On Books and The Housing of Them | Page 4

worthless part of them) in our resentment against their more and more
exacting demands? Shall we sell and scatter them? as it is painful to see
how often the books of eminent men are ruthlessly, or at least
unhappily, dispersed on their decease. Without answering in detail, I

shall assume that the book-buyer is a book-lover, that his love is a
tenacious, not a transitory love, and that for him the question is how
best to keep his books.
I pass over those conditions which are the most obvious, that the
building should be sound and dry, the apartment airy, and with
abundant light. And I dispose with a passing anathema of all such as
would endeavour to solve their problem, or at any rate compromise
their difficulties, by setting one row of books in front of another. I also
freely admit that what we have before us is not a choice between
difficulty and no difficulty, but a choice among difficulties.
The objects further to be contemplated in the bestowal of our books, so
far as I recollect, are three: economy, good arrangement, and
accessibility with the smallest possible expenditure of time.
In a private library, where the service of books is commonly to be
performed by the person desiring to use them, they ought to be assorted
and distributed according to subject. The case may be altogether
different where they have to be sent for and brought by an attendant. It
is an immense advantage to bring the eye in aid of the mind; to see
within a limited compass all the works that are accessible, in a given
library, on a given subject; and to have the power of dealing with them
collectively at a given spot, instead of hunting them up through an
entire accumulation. It must be admitted, however, that distribution by
subjects ought in some degree to be controlled by sizes. If everything
on a given subject, from folio down to 32mo, is to be brought locally
together, there will be an immense waste of space in the attempt to
lodge objects of such different sizes in one and the same bookcase. And
this waste of space will cripple us in the most serious manner, as will
be seen with regard to the conditions of economy and of accessibility.
The three conditions are in truth all connected together, but especially
the two last named.
Even in a paper such as this the question of classification cannot
altogether be overlooked; but it is one more easy to open than to close
-- one upon which I am not bold enough to hope for uniformity of
opinion and of practice. I set aside on the one hand the case of great

public libraries, which I leave to the experts of those establishments.
And, at the other end of the scale, in small private libraries the matter
becomes easy or even insignificant. In libraries of the medium scale,
not too vast for some amount of personal survey, some would multiply
subdivision, and some restrain it. An acute friend asks me under what
and how many general headings subjects should be classified in a
library intended for practical use and reading, and boldly answers by
suggesting five classes only: (1) science, (2) speculation, (3) art, (4)
history, and (5) miscellaneous and periodical literature. But this
seemingly simple division at once raises questions both of practical and
of theoretic difficulty. As to the last, periodical literature is fast
attaining to such magnitude, that it may require a classification of its
own, and that the enumeration which indexes supply, useful as it is,
will not suffice. And I fear it is the destiny of periodicals as such to
carry down with them a large proportion of what, in the phraseology of
railways, would be called dead weight, as compared with live weight.
The limits of speculation would be most difficult to draw. The
diversities included under science would be so vast as at once to make
sub- classification a necessity. The olog-ies are by no means well suited
to rub shoulders together; and sciences must include arts, which are but
country cousins to them, or a new compartment must be established for
their accomodation. Once more, how to cope with the everlasting
difficulty of 'Works'? In what category to place Dante, Petrarch,
Swedenborg, Burke, Coleridge, Carlyle, or a hundred more? Where,
again, is Poetry to stand? I apprehend that it must take its place, the
first place without doubt, in Art; for while it is separated from Painting
and her other 'sphere-born harmonious sisters' by their greater
dependence on material forms they are all more inwardly and
profoundly united in their first and all-enfolding principle, which is to
organize the beautiful for presentation to the perceptions of man.
But underneath all particular