That a volume so comprehensive in its scope and so multitudinous in its details should be wholly without errors and omissions is impossible; and we trust that any of our readers who detect such will discharge a part of the obligation they are under to Mr. Allibone by communicating them to him for the benefit of a second edition.
1. Trübner's Bibliographical Guide to American Literature. London: TRÜBNER & CO. 1859. pp. cxlix., 554. 8vo.
2. Index to the Catalogue of a Portion of the Public Library of the City of Boston. 1858. pp. 204.
Next to knowledge itself, perhaps the best thing is to know where to find it. To make an index that shall combine completeness, succinctness, and clearness,—how much intelligence this demands is proved by the number of failures. Mr. Trübner's volume contains, 1st, some valuable bibliographical prolegomena by the editor himself; 2d, an historical sketch of American literature, which is not very well done by Mr. Moran, and would have been admirably done by Mr. Duyckinck; 3d, a full and very interesting account of American libraries by Mr. Edwards; and 4th, a classed list of books written and published in the United States during the last forty years, arranged in thirty-one appropriate departments, with a supplementary thirty-second of Addenda. In some instances,—as in giving tables of the proceedings of learned societies,—the period embraced is nearly a century. A general alphabetical index completes the volume. The several heads are, Bibliography, Collections, Theology, Jurisprudence, Medicine and Surgery, Natural History (in five subdivisions), Chemistry and Pharmacy, Natural Philosophy, Mathematics and Astronomy, Philosophy, Education (in three subdivisions), Modern Languages, Philology, American Antiquities, Indians and Languages, History (in three subdivisions), Geography, Useful Arts, Military Science, Naval Science, Rural and Domestic Economy, Politics, Commerce, Belles Lettres, Fine Arts, Music, Freemasonry, Mormonism, Spiritualism, Guide Books, Maps and Atlases, Periodicals. This list is enough to show the great value of the "Guide" to students and collectors. The volume will serve to give both Americans and Europeans a juster notion of the range and tendency, as well as amount, of literary activity in the United States. As the work of a cultivated and intelligent foreigner, it has all the more claim to our acknowledgment, and also to our indulgence where we discover omissions or inaccuracies.
The second volume whose title stands at the head of our article would demand no special notice from us, were it not for the admirable manner in which it is executed and the judgment evinced in the selection of the books which it catalogues. The Boston Library may well be congratulated on having at its head a gentleman so experienced and competent as Professor Jewett. He has hitherto distinguished himself in a department of literature in which little notoriety is to be won, his labors in which, however, are appreciated by the few whose quiet suffrage outvalues the noisy applause of the moment. His little work on the "Construction of Library Catalogues" is a truly valuable contribution to letters, rendering, as it does, the work of classification more easy, and increasing the chances of our getting good general directories to the books already in our libraries, without which the number of volumes we gather is only an increase of incumbrance. It is a great detriment to sound and exhaustive scholarship, that the books for students to read should be left to chance; and we owe a great deal more than we are apt to acknowledge to men who, like Mr. Jewett, enable us to find out the books that will really help us. Dr. Johnson, to be sure, commends the habit of "browsing" in libraries; and this will do very well for those whose memory clinches, like the tentacula of zoöphytes, around every particle of nourishment that comes within its reach. But the habit tends rather to make ready talkers than thorough scholars; and he who is left to his chances in a collection of books grasps like a child in the "grab-bag" at a fair, and gets, in nine cases out of ten, precisely what he does not want.
We think that a great mistake is made in the multiplying of libraries in the same neighborhood, unless for some specialty, such as Natural History or the like. It is sad to think of the money thus wasted in duplicates and triplicates. Rivalry in such cases is detrimental rather than advantageous to the interests of scholarship. Instead of one good library, we get three poor ones; and so, instead of twenty men of real learning, we are vexed with a score of sciolists, who are so through no fault of their own. We hope that the movement now on foot, to give something like adequacy to the University Library at Cambridge, will receive the aid it deserves, not only from graduates of the College, but from all persons interested in the literary advancement of the country. So there be one really good library in the United States, it matters little where it is, for students will find it,—and they should at least be spared the necessity of going abroad in order to master any branch of learning.
A great library is of incalculable benefit to any community. It saves infinite waste of time to the thinker by enabling him to know what has already been thought. It is of greater advantage (and that advantage is of a higher kind) than any seminary of learning, for it supplies the climate and atmosphere, without which good seed is sown in vain. It is not merely that books are the "precious life-blood of master-spirits," and to be prized for what they contain, but they are still more useful for what they prevent. The more a man knows, the less will he be apt to think he knows, the less rash will he be in conclusion, and the less hasty in utterance. It is of great consequence to the minds of most men how they begin to think, and many an intellect has been lamed irretrievably for steady and lofty flight by toppling out into the helpless void of opinion with wings yet callow. The gross and carnal hallucinations of what is called "Spiritualism"—the weakest-kneed of all whimsies that have come upon the parish from the days of the augurs down to our own—would be disenchanted at once in a neighborhood familiar with Del Rio, Wierus, Bodin, Scot, Glanvil, Webster, Casaubon, and the Mathers. Good books are the enemies of delusion, the most effectual extinguishers of self-conceit. Impersonal, dispassionate, self-possessed, they reason without temper, and remain forever of the same mind without obstinacy. The man who has the freedom of a great library lengthens his own life without the weariness of living; he may include all past generations in his experience without risk of senility; not yet fifty, he may have made himself the contemporary of "the world's gray fathers"; and with no advantages of birth or person, he may have been admitted to the selectest society of all times and lands.
We live in the hope of seeing, if not a great library somewhere on this continent, at least the foundations of such a one, laid broad enough and deep enough to change hope into a not too remote certainty. Hitherto America has erected but one statue in commemoration of a scholar, and we cannot help wishing that the money that has been wasted in setting up in effigy one or two departed celebrities we could mention had been appropriated to a means of culture which, perhaps more than any other, would be likely to give us men worthy of bronze or marble, but above the necessity of them for memory.
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