Books: Enemies of Books

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THE

ENEMIES OF BOOKS

BY

WILLIAM BLADES

_Revised and Enlarged by the Author_

SECOND EDITION

LONDON
ELLIOT STOCK, 62 PATERNOSTER ROW

1888

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

FIRE.

Libraries destroyed by Fire.--Alexandrian.--St. Paul's destruction
of MSS., Value of.--Christian books destroyed by Heathens.--Heathen
books destroyed by Christians.--Hebrew books burnt at Cremona.--Arabic
books at Grenada.--Monastic libraries.--Colton library.--Birmingham
riots.--Dr. Priestley's library.--Lord Mansfield's books.--Cowper.
--Strasbourg library bombarded.--Offor Collection burnt.--Dutch
Church library damaged.--Library of Corporation of London.

CHAPTER II.

WATER.

Heer Hudde's library lost at sea.--Pinelli's library captured
by Corsairs.--MSS. destroyed by Mohammed II--Books damaged by
rain.--Woffenbuttel.--Vapour and Mould.--Brown stains.--Dr.
Dibdin.--Hot water pipes.--Asbestos fire.--Glass doors to bookcases.

CHAPTER III.

GAS AND HEAT.

Effects of Gas on leather.--Necessitates re-binding.--Bookbinders.--Electric
light.--British Museum.--Treatment of books.--Legend of Friars and
their books.

CHAPTER IV.

DUST AND NEGLECT.

Books should have gilt tops.--Old libraries were neglected.--Instance
of a College library.--Clothes brushed in it.--Abuses in French
libraries.--Derome's account of them.--Boccaccio's story of
library at the Convent of Mount Cassin.

CHAPTER V.

IGNORANCE AND BIGOTRY.

Destruction of Books at the Reformation.--Mazarin library.--Caxton
used to light the fire.--Library at French Protestant Church,
St. Martin's-le-Grand.--Books stolen.--Story of books from Thonock
Hall.--Boke of St. Albans.--Recollet Monks of Antwerp.--Shakespearian
"find."--Black-letter books used in W.C.--Gesta Romanorum.--Lansdowne
collection.--Warburton.--Tradesman and rare book.--Parish Register.--Story
of Bigotry by M. Muller.--Clergymen destroy books.--Patent Office sell
books for waste.

CHAPTER VI.

THE BOOKWORM.

Doraston.--Not so destructive as of yore.--Worm won't eat
parchment.--Pierre Petit's poem.--Hooke's account and image.--Its
natural history neglected.--Various sorts--Attempts to breed
Bookworms.--Greek worm.--Havoc made by worms.--Bodleian and Dr.
Bandinel.--"Dermestes."--Worm won't eat modern paper.--America
comparatively free.--Worm-hole at Philadelphia.

CHAPTER VII.

OTHER VERMIN.

Black-beetle in American libraries.--germanica.--Bug Bible.--Lepisma.
--Codfish.--Skeletons of Rats in Abbey library, Westminster.--Niptus
hololeucos.--Tomicus Typographicus.--House flies injure books.

CHAPTER VIII.

BOOKBINDERS.

A good binding gives pleasure.--Deadly effects of the "plough" as used
by binders.--Not confined to bye-gone times.--Instances of injury.--De
Rome, a good binder but a great cropper.--Books "hacked."--Bad
lettering--Treasures in book-covers.--Books washed, sized, and
mended.--"Cases" often Preferable to re-binding.

CHAPTER IX.

COLLECTORS.

Bagford the biblioclast.--Illustrations torn from MSS.--Title-pages
torn from books.--Rubens, his engraved titles.--Colophons torn out of
books.--Lincoln Cathedral--Dr. Dibdin's Nosegay.--Theurdanck.--Fragments
of MSS.-Some libraries almost useless.--Pepysian.--Teylerian.--Sir
Thomas Phillipps.

CHAPTER X.

SERVANTS AND CHILDREN.

Library invaded for the purpose of dusting.--Spring clean.---Dust to be
got rid of.--Ways of doing so.--Carefulness praised.--Bad nature of
certain books--Metal clasps and rivets.--How to dust.--Children
often injure books.--Examples.--Story of boys in a country library.

POSTSCRIPTUM.

Anecdote of book-sale in Derbyshire.

CONCLUSION.

