Further remarks on the policy of lending Bodleian printed books and manuscripts

by Henry W. Chandler

Here too is a very significant fact, which ought to speak trumpet-tongued to the Bodleian Curators. In 1827 Mr. Kerrich, the Public Librarian at Cambridge, possessed an Arabic Manuscript (a history of the Berbers), which was in the strictest sense of the word unique. In one sense all manuscripts are unique, for no two are or can be exactly alike, but Mr. Kerrich’s book was the only known copy of the work in existence anywhere. He was strongly urged to give or sell it to the University Library over which he presided, but he utterly declined to do either the one or the other, because the Cambridge Library is a lending library. Few men, he said, know the value of manuscripts; and he declared that there were only two libraries in England where his book would be open to the use of scholars and at the same time safe, the British Museum and the Bodleian. This manuscript now reposes on our shelves, and we got it simply and solely because in 1827 (and for many years after) we still possessed common sense. Kerrich would never have let us have this unique volume, had he supposed it possible that we should ever have been so forgetful of our duty as to lend Bodleian books. We might learn something from the Persians, who, as I was informed the other day, on what seemed to be very good authority, have a saying which runs thus:—‘The man who lends a book is a fool, but that man is a greater fool who returns a book that has been lent to him’—a fearful mixture of true with false doctrine.

Now for the letters, and as Dr. Rost is a librarian he shall have precedence. His epistle will be found in the Academy (March 5, 1887), and it is a real contribution to the facts of the case. It is reducible to two statements:—

1. During nearly eighteen years there have been from the India Office ‘thousands of loans’ and ‘there has not been a single loss to record.’ In February, 1887, there were ‘337 Oriental MSS. out on loan, 47 of which are in the hands of scholars in India.’

2. ‘Numerous editions of texts and other works based on our collections of MSS. would either have been impossible, or at least not possible, to their actual extent except for the existing arrangement.’

Here we have lending on a truly gigantic and imperial scale, ‘thousands of loans’ and ‘not a single loss’: nothing is said, however, about damage and deterioration, which must have been considerable. Still ‘thousands of loans’ and ‘not a single loss’ is a mighty strong fact, so strong indeed that Dr. Rost may be congratulated on a surprising run of luck. But his marvellous good fortune is no argument in favour of lending; it is rather an argument against it. A man has been known once in his life to throw double sixes four times running in a game of backgammon; no other player, however, who has seen this done need expect to do the like, for the chances against him, if we merely consider the single and simple chance, are more than a million and a half to one: (strictly 1,679,615 to 1.) Dr. Rost has lent MSS. thousands of times, and they have always come back safely, not perhaps quite as fresh and sound as they went out, still they have come back; let no other librarian expect that the fickle goddess will treat him with like favour. Consider for a moment the evidence produced above as to the experience of other lending libraries, and you will find it impossible to believe that the Bodleian can meet with luck so entirely exceptional as that which has befallen the India Office. It is so uncanny that, were I Secretary of State for India, I should certainly follow the example of Polycrates, and sacrifice something very valuable, only not a manuscript; the safest thing, however, would be to stop the hazardous practice of lending, and tempt Fate no more. The second part of Dr. Rost’s letter merely re-echoes an argument used by Mr. Sanday and Mr. Ellis.

Mr. Sanday’s letter is printed in the Oxford Magazine of February 23, 1887. He sees ‘two great, if not fatal, flaws’ in my argument against lending out books. They are: 1. that I ‘look only at one of the uses of a MS.,’ and 2. that I ‘immensely under-estimate the value of the work that has been done upon MSS. in recent years.’ I plead an emphatic not-guilty to both these charges. On what evidence do they rest? As to the first, the evidence offered is that ‘my idea of a MS. appears to be that it should exist beautifully, occasionally inspected by a connoisseur who strolls down to the library purely for his own amusement and with no further result worth speaking of.’ Then I am told that a great number of manuscripts are ‘valuable chiefly for their text,’ and that when ‘they have been collated and the collation thoroughly tested their work in the world is to a great extent done.’ Very good: now let us dismiss as extraneous to the present question manuscripts which are ‘works of art,’ and calligraphic or palæographical specimens or curiosities, and then let me ask whence my kindly opponent derives his information as to ‘my idea of a MS.’? I am curious to know, because he certainly cannot have got it out of my ‘Remarks’; he must have other sources of information, only, I can assure him, that he has been most woefully misled: in short, his notion of ‘my idea’ is wholly fictitious. That a great number of manuscripts are ‘valuable chiefly for their text’ is a proposition so self-evidently true, that it might have been thought difficult to find any one out of a lunatic asylum who ever doubted it. Will Mr. Sanday point out to me in anything I have ever written any passage which, by any interpretation however forced, could be made to say that the great proportion of manuscripts are valuable for much except their texts? In the greatest libraries—even in the Bodleian—the number of splendid manuscripts—of manuscripts valuable as works of art or as palæographic monuments—is comparatively small.

