BRITISH COURIER

Lord Rosebery, who last October formally opened the new Mitchell Library in Glasgow made in the course of his speech some scathing remarks which greatly perturbed Librarians all over the country. The following extracts from the Manchester Guardian will give a correct idea of the utterances of the noble Lord Rosebery. He first spoke of the barrenness of the theme of libraries: Mr. Carnegie the other day told him, if he did not mistake the figures, that he had founded 2,200 libraries. Well, that was an enormous work of beneficence, but he was not troubled with the beneficence at this moment; he was troubled with another aspect of the question. Every one of these 2,200 libraries had been opened with oratory. They might take it that at any one of them ten speakers had uttered their thoughts. That was 22,000 speeches. Every one of these speeches he calculated on an average contained ten platitudes on the subject of public libraries.—(Laughter.) Thus 220,000 platitudes had been uttered in connection with the foundation of the Carnegie libraries alone.

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If he was to depart in any way from the customary phrases which usually accompanied these functions, he felt rather disposed not entirely to bless them—not perhaps absolutely to curse them, but by no means to utter an unqualified benediction on libraries. He should like rather to play the part of Balaam for a moment, and he must honestly confess that entering this enormous collection of volumes-180,000 of them-in the Mitchell Library he believed that he was filled with a hideous depression. He knew he ought to feel elated, but he did not; he felt an intense depression. This enormous mass of books, this cemetery of books --because after all, most of them were dead-how many living books were there in the Mitchell Library? How many inevitable books, time-proof books, weather-proof books? When Mr. Barrett (the librarian) told him there were 180,000 books in the Mitchell Library he asked him if there were not 100,000 which nobody ever asked for. Diplomatically he had declined to reply-(laughter),-but if it were true that the percentage of living books was exceedingly small-and he was afraid that they must all agree it was exceedingly small-what a huge cemetery of dead books or books half alive was represented by a great library like this. Of course some of them were absolutely dead-books that no human being out of a madhouse would ever ask for. Some of them were semiliving books. Some stray reveller or wanderer student might ask for them at some heedless or too curious moment.

Think of the enormous fund of knowledge which no individual now living or to be born would ever be able to overtake. In the Middle Ages the whole library of the world could be contained in a cupboard. The largest library did not exceed 400 volumes. These were the monastic libraries. When their libraries consisted of 400 volumes they had a very good chance or grasping the whole available knowledge of the world. Now there was no such chance. He confessed he felt it a depressing thought to enter one of these huge storehouses of knowledge and to feel how hopeless it was in any degree or in any way to overtake the opportunities that they afforded.

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Lord Rosebery went on to say that he was glad to hear that the collection relating to Burns was probably the first in any library in the world, except in that unknown quantity the treasure of the American private libraries which was such a formidable obstacle to the book buyer of this country. Attached to the library relating to Burns there were many hundreds of books relating to Scottish poetry, there was also what was practically more important what was essential to a city like Glasgow.

The records of its topography, the first task of a librarian in a great community should be a great collection of every material relating to the community in which the library was situated. They had no national library in Scotland -he said it to their shame but they had two great libraries. The Advocate's library in Edinburgh was a magnificent collection of its kind but a library which unfortunately belonged to a small caste, a caste eminently generous in admission to the privileges of their library, but which as a caste could not claim that its library was a national possession.

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Lord Rosebery, as president of the Scottish History Society, took the chair at the annual meeting of the Society in Edinburgh on oct. 21st. He referred to the issue by the Society of << Lady Grisell Baillie's Household book ». He said it was emphatically a book that would appeal to the ladies, dealing as it did largely with household matters, and giving them guidance as to the conduct of their establishments.

He thought Lady Grisell was one of the most interesting and picturesque figures of their later history. She was a daughter of Sir Patrick Hume, who afterwards became Lord Marchmont, a leading statesman of his day, and when he was in concealment under persecution either of Charles II, or James II, he forgot which, she, as a girl, managed at supper to secrete her meals in an astonishing manner so as to be able to convey them to her father in his confinement.

Lord Rosebery in the course of his speech said some remarks I have made about dead and superannuated books, which caused a considerable amount of perturbation, and which, I think, have been taken a little too seriously. I do not want anybody to destroy any books that they do not want to destroy, and I do not want anybody, to keep any books that they do not want to keep. I want a sort of freedom; but when I observe the voracious propensities of librarians—who, after all, are collectors, and there are no limits to what a collector may do,—and when I think of the ratepayers and of the space which libraries, without discrimination, must inevitably occupy in the future, I am litlle dismayed at the idea that they consider any book good enough to find a place for.