The care that should be taken of books.--Enjoyment derived from them.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

SERVANT USING A "CAXTON" TO LIGHT THE FIRE --- _Frontispiece_,

PIRATES THROWING LIBRARY OVER-BOARD ---------- page 19

FRIARS AND THEIR ASS-LOAD -------------------- 35

BRUSHING CLOTHES IN A COLLEGE LIBRARY -------- 45

BOOKWORMS ------------------------------------ 73

RATS DESTROYING BOOKS ------------------------ 99

HOUSEHOLD FLY-DAMAGE ------------------------- 102

BOYS RAMPANT IN LIBRARY ---------------------- 141

THE ENEMIES OF BOOKS.

CHAPTER I.

FIRE.

THERE are many of the forces of Nature which tend to injure Books;
but among them all not one has been half so destructive
as Fire. It would be tedious to write out a bare list only
of the numerous libraries and bibliographical treasures which,
in one way or another, have been seized by the Fire-king as his own.
Chance conflagrations, fanatic incendiarism, judicial bonfires,
and even household stoves have, time after time, thinned the treasures
as well as the rubbish of past ages, until, probably, not one
thousandth part of the books that have been are still extant.
This destruction cannot, however, be reckoned as all loss;
for had not the "cleansing fires" removed mountains of rubbish from
our midst, strong destructive measures would have become a necessity
from sheer want of space in which to store so many volumes.

Before the invention of Printing, books were comparatively scarce;
and, knowing as we do, how very difficult it is, even after
the steam-press has been working for half a century, to make
a collection of half a million books, we are forced to receive
with great incredulity the accounts in old writers of the wonderful
extent of ancient libraries.

The historian Gibbon, very incredulous in many things, accepts without
questioning the fables told upon this subject.No doubt the libraries of
MSS. collected generation after generation by the Egyptian Ptolemies
became, in the course of time, the most extensive ever then known; and
were famous throughout the world for the costliness of their ornamentation,
and importance of their untold contents. Two of these were at Alexandria,
the larger of which was in the quarter called Bruchium. These volumes,
like all manuscripts of those early ages, were written on sheets of
parchment, having a wooden roller at each end so that the reader needed
only to unroll a portion at a time. During Caesar's Alexandrian War, B.C.
48, the larger collection was consumed by fire and again burnt by the
Saracens in A.D. 640. An immense loss was inflicted upon mankind thereby;
but when we are told of 700,000, or even 500,000 of such volumes being
destroyed we instinctively feel that such numbers must be a great
exaggeration. Equally incredulous must we be when we read of half a
million volumes being burnt at Carthage some centuries later, and other
similar accounts.

Among the earliest records of the wholesale destruction of Books
is that narrated by St. Luke, when, after the preaching of Paul,
many of the Ephesians "which used curious arts brought their books
together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price
of them, and found it 50,000 pieces of silver" (Acts xix, 19).
Doubtless these books of idolatrous divination and alchemy, of
enchantments and witchcraft, were righteously destroyed by those to
whom they had been and might again be spiritually injurious; and
doubtless had they escaped the fire then, not one of them would have
survived to the present time, no MS.of that age being now extant.
Nevertheless, I must confess to a certain amount of mental disquietude
and uneasiness when I think of books worth 50,000 denarii--or, speaking
roughly, say L18,750,[1] of our modern money being made into bonfires.
What curious illustrations of early heathenism, of Devil worship, of
Serpent worship, of Sun worship, and other archaic forms of religion;
of early astrological and chemical lore, derived from the Egyptians,
the Persians, the Greeks; what abundance of superstitious observances
and what is now termed "Folklore"; what riches, too, for the philological
student, did those many books contain, and how famous would the library
now be that could boast of possessing but a few of them.

[1] The received opinion is that the "pieces of silver" here mentioned
were Roman denarii, which were the silver pieces then commonly used in
Ephesus. If now we weigh a denarius against modern silver, it is
exactly equal to ninepence, and fifty thousand times ninepence gives
L1,875. It is always a difficult matter to arrive at a just estimate of
the relative value of the same coin in different ages; but reckoning
that money then had at least ten times the purchasing value of money
now, we arrive at what was probably about the value of the magical books
burnt, viz.: L18,750.

The ruins of Ephesus bear unimpeachable evidence that the City was very
extensive and had magnificent buildings. It was one of the free cities,
governing itself. Its trade in shrines and idols was very extensive,
being spread through all known lands. There the magical arts were
remarkably prevalent, and notwithstanding the numerous converts made by
the early Christians, the , or little scrolls upon
which magic sentences were written, formed an extensive trade up to the
fourth century. These "writings" were used for divination, as a protection
against the "evil eye," and generally as charms against all evil.They
were carried about the person, so that probably thousands of them were
thrown into the flames by St. Paul's hearers when his glowing words
convinced them of their superstition.

