3. UNIVERSAL CATALOGUE OF BOOKS ON ART: COMPREHENDING PAINTING, SCULPTURE, ARCHITECTURE, DECORATION, COINS, ANTIQUITIES, &c. THE INTRODUCTION. HE IMPORTANCE of a Catalogue to a Library of any extent cannot well be overstated. A Dictionary is not more necessary to a language; and while languages are living traditions, and may be orally acquired by the educated and the ignorant, the contents of libraries, if large in extent, are but partially mastered by the studies of a lifetime. Living Librarians of competent learning would be, without doubt, the best guides to large repositories of books. If such directors could be always on the spot, and at everybody's command, they would infinitely surpass the written information of a book. But the vastness of the intellectual legacy, bequeathed by the ages as they pass, the shortness of life, and the restless activity of human curiosity and research, defy the possibility of satisfaction from such a source as this. One instrument alone can supply, not indeed all that is wanted-for we should ask to have all the paths of human knowledge laid out with science and method-but all that is possible, and that instrument is a well-arranged Catalogue. With such a work in our hands, we know at once whether a book we want is in a Library. This is the great point to ascertain, and it is the one kind of help which Libraries can afford to enquirers; not to save readers the Labour of study, but to give access with the least trouble and delay, to the books that they contain. In speaking of Catalogues, this essential point must be kept in view. The arrangement and object of such works have been often discussed, and the method of composing particular Catalogues has been eagerly, if not acrimoniously, attacked and defended. Very different objects are sometimes considered as primary for Book-Catalogues, and disappointment is felt if these are not attained. Thus the division of a General Library into classes of books under different heads is often looked for, as well as the history and peculiarities of each book. The last is the proper province of Bibliography; and the former is, on a large scale, difficult, because the literary public will never be agreed as to the method of classification, the number of classes, or the limitations of each. The attempt to divide the books in the British Museum after this method would hide under one class books which many readers would look for under another. Time would thus be lost by students, while the re-arrangement of the classes would be an endless labour. On a limited scale such Catalogues have been composed. The admirable Catalogue of Lord Spencer's Library, by Dibdin, may be quoted as a specimen. Such works on special kinds of books, or on books of particular dates or periods, will remain literary acquisitions of great value. But they are possible only on a narrow field. In a large Public Library they would oftener perplex than guide the student, and, for general use, prove costly failures. The one simple and sufficient object, therefore, of a Catalogue of Books is to give, in the smallest space, a faithful description or title of each book, accurately copied from its title-page; the full name or names of the writer; the account, in its own words and spelling, that the book gives of itself, even should the writer's name be omitted. And as Public Libraries are institutions for reference, not for education, and presuppose students looking for special books or authors, no scheme has been devised so simple or so easy as an alphabetical arrangement of books under the authors' names or assumed names, or the catch-word by which an anonymous book is known. Most Public Libraries in Europe have adopted this arrangement more or less methodically; and our own British Museum, not without full examination and discussion, and patient hearing of every learned dissident, has done the same, and its method and regulations have been adopted by the Smithsonian Institution in New York. The British Museum Library, as the reader well knows, is the largest and most complete in the kingdom, though numbers of works remain still to be acquired for it. Costly bequests, such as the collection of King George III., the Grenville and other collections, embracing books that were the Royal property of King Henry VII. and his successors, having been made to the Museum, its numbers are to some extent swelled by duplicate copies, and much has had to be done to fill up gaps and deficiencies so as to represent all branches of literature evenly. But for many years this work has been carried on with care and intelligence. Perhaps few national collections, at the present time, though larger in number of volumes, would prove more generally complete. The great collections in our national seats of learning, Oxford, Cambridge and Dublin, may be expected to be more specially devoted to ancient learning, theology, and mathematics. Other institutions of great public utility have Libraries, more or less special in range, open to general students, with various degrees of restriction. Of all it may be said that, without a Catalogue well kept up as fresh books are acquired, they would become sources of incessant disappointment, instead of help and consolation to the student. At a more recent date, a National Library of Art Books has been placed in the South Kensington Museum. The class of books of which it is composed is, of course, special and limited, but within this particular range every care has been taken to make it as complete as possible. Of this Library the general public has the fullest use but its first object is the education of students in the National Schools of Art. As far as can be done without impairing the useful Fœminarum illustrium, quibus in Græcis aut Latinis Monumentis, aliqua pars datur;......ex antiquis Marmoribus Numismatibus Gemmisque expressæ. 9 parts. Fol. Lugduni Batavorum (1724?). A collection of 300 plates, first published with Gronovius' Thesaurus, and now republished by P. van der Aa. B.M. A. (F. F.).-Ueber Landschaftsmalerei. AA (P. VAN DER).-Effigies Virorum ac Ein Handbuch für Dilettanten und Anfänger in dieser Kunst. Von F. F. A. 8vo. Wien, 1842. A. (H.).—Illuminated Capitals in the Style of the Middle Ages. (By H. A.) 8vo. London (1859). B.M. A. (H. W.).—Prints for Cottage Walls. A Paper read by request at the Book Hawkers' Union, in Oxford (by H.W. A., i. e. Henry Wentworth Ac land). 14 pp. 8vo. Oxford and London, 1862. B.M. A. (J. Y.).—Tales of other Days, with illustrations......1830. See CRUIKSHANK (George). A. (M.).—A History of Ford Abbey, Dorsetshire, late in the County of Devon. 1 plate. 8vo. London, 1846. B.M. B.M. A. (M. B. A.).-Histoire de la Peinture en AA (P. VAN DER).-Fundatoris, Curatorum B.M. AA (P. VAN DER).-La Galerie agréable du Monde, où l'on voit en un grand nombre de cartes très exactes, et de belles tailles-douces, les principaux empires, royaumes, républiques, provinces, villes, etc., dans les quatre parties de l'univers; divisée en LXVI tomes. Les estampes ayant été dessinées sur les lieux, et gravées par Luyken, Mulder, Goerée, Baptist, Stopendaal. Le tout mis en ordre et exécuté par P. van der Aa. About 2,400 plates. Fol. Leide (1730 ?). B.M. AA (P. VAN DER).-Icones arborum, fruti cum et herbarum exoticarum......ut et animalium ABATI (NICCOLÒ DELL'). See ABBATE. ABATI, O.-G. (A. DEGLI).-Esame del B.M. Pesaro e delle Monete Pesaresi dei secoli bassi. 64 pp., 4 plates, and a vignette. 4to. Bologna, 1773. B.M. 1 All Communications relating to this Catalogue to be addressed to the Editor, South Kensington Museum, w. |