The Reformed Librarie-Keeper (1650) | Page 4

some of the scientific reforms Dury had advocated.
_Richard H. Popkin Washington University_
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John Dury's place in the intellectual and religious life of seventeenth-century England and Europe is amply demonstrated in the preceding part of the introduction. This section focuses on _The Reformed Librarie-Keeper_ itself, which was printed in 1650 with the subheading _Two copies of Letters concerning the Place and Office of a Librarie-Keeper_ (p. 15). The first letter concentrates on practical questions of the organization and administration of the library, the second relates the librarian's function to educational goals and, above all else, to the mission of the Christian religion. The work's two-part structure is a clue to a proper understanding of the genesis of _The Reformed Librarie-Keeper_ and to its meaning and puts in ironic perspective its usefulness for later academic librarianship.
Because _The Reformed Librarie-Keeper_ appeared in the same year that Dury became deputy librarian of the King's Library in St. James's Palace, it has been assumed that he probably wrote the pamphlet as a form of self-promotion to secure the job. An anonymous article in The Library in 1892, for instance, speculates that the pamphlet may have been "composed for the special purpose of the Author's advancement" and that Milton and Samuel Hartlib urged its production "to forward his claims" while the Council of State was debating what to do with Charles I's books.[8] Certainly the final sentence of the tract, with its references to "the Hous" and "the Counsels of leading men in this Common-wealth" (p. 31), suggests a connection with the debate, but the tone of religious zeal that permeates the work, and especially the second letter, seems to transcend any specific occasion. Moreover, Hartlib, Dury's longtime friend and associate in millenarian causes and the recipient and editor of these letters, claims that they and the other, disparate works he selected for the volume are all "_fruits of som of my Solicitations and Negotiations for the advancement of Learning_" and as such "_are but preparatives towards that perfection which wee may exspect by the advancement of the Kingdom of Christ, wherein the Communion of Saints, by the graces of the Spirit, will swallow up all these poor Rudiments of knowledg, which wee now grope after by so manie helps_" (sig. A2r-v).
There is, in fact, no way of knowing with certainty if Dury's motives were "impure," especially since the exact date of the tract cannot be determined, no entry existing for it in the Stationers' Register. According to one of Dury's biographers, but with no reference to source, the pamphlet was printed by William Dugard "shortly after" the latter's release from prison in the early spring of 1650.[9] The Calendar of State Papers and the records of Bulstrode Whitelocke indicate that Dury was not officially considered for the library post before late summer and not appointed until 28 October.[10]
The contents of the letters themselves reveal Dury far ahead of his time in his conception of the Complete Librarian, but later commentators have generally not understood that the administrative reforms he advocated were inseparable from his idea of the sacramental nature of the librarian's office--and so have tended to dismiss the second letter because it "merely repeats the ideas of the first with less practical suggestion and in a more declamatory style."[11] Such a comment illustrates how far we are from Dury's (and the age's) purposes and hopes, and it shows a great misunderstanding of the religious and moral context within which, for Dury, all human activity took place. As Professor Popkin has shown, Dury considered libraries fundamental to the preparation for the millennium: they housed the texts indispensable to the spread of learning, which in turn was prerequisite to religious unity and peace on earth and ultimately to the millennium itself; for with enough of the right books, the Christian world could convert the Jews, that final step which was to herald the reign of Christ on earth. When, in the second letter, Dury refers to the "stewardship" of the librarian he is speaking literally, not metaphorically.
But if libraries were to serve their purpose in the grand scheme--that is, to make texts easily available--extensive reforms were necessary, and that is the burden of the first letter. Dury's cardinal principle is that libraries should be useful to people: "It is true that a fair Librarie, is ... an ornament and credit to the place where it is [the 'jewel box' concept]; ... yet in effect it is no more then a dead Bodie as now it is constituted, in comparison of what it might bee, if it were animated with a publick Spirit to keep and use it, and _ordered as it might bee for publick service_" (p. 17, my emphasis). The public that Dury refers to is an academic faculty and not the