On Feb. 2, 1884, Drake's Chair was lent to the Mayor of Plymouth.
On May 2, 1885, 'the Librarian presented applications from the Exhibition of Inventions now being held for the loan of certain MSS.; certain early printed books; certain works on music. It was agreed that the Librarian be empowered to lend out of the above as required, as he may think well, to the Exhibition.'
At this last meeting I was present, and the following is a verbatim copy of my note written the same day:—
'An Exhibition of Inventions (I have not got the name correctly) applied for the loan of certain MSS. and books from Bodleian: 5 MSS. Liturgies: 3 Bodley MSS. 515, 775, 842: Gough, Missal 336: an Ashmole book, and 2 English.—I objected, but the loan was carried, except as to 775 Bodley.' I have lately been informed that one of the books sent up to be stared at by the mob of sightseers was a Selden book: this I neither knew nor could have known at the time, or it should have been stopped, if protesting could have stopped it.
In every one of these cases the Curators, with the most perfect innocence, took upon themselves to do what they had not a shadow of right to do. If the University is content to have its property so dealt with that in case of damage or loss its only remedy would be to mulct the Curators, there is nothing more to be said; but it is just as well that the University should know what has been done in the past, and what would have been done in the future, had not a protest been made against the practice; and even now, though the board as a board has seemingly condemned its former doings, it still contains a stubborn and impenitent minority. If the University wishes its statutes to be obeyed, it should ordain substantial pecuniary fines for breaches of them; if it does not care whether they are obeyed or not, it is a pity that it wastes its time in enacting them.
And now as to the policy of lending the printed books and manuscripts of the Bodleian. The question is not whether it is a good or a bad thing to lend books, nor whether it is a good thing for this or that library to do so; it is simply whether it is right to lend Bodleian books. It may be argued that it is right to do so—
1. Because books are made to be used, and they will be very much more used if they are lent than if they are not; moreover it is generally more convenient to read in one's own room than it is in a public place. Some men cannot read, certainly cannot read and think in a library, or in the midst of company; I cannot myself, and all that I have ever been able to do in such places is to make extracts, verify references and the like; but to read a book as I should in my own room is to me, and probably to many people, impossible. If you go to a public institution you must go when it is open; you must sit still; you must not whistle or make a noise; you must not smoke; you cannot lie down and read on your back; you cannot throw the book aside, go for a walk, and resume your perusal; you cannot read quietly over the fire of an evening; you cannot read in the small hours of the night, and so on ad infinitum. Yet all this you can do if you are allowed to borrow the books. You can then treat them exactly as if they were your own. It is clear that this argument may be expanded in a multitude of ways, and no one is so destitute of imagination as not to be able to fill up the details to suit his own particular case and fancy.
The answer to it is very simple. You cannot by any device or contrivance combine the advantages of private and of public property. He who wishes to use the books of a public library must submit to many personal inconveniences; and the man who is unwilling to deny himself for the general good is the very last person in the community to whom any favour ought to be shown, and of all people he least deserves the favour of borrowing. He who has ever been foolish enough to lend his own books freely, learns by almost unvaried experience that hardly one man in twenty can be trusted: your book comes back (when it comes back at all) more damaged by a month's outing than the owner would occasion in fifty years. The book of a public library is even less regarded, as a rule, than that belonging to a friend; for the friend may have a sharp tongue, and a knack of using it, whereas a librarian is an official; even if he ever has time to look through the books when they are returned, his censure is disregarded, and after all accidents will happen, and the book might possibly have been equally damaged had it never left the library walls. It is really astonishing how few men there are in the present day who know how to use a book without doing it real and often serious damage. Over and over again have I seen men who would be very angry to be called boors deliberately break the back of a book. Over and over again, both in libraries and in private rooms, have I seen the headband broken, simply because people did not know how to take a book off a shelf. Again and again I have seen men of education (but grossly ignorant for all that of the ways of books) play such pranks with my own volumes as made me shudder. The horrid trick of turning a leaf by wetting a finger I have seen practised in this seat of learning over and over again by Graduates, by Professors, by Heads of Houses; and years ago I saw that same nasty trick played pro pudor! in the sacred precincts of the Bodleian itself on a manuscript, which will bear to its last moment the impression of the dirty thumb (and it was dirty) that perpetrated the uncleanly act. Often and often you see a man sitting close over the fire with a well-bound volume; a few such experiments will ruin the binding of any book; if it is his own, well and good, though even so the act is that of a barbarian: but suppose it a Bodleian book, what then? Why in that case the binding bills will be higher than ever, to say nothing about the ruin of the book itself. A man who knows how to handle a book will use a volume habitually for years and leave no trace of wear and tear behind him; but the average man, even though he may be a Master of Arts, is, not unfrequently, totally unfit to have the use of any books in good condition, even in a library, much less out of one.
The scholars and readers of former days seem to have been far more careful in their habits than men are now. Look at the books of the great collectors—Grolier, the Maioli, Selden, De Thou, the Colberts, and the like. These men read their books; and Grolier and Thomas Maioli certainly lent them: yet even after all these years, though time and neglect may have ruined the magnificent bindings—bindings such as few, if any, modern collectors ever indulge in—the books themselves are internally spotless. I have myself scores of volumes, many of them three or four hundred years old, clean and pure as the day they were issued from the press; they have most certainly been used and read, but used by men of clean hands and decent habits. In the present day books are so common and so cheap, and modern readers too frequently so unrefined, that they get into a vile habit of misusing them, and to such persons—that is, to the great majority—the books of a public library cannot be safely trusted except under the very strictest supervision. The slovenly practice of placing one open book on another, a practice sternly forbidden in many foreign libraries, may be seen in full swing both at the Camera and in the Bodleian; and no one seems to be aware how ruinous it is, or to have the least suspicion that he who knows how to handle books never treats them so. Treated in a cleanly and decent manner, there is not the least reason why a book printed on good paper should not last for twenty centuries or more; treated as they are too often treated here in Oxford, they will hardly last as many months.