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Slip backward to the world that lies behind I too, presumptuous! when thy countless

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From The Edinburgh Review. LIBRARIES, ANCIENT AND MODERN.*

of that history. It has been our wont in this Journal to review at intervals the IN the year 1471, when Louis XI. progress of our own national library. wished to borrow a book from the Med- Perhaps it will not be uninteresting to ical Faculty in Paris, he was required to our readers, if we prefix to our present deposit plate in pledge, and to get one of periodical survey of the progress within his nobles to join him in a guarantee for the last few years of the library of the the safe return of the book. In the Paris British Museum and its great rivals of 1873 there is not one among the price- abroad, a summary account of the libraless volumes that fill untold kilomètres of ries of other times, and of the nature and shelves in the Bibliothèque Nationale circumstances of book-collecting under that is not at the command of the hum- the very different conditions of litblest applicant of honourable reputation. erature which then prevailed. These And in our own national library, at its conditions, it is true, were so different as first reorganization, so easy were the con- almost to render comparison impossible; ditions of access, that, notwithstanding but the very contrast of the conditions the lavish provision of space in its noble will itself be interesting, and will at all reading-room, it became necessary, in the events be comforting to us in view of the interest of that higher class of readers advantages which we enjoy. Mr. Edwhose wants mainly a great library must wards supplies ample particulars for the aim at supplying, to exclude, by fixing a purpose; but we shall freely combine limit of age, the "rush of young men with the materials which he has brought from University and King's Colleges to together, information drawn from the the presses that contain the Latin Dic- various bibliographical publications, peritionaries and Greek Lexicons and Bohn's odical and otherwise, in every country of cribs." Both these extremes, no doubt, Europe, which have of late years elevatespecially the first, are exaggerated types ed the study of books almost to the conof the relative degree of accessibility of dition of a science. books in their respective periods; but, even when every due allowance has been made, the two periods are found to be separated from each other by a vast interval.

The intellectual history of that interval is in some degree represented by the History of Libraries, and Mr. Edwards has rendered an acceptable service to letters by bringing together in his "Memoirs of Libraries," and the two works, "Libraries and Founders of Libraries," and "Founders of the British Museum," which form its complement, the materials

The history of libraries is divided by Mr. Edwards into three periods, the ancient, the medieval, and the modern.

The history of the ancient period, like most other branches of early inquiry, has its region of legend; and in its historical period itself, it is difficult, even where precise statements of facts are found, to separate the true from the apocryphal. No ancient writer has treated the subject of libraries professedly. Of the detailed notices of libraries which we find in the ancient authors, very few are contempory, or regard libraries personally visited and known by the writers themselves. Thus Aulus Gellius, Seneca, Josephus, Eusebius, and others, tell us many seemingly precise particulars about the famous library of Alexandria; Plutarch is tolerably minute as to the collection of Attalus, King of Pergamus; and Strabo re4. Ein Gang durch die St. Petersburger k. öffentlates very circumstantially the fortunes

1. Memoirs of Libraries, including a Handbook of Library Economy. By EDWARD EDWARDS. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1858.

2. Catalogue de l'Histoire de France. 4to. I.-X. Paris: 1855-1870.

Vols.

3. Catalogue des Nouvelles Acquisitions de la Bibliothèque Impériale Publique. 1.-XII. 8vo. St.

Petersburg: 1863-71.

liche Bibliothek. Von. Dr. R. MINTZLAFF, Oberbibliothekar an der k. öffentliche Bibliothek. 8vo. St. Petersburg: 1870.

of the so-called library of Aristotle, from its first formation at Athens to its trans

5. La Biblioteca Vaticana, dalla sua Origine fino portation to Rome under Sylla. But it is

al Presente. Per DOMENICO ZANELLI. 8vo.

1857.

Roma:

worthy of note that, neither in these nor

It has been conjectured that the books of the early libraries of Egypt were chiefly sacred, such as Lepsius' "Book of the Dead" and Brugsch's "Sai-an-Sinsin; but no doubt can be entertained of the cosmopolitan character of the Ptolemæan Library at Alexandria ; and in its Roman period we may be sure that the Latin authors were not unrepresented. This is highly improbable, however, of the purely Greek libraries.

