INTRODUCTORY

It is curious to reflect that the library, in our customary sense, is quite a modern institution.  Three hundred years ago there were no public libraries in Europe.  The Ambrosian, at Milan, dates from 1608; the Bodleian, at Oxford, from 1612.  To these Angelo Rocca added his in Rome, in 1620.  But private collections of books always existed, and these were the haunts of learning, the little glimmering hearths over which knowledge spread her cold fingers, in the darkest ages of the world.  To-day, although national and private munificence has increased the number of public libraries so widely that almost every reader is within reach of books, the private library still flourishes.  There are men all through the civilised world to whom a book is a jewel—­an individual possession of great price.  I have been asked to gossip about my books, for I also am a bibliophile.  But when I think of the great collections of fine books, of the libraries of the magnificent, I do not know whether I dare admit any stranger to glance at mine.  The Mayor of Queenborough feels as though he were a very important personage till Royalty drives through his borough without noticing his scarf and his cocked hat; and then, for the first time, he observes how small the Queenborough town-hall is.  But if one is to gossip about books, it is, perhaps, as well that one should have some limits.  I will leave the masters of bibliography to sing of greater matters, and will launch upon no more daring voyage than one autour de ma pauvre bibliotheque.

I have heard that the late Mr. Edward Solly, a very pious and worshipful lover of books, under several examples of whose book-plate I have lately reverently placed my own, was so anxious to fly all outward noise that he built himself a library in his garden.  I have been told that the books stood there in perfect order, with the rose-spray flapping at the window, and great Japanese vases exhaling such odours as most annoy an insect-nostril.  The very bees would come to the window, and sniff, and boom indignantly away again.  The silence there was perfect.  It must have been in such a secluded library that Christian Mentzelius was at work when he heard the male book-worm flap his wings, and crow like a cock in calling to his mate.  I feel sure that even Mentzelius, a very courageous writer, would hardly pretend that he could hear such a “shadow of all sound” elsewhere.  That is the library I should like to have.  In my sleep, “where dreams are multitude,” I sometimes fancy that one day I shall have a library in a garden.  The phrase seems to contain the whole felicity of man—­“a library in a garden!” It sounds like having a castle in Spain, or a sheep-walk in Arcadia, and I suppose that merely to wish for it is to be what indignant journalists call “a faddling hedonist.”