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Mr. Edmund Gosse had a letter in the « Times » supporting Lord Rosebery's views regarding the over stocking of public libraries. He says the mixed and doubtful blessing of the Carnegie libraries scattered all over the country has made the superfluity of printed matter an absolute nightmare. << We have to grope for the needle of literature in an ever-increasing haystack of rubbish. No one who really loves books and is accustomed to them will seriously pretend that the Mitchell Library is to be envied for possessing four hundred thousand volumes. There must be more than three hundred thousand volumes in the Mitchell Library which add nothing, and can never to the end of time add anything, to human interest, pleasure, or instruction. Surely we worship a fetish of the silliest superstition when we persist in preserv ing them all ». The writer adds: « We must start a tendency towards concentration and selection, or else librarians will go mad, and the public, face to face with these gigantic masses of rubbish, will give up reading altogether ».

The « Times », in a leader on the subject, says: «What we need is a central committee of experts who will draw up lists of books and of editions for the use of librarians of all public libraries, large or small. All books would be omitted which seemed to the compilers to be valueless. Without such lists it will be dangerous to begin the destruction of worthless books.

THE OWEN MSS. Extracts from a paper read by Mr. Ernest Axon before « the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society ».

The Owen MSS., purchased by the Manchester Free Libraries Committee, are the work of Mr. John Owen.

They consist of eighty volumes, all except one being either in folio or quarto. In these volumes Mr. Owen has drawn or written in a particularly neat hand material for local history which may be roughly grouped under five heads :

1) Monumental inscriptions.

2) Parish registers.

3) Genealogical memoranda.

4) Architecture and archæology.

5) Miscellaneous historical notes.

The arrangement of the various items is exactly what we might expect in a work which has been in progress for fifty or sixty years.

The most important of the sections into which the collections fall is that of monumental inscriptions.

The second section, parish registers, is almost as important.

The third section, genealogical memoranda, is very varied in its nature.

In the section of architecture and archæology there is much interesting and valuable matter. Old houses are also described. A word must be said of the illustrations. Mr. Owen is a careful draughtsman, and his deft pencil has preserved the outward form and semblance of many a quaint house, ancient cross, sculptured gravestone, and interesting architectural detail. These sketches add materially to the value of the Owen MSS. The historical notes are also very numerous and of varied nature.

The material illustrating the history of Manchester is naturally most extensive. First and foremost is the collection of the monumental inscriptions both inside and outside the old Collegiate Church. They occupy several volumes, and very many of the inscriptions, there are about two thousand in all, are beautifully drawn in reduced facsimile. Mr. Owen has added to the value of these transcripts of the cathedral inscriptions by annotating them with extracts from the registers and other sources.

It is certain that so complete a collection of the Collegiate Church inscriptions could not be made now. Many of the inscriptions were only accessible during the restoration of the cathedral, and, of course, the whole of those in the yard are now covered up.

The bulk of the Owen MSS. refers to South East Lancashire and East Cheshire, but they are not exclusively of local interest. Mr. Owen was in the Isle of Man on several occasions, and the diary of his observations, contains descriptions of churches, drawings and antiquities and copies of descriptions. Shropshire, North Wales and Yorkshire were also visited, many churches described, and selected inscriptions copied. Among the Owen MSS. are two volumes, one containing some correspondence with Timothy Talvey an anti-corn law lecturer; the other being an original MS. of the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century, containing the receipts and expenditure of Richard Syddal as administrator of the estate of John Browne of Bramhall.

The Times of Nov. 24, had the following important notice on THE HUTH SALE. Messrs. Sotheby, Wilkinson, and Hodge finished on Nov. 23rd the sale of the first portion of the Huth library. It brought in £3,607 os. 6d., which makes the gross total of the 1,186 lots £50,821 Is. 6d. This amount does not include the price-which obviously must run into several thousand pounds-paid for the Shakespeare collection, which was to have been sold to-day, but which has been sold privately to America.

Both with regard to the total as well as the average per lot-e.g., nearly £50 eachthe sale will rank as one of the most important ever held in England. The prices have been well maintained throughout the sale, and nearly all the more important books have been secured by English booksellers, Mr. Quaritch's purchases alone amounting to £37,578, or just

three-quarters of the whole total. One of the most interesting of the American MSS. in the first day's sale, the 16th century « Histoire Naturelle des Indes », with 200 drawings in water colours of the natural history, &c., of South America, was not bought for an American collector, but has already found a place in the collection of an Englishman. The second portion of the Huth library will probably be sold by Messrs. Sotheby some time next summer. The interest yesterday centred largely around Burns and Byron. A fine and clean copy, for which Mr. Huth paid £36 in 1875, of the first edition of Burns's « Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect », published at Kilmarnock, 1786, sold for £730 (Hopkins). This would seem to be a record » auction price, although the Trustees of the Burns Cottage paid in 1903 £1,000 for Mr. G. S. Veitch's faultless copy (which had cost the owner £10). It will be interesting to recall that John Wilson, the original publisher, issued an impression of 612 copies at 3. each, the author's profits on the venture amounting to £20 and the publisher's to £30. BURNS'S PATENT AS EXCISEMAN. But while copies of the first and second editions of the « Poems » are comparatively common, there is only one copy of the Original Patent, printed on vellum, appointing « Robert Burns, gentleman », to the office of Exciseman, dated July 14, 1788, a single sheet with calligraphic portrait of George III., signed J. Wharton, Georg Brown, and James Stodart. For this Mr. Huth paid 12 guineas in 1868, and it now fell at £500 to Mr. Quaritch, who informs us that it was not purchased « on commission », but for stock.

