a reprint of the "Divina Commedia " without the author's name should be catalogued under Dante, and a reprint of "Robinson Crusoe " under Defoe,' so that care has been taken to keep the standard of a 'recognized classic' very high, and this is further emphasized by the solemn note: 'But such cases are rare and very exceptional.' For all practical purposes, therefore, the Museum custom is guided by the earlier sentence in this fourth rule, which tells us: The choice of a Heading for a mainentry must be based on the information supplied in print in a perfect copy of the book itself, and on that only,' so that our suggestion that information supplied in later editions should be allowed to influence the cataloguing of an original anonymous issue is excluded in all but a handful of instances. In the same way under Rule 12 initials denoting authorship are adopted as headings, although these initials are seldom likely to be remembered by those who use the Catalogue. It appears from Rule 36 that this is not the last word the British Museum has to say on the cataloguing of anonymous or semi-anonymous books. If it were, there would be serious grounds for complaint. Fortunately, at this point Cross-References come to the rescue, and by the great elaboration which these have received in recent years the desire which everyone must feel to see all the editions of the same work kept together and arranged in chronological order is practically satisfied. (3) The cross-references in the British Museum Catalogue have always been very numerous and are of the greatest value. No book can have more than one mainentry (Rule 3), but there is no limit to the cross-references. Unfortunately, in the old Catalogue, and in some of the volumes of the existing one which were the first sent to press, the form of the cross-references deprived them of half their value. A single cross-reference from the name of the author to the initials under which a word was issued did duty for any number of editions, or for any number of works published under the same initials. In the case of anonymous works a separate cross-reference was written for every edition; but as this was written in the same form as references for works merely edited or translated, and all cross-references were kept together, apart from the mainentries, there was nothing, at the place where the reader would naturally look, to show that the library possessed any other editions than those which the main-entries recorded. Under the new Rules a sharp distinction is made between cross-references in cases of authorship and all others. In the latter the reference follows immediately after the name: Caldecott (Randolph). See Irving (W.). Bracebridge Hall may serve as a specimen of them all. In cross-references denoting authorship, on the other hand, the title of the book comes between the name and the reference, and not only the title, but the date and size, e.g.: Bargrave (Isaac). A Sermon against Self-Policy, etc. [By I. Bargrave.] [1624.] 4°. See SERMON. Allen (John). The Younger Brother his Apologie, or a father's free power disputed for the disposition of his lands, etc. [By J. A., i.e. John Allen.] 1634. 8°. See A., J. The cross-references written in this form (of those to initials no example is given in the Rules) are arranged among the main-entries in the alphabetical order of the work and the chronological order of the edition, and a complete view is thus given of all the books by an author which are in the library. Thus many of our objections to the rules respecting the arrangement of the mainentries are rendered nugatory by reason of the multi plicity of secondary entries. The latter are sufficiently full for ordinary purposes, and having the press-marks they can be used as if they were main headings. The new system is certainly open to the objection that, while it keeps to the letter of the rule that no book can have more than one main-entry, it produces cross-references which are so remarkably like main-entries that the rule is rather circumvented than observed. But probably no other method could be devised which would so well suit the needs of readers, and at the same time secure the mechanical certainty as to the heading under which a main-entry will be found, which, in a great library, is the only safeguard against the purchase of duplicates. One other point we should like to make, though it does not arise directly out of these Revised Rules. In the various criticisms on the British Museum Catalogue full justice, to our thinking, has never been done to the discretion exercised in writing out the titles. In some catalogues the titles are uselessly short, while in others they are irritatingly long; but in the British Museum Catalogue the happy medium is adopted. After many years' use of the Catalogue we can say that we have never come upon an instance of a title which was not in every way sufficient for its purpose. In conclusion, we desire to express grateful thanks to the Trustees for these revised Rules, which are presented to the public in excellent form, with full table of contents and index. HENRY B. WHEATLEY. 274 FIRST THE REPUTED FIRST CIRCULATING SUBSCRIPTION LIBRARY IN LONDON. T is always dangerous in treating historically of the institutions of our social life to make any positive statements as to the exact date of the origin of any one of them, but there is good reason to believe that the first English library supported by subscription was established in London between the years 1740 and 1743. As Gabriel Naudé in his "Traité de Bibliothèque drew up regulations for borrowing books from libraries, it is certain that the system was in vogue in France quite early in the seventeenth century. That it was known in England in the same century is proved by the records we have of the Rev. Thomas Bray's scheme for the establishment of lending libraries in every deanery throughout England, a system which he carried into effect in America also when he left this country. In the beginning of the seventeenth century clubs, which introduce the principle of subscription for a common advantage, began to grow up in London. One of the earliest was the Bread Street or Friday Street Club, originated by Sir Walter Raleigh, and meeting at the Mermaid Tavern. Of this club Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden, Donne, and others were members. It was an application of this spirit of fellowship and combination as a means of promoting the study of natural science that led to the formation of the Royal Society in 1662. The unbroken success and activity of this time-honoured institution is written in the pages of its long series of "Philosophical Transactions," and by the middle of the eighteenth century it had flourished for well-nigh a hundred years. But the means of attaining knowledge were confined to a very few even in the vears 1740 to 1745. Allowing for the greater value of present equivalents of money, books were expensive, and to many unattainable, and libraries from which books could be borrowed for home-reading were exceedingly few. Up to the year 1825 no books were allowed to be borrowed from the Library of the Royal Society without the formality of motion in the Society."1 2 The parish libraries established at the praiseworthy instigation of Thomas Bray and others were not sufficiently numerous, or managed energetically enough, to make them potent factors in dispelling ignorance; and the little good they did was counterbalanced by the gross ignorance of the lower classes, among whom reading was a rare accomplishment, and writing almost unknown. That for which they had no aspiration the lowest classes of the population did not miss. But to the educated middle classes and tradesfolk the want of facilities for that continuous reading which a subscription library so amply supplies must have been, even then, very trying. In a very popular historical novel dealing with the middle period of the eighteenth century, "The Chaplain of the Fleet," by Besant and Rice, the heroine is made to hail with pleasure the recent establishment of circulating libraries and the wonderful change and fresh interest the constant reading of books had given to life. I think we may fairly conclude that the originators of the idea of circulating subscription libraries saw that social and literary clubs were flourishing institutions; that they had a real desire that by means of the loan of books knowledge should circulate with as much activity as the blood circulates throughout the body; that they saw how dull and almost stagnant was this circulation-witness the above-cited cramping order of the Royal Society relating 'Weld (C. R.), "History of the Royal Society," 1848, ii. 396. 2 For an account of and statistics relating to parish libraries, see Shore (T. W.), "Old Parochial Libraries of England and Wales," Trans. and Proc. First Annual Meeting of the Library Association of the United Kingdom. Oxford, 1878, pp. 51, 145. |