【英文原著类】THE LIBRARY(图书馆).pdf

THE LIBRARY1
THE LIBRARY
By Andrew Lang
1
THE LIBRARY2
PREFATORY NOTE
The pages in this volume on illuminated and other MSS. (with the
exception of some anecdotes about Bussy Rabutin and Julie de
Rambouillet) have been contributed by the Rev. W. J. Loftie, who has also
written on early printed books (pp. 94-95). The pages on the Biblioklept
(pp. 46-56) are reprinted, with the Editor's kind permission, from the
Saturday Review; and a few remarks on the moral lessons of bookstalls
are taken from an essay in the same journal.
Mr. Ingram Bywater, Fellow of Exeter College, and lately sub-
Librarian of the Bodleian, has very kindly read through the proofs of
chapters I., II., and III., and suggested some alterations.
Thanks are also due to Mr. T. R. Buchanan, Fellow of All Souls
College, for two plates from his "Book-bindings in All Souls Library"
(printed for private circulation), which he has been good enough to lend
me. The plates are beautifully drawn and coloured by Dr. J. J. Wild.
Messrs. e Bell & Sons, Messrs. Bradbury, Agnew, & Co., and
Messrs. Chatto & Windus, must be thanked for the use of some of the
woodcuts which illustrate the concluding chapter. A. L.
2
THE LIBRARY3
AN APOLOGY FOR THE BOOK-
HUNTER
"All men," says Dr. Dibdin, "like to be their own librarians." A writer
on the library has no business to lay down the law as to the books that
even the most inexperienced amateurs should try to collect. There are
books which no lover of literature can afford to be without; classics,
ancient and modern, on which the world has pronounced its verdict.
These works, in whatever shape we may be able to possess them, are the
necessary foundations of even the smallest collections. Homer, Dante
and Milton Shakespeare and Sophocles, Aristophanes and Moliere,
Thucydides, Tacitus, and Gibbon, Swift and Scott,--these every lover of
letters will desire to possess in the original languages or in translations.
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