The Enemies of Books | Page 4

literary and other collections of Lord Mansfield, the celebrated
judge, he who had the courage first to decide that the Slave who
reached the English shore was thenceforward a free man. The loss of
the latter library drew from the poet Cowper two short and weak poems.
The poet first deplores the destruction of the valuable printed books,
and then the irretrievable loss to history by the burning of his

Lordship's many personal manuscripts and contemporary documents.
"Their pages mangled, burnt and torn, The loss was his alone; But ages
yet to come shall mourn The burning of his own."
The second poem commences with the following doggerel:--
"When Wit and Genius meet their doom In all-devouring Flame, They
tell us of the Fate of Rome And bid us fear the same."
The much finer and more extensive library of Dr. Priestley was left
unnoticed and unlamented by the orthodox poet, who probably felt a
complacent satisfaction at the destruction of heterodox books, the
owner being an Unitarian Minister.
The magnificent library of Strasbourg was burnt by the shells of the
German Army in 1870. Then disappeared for ever, together with other
unique documents, the original records of the famous law-suits between
Gutenberg, one of the first Printers, and his partners, upon the right
understanding of which depends the claim of Gutenberg to the
invention of the Art. The flames raged between high brick walls,
roaring louder than a blast furnace. Seldom, indeed, have Mars and
Pluto had so dainty a sacrifice offered at their shrines; for over all the
din of battle, and the reverberation of monster artillery, the burning
leaves of the first printed Bible and many another priceless volume
were wafted into the sky, the ashes floating for miles on the heated air,
and carrying to the astonished countryman the first news of the
devastation of his Capital.
When the Offor Collection was put to the hammer by Messrs Sotheby
and Wilkinson, the well-known auctioneers of Wellington Street, and
when about three days of the sale had been gone through, a Fire
occurred in the adjoining house, and, gaining possession of the Sale
Rooms, made a speedy end of the unique Bunyan and other rarities
then on show. I was allowed to see the Ruins on the following day, and
by means of a ladder and some scrambling managed to enter the Sale
Room where parts of the floor still remained. It was a fearful sight
those scorched rows of Volumes still on the shelves; and curious was it

to notice how the flames, burning off the backs of the books first, had
then run up behind the shelves, and so attacked the fore-edge of the
volumes standing upon them, leaving the majority with a perfectly
untouched oval centre of white paper and plain print, while the whole
surrounding parts were but a mass of black cinders. The salvage was
sold in one lot for a small sum, and the purchaser, after a good deal of
sorting and mending and binding placed about 1,000 volumes for sale
at Messrs. Puttick and Simpson's in the following year.
So, too, when the curious old Library which was in a gallery of the
Dutch Church, Austin Friars, was nearly destroyed in the fire which
devastated the Church in 1862, the books which escaped were sadly
injured. Not long before I had spent some hours there hunting for
English Fifteenth-century Books, and shall never forget the state of dirt
in which I came away. Without anyone to care for them, the books had
remained untouched for many a decade-damp dust, half an inch thick,
having settled upon them! Then came the fire, and while the roof was
all ablaze streams of hot water, like a boiling deluge, washed down
upon them. The wonder was they were not turned into a muddy pulp.
After all was over, the whole of the library, no portion of which could
legally be given away, was lent for ever to the Corporation of London.
Scorched and sodden, the salvage came into the hands of Mr. Overall,
their indefatigable librarian. In a hired attic, he hung up the volumes
that would bear it over strings like clothes, to dry, and there for weeks
and weeks were the stained, distorted volumes, often without covers,
often in single leaves, carefully tended and dry-nursed. Washing, sizing,
pressing, and binding effected wonders, and no one who to-day looks
upon the attractive little alcove in the Guildhall Library labelled "Bibliotheca Ecclesiae Londonino-Belgiae"> and sees the rows of
handsomely-lettered backs, could imagine that not long ago this, the
most curious portion of the City's literary collections, was in a state
when a five-pound note would have seemed more than full value for
the lot.

CHAPTER II.

WATER.
NEXT to Fire we must rank Water