The sale included a remarkable collection of first and early editions of Lord Byron's works, bound uniformly in yellow calf, and forming lots 1,153 to 1,186. This collection was put up in one lot, and fell to Mr. Spencer at £890. Mr. Huth managed to obtain a few early editions of Bunyan, notably a copy of the fifth edition of « The Pilgrim's Progress », 1682-£36 (Letchford); this cost £14 in 1866; one of the sixth edition, 1681-£37 (Quaritch); and fine copy of « The Holy War », 1682—£39 (Leighton)—this cost 18 guineas in 1875. AMERICANA. There were several very rare Americana in yesterday's sale, and of two of these there is no record of previous copies being sold. Francis Bugg's « News from Pennsylvania », 1703, sold for £22 10. (Quaritch)—the author was a Quaker, but left that body under suspicion of betraying their meetings to the Government; he spent the remainder of his life in writing virulent pamphlets against Quakerism and William Penn. Gersham Bulkeley's « The People Right to Election », Philadelphia, 1689, sold for £150 (Quaritch)— this cost 20 guineas in 1868; W. Bullock's « Virginia Impartially Examined », 1649, brought in £21 (Edwards).

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Says the << City News » Burns lovers and book collectors in general will be more than ordinarily interested in the disposal of the copy of the Kilmarnock edition of Burns's poems, a feature of the Huth library sale. Mr. Quaritch paid £700 for the copy in the collection of the late Mr. William C. Van Antwerp, the New York stock-broker, in 1907. At Dowell's rooms, Edinburgh, 545 guineas was given by Mr. Sabin in 1898 for the well-known Lamb copy.

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BIBLES AT THE HUTH SALE. It was easy to guess from the number of squash hats and round collars that were to be seen in Messrs. Sotheby's what was the outstanding feature of the fourth day's sale of the Huth Library. For these clergymen had assembled, not indeed in the hope of buying, but of watching over the fate of a splendid copy of the Mazarine Bible and many other valuable editions of the Bible, and there was no doubt about the interest which they took in the sales. Looking somewhat incongruous as they sat or stood wedged among a crowd of the professional dealers, they now and again caused little exhibitions of impatience as they turned lingeringly over the pages of the books with the eye of the genuine bibliophile. « An episcopal salary », whispered one clergyman to his comrade as the Mazarine Bible was finally knocked down to Mr. Quaritch at £5,800. Nor was it only the rarest edition that called forth comments. When an edition by the celebrated Michael Servetus had gone for £35 I saw this same clergyman pointing earnestly to the notes in his catalogue which described how this edition had been suppressed by Calvin and thrown into the fire with Servetus. And the significant nod with which the information was received may perhaps be taken as an indication that Parson Thwackum's definition of religion has still its supporters. (Manchester Guardian).

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LORD KINNOULL'S LIBRARY. Messrs. Sotheby sold on nov. 7 books and manuscripts, the property of the Earl of Kinnoull, removed from Dupplin Castle, Perthshire. The chief interest of the sale consisted of volumes of pamphlets on America, the Civil War and Commonwealth, taxation and trade. The total of the day amounted to £1,390 8s.

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The most important lot was a well-written and well-decorated Scotch MS., « The Cronikillis of Scotland », compiled by Hector Boece and translated by John Ballantyne, on 312 leaves, 111⁄2 in. by 7 1/2 in., and evidently done for King James V.-£200 (Cleveland). The dedication copy to Queen Elizabeth of Barlaamus Monachus, « Logistica nunc primum Latine »>, Paris, 1594-£50 (Ellis); P. de Crescentiis, « Opus Ruralium Commodorum », Louvain, 1474, printed on vellum with 11 finely painted and illuminated initials (one cut out)—£84 (Quaritch); << The Horseman's Honour », 1620, very rare-£20 (Hatchard); and a set of the Bannatyne Club publications, 1823-55-£53 (Harding).

The American pamphlets included « The North American Atlas selected from the most authentic maps, charts », &c., folio, 1777-£40 (H. Stevens): and L. Hennepin, « A New Discovery of a Vast Country in America », 1698-£22 10s. (Martin). The Civil War pamphlets varied in price from £3 15s. to £13 5s. per lot.

Messrs. Puttick and Simpson of London sold on the same date modern etchings, among which were two after J. L. E. Meissonier by Jules Jacquet, « 1806 », 22 guineas, and « 1807 », 26 guineas, both vellum remarque proofs, and both purchased by Messrs. Tooth.

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ART AND CURIO SALES. Messrs. Christie, Manson, and Woods sold on nov. 30 the various small collections made by the late Judge Bacon, of Lancaster-gate-terrace, and Compton Beauchamp, Berks. The pictures and drawings sold on Monday realized £2,220 2s. 6d., the