740-1742) have the appearance of a list of books, but on closer examination many titles prove to be made up. In other words, San José offers what amounts to a general survey of bibliography. Since his book is almost unknown and the entries are often curious, a brief description will not be out of place. The articles are arranged alphabetically according to the adjective that follows the word bibliotheca. Thus, the list begins with J. F. Reimann, Bibliotheca acroamatica (Hannover, 1712), a condensation of Peter Lambeck's catalogue of manuscripts in the Imperial Library at Vienna. The next entry consists of two columns headed "Bibliotheca Adriani Baillet" and is a brief discussion of the Jugemens des savans (1685-1686) and a long summary of a prospectus of a philosophical dictionary that Baillet planned but never published. More entries follow in an alphabetical order according to proper names or adjectives derived from proper names or the subject matter. Laurentius de Cremona, Bibliotheca aethiopica is entered under "Aethiopica," and Albert Bartholin, Liber de scriptis Danorum under "Alberti." It is difficult to discover the plan of arrangement, and equally difficult to see the reasons for choosing the books. The presence of more than twenty entries entitled "Bibliotheca Biblica" is not surprising, but eleven botanical bibliographies and twelve pages summarizing the Linnean classification seem an unnecessarily generous allotment to that subject. A few pages later San José cites collective works—not bibliographies—that deal with Byzantine history and canon law, but he ordinarily limits himself to bibliographies and biobibliographies. He shows no sense of proportion in the choice of titles. Out of hundreds of regional biobibliographies he chooses one for Naumburg for mention. It can have meant very little to most readers of his book, and he might have omitted it. A "Bibliotheca occulta concionum P. Paulini a S. Joseph" (Rome, 1720) did not deserve three pages or a revision of Antonio León Pinelo, Epitome (an early bibliography of American subjects) five. San José is careless with names and titles. Martin Hancke, the writer of a Silesian biobibliography (p. 528), acquires an Oriental look, when he is called Han Kii. San José's strange medley may yield a curious bit of information now and again, but it need not detain us longer.
The last list of books entitled bibliotheca is the Dissertation sur les bibliothèques (1758) by J. D. Durey de Noinville (1683-1768).[119] He does not hold to the purpose announced in the heading "Alphabetical list of both works published under the title of bibliothèque and printed catalogues of collections in France and foreign countries."[120] He offers virtually a bibliography of bibliographies. His use of an asterisk to mark works containing an alphabetical index of authors shows some bibliographical sense, but the lack of a clear plan of selection and organization makes the book unusable. In a hodgepodge of seven hundred and fifty titles—I take the figure from Besterman—Durey de Noinville may list a book according to its author or its subject without any apparent reason for his choice of either method. His knowledge of available bibliographies is entirely inadequate. The accounts of reference books dealing with Belgium, church history and France are scanty,[121] the list of learned journals is almost worthless,[122] and the remarks about journals entitled Mercure exceed somewhat the scope of his enterprise.[123] In addition to these faults Durey de Noinville makes bad mistakes in details.[124] His virtually worthless compilation yields an occasional nugget, but such discoveries are rare.[125] His book is only interesting or important for showing how a bibliography of bibliographies might have grown out of a list of books entitled bibliotheca.
The efforts that we have surveyed in this chapter produced nothing of lasting value. The list written by the author of Die neu-eröffnete Bibliothec did not lead to either a bibliography of bibliographies or a guide to reference works. Durey de Noinville's disorderly book was not good enough to suggest making anything better. All these writers worked independently and made little or no use of their predecessors. We might see in this fact an omen of the course of bibliographies of bibliographies in the next century.