in any other ancient writers, however | Interspersed with these notices are many minute and circumstantial regarding for- curious details regarding the founders, eign collections, is there to be found a beginning with the perhaps legendary precise account, such as might be expect- Osymandyas, King of Egypt, fourteen ed from an observant scholar, of any one centuries before Christ. But the only of the numerous libraries, public and pri- questions as to ancient libraries which vate, which are known to have existed in are important for this inquiry are those Rome during their time, and to which which regard the character of the books, they themselves not unfrequently refer and the probable number of the volumes by name. Aulus Gellius, for instance, which they contained. speaks of meeting friends in the Tiberian Library,* of making researches in the library of Trajan,† and of finding a book, "after a long search," in the Library of Peace. But he does not say a word as to the number of volumes, as to the class or character of the books, as to the order of their arrangement, or as to the conditions on which they were made accessible to the public, whether in these or in any other contemporary Roman libraries. Suetonius records what each of the em- Roman librarians, on the contrary, conperors did in founding or enlarging the sidered a series of the Greek poets, phillibraries of his time, but he leaves us in osophers, and rhetoricians as indispensa ignorance as to the nature and extent of ble in their collections. The Palatine the collections themselves. Flavius Vo-library, according to Suetonius,* had two piscus actually gives the very press-mark distinct collections, Greek and Latin, with of a book to which he refers in the Ul- a distinct librarian for each ; † and Tibepian Library,§ but of the Ulpian Library rius ordered copies even of obscure itself he tells absolutely nothing. And it Greek poets to be placed in all the public is a curious fact that the only Roman li- libraries of Rome. The same is true of brary of whose contents any enumeration private collections at Rome. It is clear is preserved, is not a public but a private from what Cicero writes, both of himself that which Serenus Sammonicus, and of his brother Quintius, that, although preceptor of the younger Gordian, be- there was no regular market for Greek queathed to his imperial pupil, and which books at Rome, yet the Roman collectors is said to have contained 62,000 volumes. eagerly sought to acquire them for their Mr. Edwards has collected most of the libraries, partly by purchase, partly by details which have been preserved regard-giving Latin books in exchange.§ In the ing the libraries of remote antiquity-post-Augustan age, the relative proporthe libraries of ancient Egypt; the more modern library of the Ptolemies at Alexandria (B. C. 290); the library of the kings of Pergamus; the libraries of Pisistratus, of Aristotle, and of Apellicon at Athens; and the much more numerous libraries of Rome, both republican and imperial, which, in the time of Constantine, amounted to twenty-nine in number.

one

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tions of the two literatures were, perhaps, somewhat modified; but Greek still continued to be the fashionable literature.

A more curious inquiry, suggested by allusions to Christian writings in the Greek and Roman poets and humourists, would be, whether in the libraries of pagan Rome was to be found any representation of the uncouth and semi-barbarous

Suetonius, Octavius, 34, vol. i. p. 240.

† See Geraud, "Essai sur les Livres dans l'Antiquité." Paris, 1840.

Suetonius, Tiberius, 70, vol. i. p. 522. § Ep. lib. iii. p. 4.

literature of that despised sect, which was destined before long to displace the established religion of the empire, in the world of letters as well as of social influence. Our means of judging are too scanty to warrant a positive conclusion; but we are not aware of a single ancient authority from which it appears that even the Christian Scriptures themselves, not to speak of the Christian apologists or polemic writers, were admitted to the honour of a place in any of the libraries of Greece

or Rome.

serving of implicit belief the most positive allegations as to the extent of the libraries of our own day have proved, when tested by actual enumeration, could think of accepting as conclusive evidence that the Alexandrian Library contained 700,000 volumes, the unsupported assertion of a single foreigner, writing long after the period to which he refers. But in reference to the second ground of incredulity, so much misconception has prevailed, that we think it necessary to say a few words in explanation.

The question as to the number of books The learned reader need not be recontained in the ancient collections has minded how wide is the difference bebeen much discussed, but with results tween the ancient "volumen," or roll, very little more satisfactory. The state- and the "volume" of the modern Lookments as to the number of volumes in the trade, and how much smaller the amount Ptolemæan Library at Alexandria are of literary matter which the former may very various, ranging from 100,000, at represent. Any single "book" or "part" which it is rated by Eusebius, to 700,000, of a treatise would anciently have been at which it is fixed by Aulus Gellius.* called "volumen," and would reckon as Senecat gives the intermediate number, such in the enumeration of a collection 400,000. The library of Attalus, king of of books. The "Iliad " of Homer, which Pergamus, is said by Plutarch to have in a modern library may form but a sincontained 200,000 volumes. All these gle volume, would have counted as statements, however, are of a date long twenty-four "volumina" at Alexandria. posterior to the time which they regard. We read of authors leaving behind them Of the libraries of Greece and Rome, hard-works reckoned, not by volumes or tens ly anything in the way of contemporary of volumes, but by hundreds. The works enumeration is preserved. For the for- of Epicurus, as enumerated with their mer, indeed, there is absolutely nothing on titles by Diogenes Laertius,* amount to which to found a judgment. Of the lat-300 volumes. Varro-that "homo Touter there are but two-both private collec-ypapúraros "t-reckons his own works at tions — the number of which is recorded; no less a sum than 490 volumes; and the the first, that of Tyrannion - a contemporary of Cicero, and mentioned by him in one of his book-hunting letters to his brother Quintius - which, on the perhaps questionable authority of Suidas, is said to have consisted of 30,000 volumes; the other, that of Serenus Sammonicus, already referred to, of 62,000.

The first impression produced by these statements as to the large number of volumes in the ancient libraries, will be of incredulity, founded partly on the insufficiency of the evidence, partly on the notions which prevail regarding the comparative scarcity of books in ancient times. And unquestionably, as to the first objection, no one who considers how unde

• Noctes Atticæ, vi. p. 17.
↑ De Tranquillitate Animi, c. 9.

works of Chrysippus, Epicurus's wellknown rival, are said to have reached the incredible total of more than 700 volumes! It is curious - we dare not say significant that of the numerous works of these singularly prolific writers hardly anything has come down to our day, with the exception of Varro's treatise "De Re Rusticâ " and the Herculanean fragments of Epicurus; so that we are unable to speak from positive knowledge of the extent of their so-called "volumina." But their number itself suggests the inference that they must have been very short; and the actual specimens of "vo

Lib. x. c. 26.

† Cicero, Ep. ad Atticum, xiv. 18.

Septuaginta hebdomadas librorum, Aulus Gellius,. iii. p. 14.

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