Imagine an open space near the grand Temple of Diana, with fine buildings
around. Slightly raised above the crowd, the Apostle, preaching with
great power and persuasion concerning superstition, holds in thrall the
assembled multitude. On the outskirts of the crowd are numerous bonfires,
upon which Jew and Gentile are throwing into the flames bundle upon bundle
of scrolls, while an Asiarch with his peace-officers looks on with the
conventional stolidity of policemen in all ages and all nations. It must
have been an impressive scene, and many a worse subject has been chosen
for the walls of the Royal Academy.

Books in those early times, whether orthodox or heterodox, appear to have
had a precarious existence. The heathens at each fresh outbreak of
persecution burnt all the Christian writings they could find, and the
Christians, when they got the upper hand, retaliated with interest upon
the pagan literature. The Mohammedan reason for destroying books--"If
they contain what is in the Koran they are superfluous, and if they contain
anything opposed to it they are immoral," seems, indeed, _mutatis mutandis_,
to have been the general rule for all such devastators.

The Invention of Printing made the entire destruction of any author's
works much more difficult, so quickly and so extensively did books
spread through all lands. On the other hand, as books multiplied, so
did destruction go hand in hand with production, and soon were printed
books doomed to suffer in the same penal fires, that up to then had been
fed on MSS. only.

At Cremona, in 1569, 12,000 books printed in Hebrew were publicly burnt as
heretical, simply on account of their language; and Cardinal Ximenes, at
the capture of Granada, treated 5,000 copies of the Koran in the same way.

At the time of the Reformation in England a great destruction of books
took place. The antiquarian Bale, writing in 1587, thus speaks of the
shameful fate of the Monastic libraries:--

"A greate nombre of them whyche purchased those superstycyouse mansyons
(_Monasteries_) reserved of those librarye bookes some to serve
their jakes, some to scoure theyr candelstyckes, and some to rubbe
theyr bootes. Some they solde to the grossers and sope sellers,
and some they sent over see to yeS booke bynders, not in small nombre,
but at tymes whole shyppes full, to yeS, wonderynge of foren nacyons.
Yea yeS. Universytees of thys realme are not alle clere in thys
detestable fact. But cursed is that bellye whyche seketh to be
fedde with suche ungodlye gaynes, and so depelye shameth hys
natural conterye. I knowe a merchant manne, whych shall at thys
tyme be namelesse, that boughte yeS contentes of two noble
lybraryes for forty shyllynges pryce: a shame it is to be spoken.
Thys stuffe hathe heoccupyed in yeS stede of greye paper, by yeS,
space of more than these ten yeares, and yet he bathe store ynoughe
for as manye years to come. A prodygyous example is thys, and to be
abhorred of all men whyche love theyr nacyon as they shoulde do.
The monkes kepte them undre dust, yeS, ydle-headed prestes regarded
them not, theyr latter owners have most shamefully abused them,
and yeS covetouse merchantes have solde them away into foren
nacyons for moneye."

How the imagination recoils at the idea of Caxton's translation of
the Metamorphoses of Ovid, or perhaps his "Lyf of therle of Oxenforde,"
together with many another book from our first presses, not a fragment
of which do we now possess, being used for baking "pyes."

At the Great Fire of London in 1666, the number of books burnt was
enormous. Not only in private houses and Corporate and Church libraries
were priceless collections reduced to cinders, but an immense stock of
books removed from Paternoster Row by the Stationers for safety was burnt
to ashes in the vaults of St. Paul's Cathedral.

Coming nearer to our own day, how thankful we ought to be for the
preservation of the Cotton Library. Great was the consternation in the
literary world of 1731 when they heard of the fire at Ashburnham House,
Westminster, where, at that time, the Cotton MSS. were deposited. By
great exertions the fire was conquered, but not before many MSS. had
been quite destroyed and many others injured. Much skill was shown in
the partial restoration of these books, charred almost beyond recognition;
they were carefully separated leaf by leaf, soaked in a chemical solution,
and then pressed flat between sheets of transparent paper. A curious heap
of scorched leaves, previous to any treatment, and looking like a monster
wasps' nest, may be seen in a glass case in the MS. department of the
British Museum, showing the condition to which many other volumes had been
reduced.

Just a hundred years ago the mob, in the "Birmingham Riots," burnt the
valuable library of Dr. Priestley, and in the "Gordon Riots" were burnt
the 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