But let us suppose the fiction to be a fact; let it be assumed that ‘my idea of a MS. is that it should exist beautifully’; how would that be a flaw in the argument against lending Bodleian books? The argument—to put it in its baldest form—is, that Nothing that tends to damage a library ought to be done by those who really care for it; but lending tends to damage a library, ergo. Minor probatur: Whatever unnecessarily damages the books tends to damage a library; lending does so, ergo. Again, Whatever deters would-be benefactors from giving books tends to damage a library; lending does so; ergo, and so on and so on. The ‘Remarks’ can be run out into mood and figure with no trouble at all. How is this argument or any part of it vitiated, if I were to say (what I never have said), that ‘a MS. should exist beautifully’? Let us clench the absurdity: suppose I had been fool enough to say that no book should ever be looked at in the library for more than an hour a day; even that would not vitiate the argument against lending books out of it. Have we forgotten in this once famous University what a contradictory proposition is? Have we as completely lost the art of clear disputation as we have forgotten the use of the rapier? There are times when I think so.

Come we now to the second flaw: I ‘immensely under-estimate the value of the work that has been done upon MSS. in recent years’. Suppose for a moment that I do, how does that constitute a flaw in my argument? It beats me altogether: I cannot see it. Do not lend your books, says the argument, for five or six different reasons; and I ask again with positive wonder in what way any of these reasons are contradicted, even if I do under-estimate the work that has been done on MSS.? What has the one thing to do with the other? I could understand it if it were impossible to examine a MS. in the library; but that cannot be Mr. Sanday’s meaning. Or does he mean this? If you do not let your MSS. go out of the Library, and occasionally out of the country, they will not be examined or collated at all? I hope that this is not his meaning; for badly as I think of the state of learning here, I have never thought so badly of it as this supposition would imply. If after thirty years of constant ‘reform’ we are sunk so low that we neither can, nor will, use the treasures of the Bodleian Library ourselves, why in that case I say let us give the whole of it away to some country where scholars are yet to be found. A library in which no man works—a library such as the Bodleian is in the hands of men too ignorant or too idle to use it—is dreadful to think of. I, however, hoped better of the place, and I argued that we should not send our books out of the library, because—as one reason amongst others—it would then be impossible for us to use those books in the library. I wished to think of this University as still living, and of its members as still lovers of learning for its own sake, though I admit that this last effort cost me almost all the faith I possess.

But I trust that I have completely misunderstood the way in which my good-tempered critic would connect my under-estimate of the work done on MSS. with the argument against lending. All this, be it observed, is on the supposition that I actually have under-estimated that work; this I do not admit to be the fact, but whether I have or have not it in no way affects the argument against lending.

Mr. Sanday’s next point is, that if we do not lend our books to foreigners, foreigners will not lend their books to us, which will greatly inconvenience English scholars; and, lastly, that it is a great inconvenience not to be permitted to have Bodleian printed books in our rooms. ‘The purpose,’ he says, ‘with which one borrows books is mainly to complete a collection: one has, perhaps, ten or twelve of the books one wants, but just some two or three are needed which no other library but the Bodleian can supply’. What does all this amount to? Why, that it is a great convenience to have books and MSS. out of the Bodleian. Quis negavit? Everybody admits it; but the point—and it is really astonishing how few people there seem to be now-a-days who can see the point of any thing—the point is this: which on the whole is the greater convenience to the greatest number of serious students, letting books go out of the library or keeping them in it? Never to lend entails inconveniences; lending also entails inconveniences; on which side does the balance of inconvenience lie? People feel, as Mr. Sanday confesses that he feels, how convenient it is ‘to complete a collection’; they never for one moment consider that their convenience is another man’s inconvenience. Provided they can get what they want, they really seem to care not one farthing for anybody else in the universe. It is almost needless to add that this remark does not apply to Mr. Sanday.