LORD ROSEBERY ON LIBRARIES.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1299, 30 November 1911, Page 4

LORD ROSEBERY ON LIBRARIES.

AMUSING SPEECH, "L'K.MKTEKIES OF .DEAD BOOKS." lord i;o-i'l*'i-y. wilh a gol'len key which Win pi-eseiilod"to him. formally opened the new building of Use Mitchell Library in lilasgow on October IC. founded in isri by (ho laic Mr. Stephen Mitchell, who liVnuealhi'd ,L'G7,OO!I lo the Ulasgow Corporation for Hit purpose, tho library has outgrown a number of buildings. Subsequently Lord Koschery addressed nn aiiriiem-p of T.OOO ii>. St. Andrew's Hall, whieh adjoins the new library building. A wise man, he .-aid, when iio had reached the ago of sixty, never o]ieued a library and never distributed prizes at s-chool, bocaus.\ in fact, (ho whole subject w.is cxhaiislod. . Mr. Carnegie tho other day told him— if he did not mistake the figures—that he had founded 2-'OO libraries. That was nn ennrmous work of beneficence, but ho (Lord Hoscbery) wn? not troubled with tbo beneficence at this moment; be wss troubled with another asiiect ol the Cjiie.stion. . 220,000 Platitudes. Every one of these 2200 libraries had been opened with oratory. They might take it that at any one of them ton speakers had uttered their thoughts. That was 22,000 speeches. L'veryone 'of these speeches, ho calculated, on an average contained (ou platitudes on the subject of public libraries. (Lnughter.) . Thus 220,000 platitudes hai utteroii in connection with the foundation of theCarnegie libraries alone. Haw, then, was ah inexperienced orator —(laughter)—at this hour in the evening and declino of life to try to utter anything that was worth hearing? He ielt rather disposed not entirely tobless,them-, not perhaps absolutely to. curse thptti,.but. by no means to utter an unqualified bene-.. diction on libraries On entering this enormous collection of volumes—lßo,ooo of them—in the Mitchell-Library-he-believed that ho was filled with a hideous depres-. ston. Ho know ho ought to feel elated. Ho might, but ho did liol. ]]? felt au intense depression in seeing this enormous nias-s of book?, this cemetery of books, botwiuso after all most of them were dead. How many living books were there in tha Mitchell Library- ■ How many inevitable books, time-proof books, weather-proof books? Few Living Books. When Mr. Barrett (the , librarian) told him there' worn 180,000 books in the Mitchell Library he askqd him if there were not 100,000 which nobody ever asked for. Diplomatically Mr. Barrett had declined to reply. (Laughter.) But if it were triio that tho percentage''of living books was exceedingly small—and ho was afraid that they must all a»roo it wns exceedingly small —what a lingo cemetery of dead Ixioks, or book? half alive, was represented bv a great library liko this! , That was not the only depressing aspect from which he saw those libraries.' Ho thought of all the thoughts and of the aspirations of tho authors who wrote them. To each book there was attached the name of an author whose life might, havo been crowned by the production" of that book. How many baffled ambitions, dibappointed hopes, crushed aspirations, we're represented by. each shelf of books in tho Mitchell Library! Think of the long proccsM'on of baffled hopes, of literary aspirations, inarching onwards to tbo inevitable grave! Just think what a groat mass of disappointment, of wrecked hopes and lives, was represented by a public library! Here they had folios which our-gen-eration could r>ot handle, novels.as vapid as soda-water which had been opened for a week, pages of sermons which, had given satisfaction to no one but" their authors, collections, of political speeches evpn more evanescent than the sermons, bales of forgotten- science, -superseded history, biographies of people wlAim- nobody coi'od about. AVho was to overtake the-, reading-of - thpsq '.bobks? If they, weroto devote' the whole gf their, life,' the voungest of them, in trying to gel through half of the Mitchell'Library, would be baffled l'ong before life was over, and they would find themselves drowned in thu stream of hew books'which thoy would nnd it necessary to read. - Masterpiece of Philanthropy, ' ■ ' In the Middle Ages tho whole, library of the world could be contained in a cupboard. The largest library'did not exceed 400 volumes. These were the monastic libraries. When their libraries consisted of 400 volumes they had a very good chance of grasping the whole available knowledge of the world. Now there was no such chance. He confessed he felt it a depressing thought to enter one of these hugo storehouses of knowledge, and to feel how hopeless it was in.any degree or in any way to overtake tho opportunities that they afforded. Even tho lato Lord Acton : could have "produced'no-ef-' feet by his reading on the stores of' tho Mitchell Library, and to thoso who,-like himself, were of a melancholy arid'-jaun-diced frame of mind—(laughter)— 'an enormous collection like tho Mitchell Library had a stupefying and paralysing rather than an encouraging effect. ; While the demand existed • Mr. Carnegie's supply was always equal to the demand, and if, as they wero told, the great Empire of China was awakening from its long sleep to au intellectual activity by 300,000.000 or 400,000,000 of. inhabitants, ho had no doubt Mr. Carnegie would only see in it a new opportunity for providing libraries. (Laughter.) Such munificence as that, of encircling, they might say, the entire globo with a girdle' of free libraries, which were'highly appreciated now and which ho. ventured to say would bo appreciated tenfold by gonerations to come, was' a niasterpieco of philanthropy. Gift to Glasgow, He believed there was only one thing in which the municipality of Glasgow was deficient. He understood that they had a mace at one time, but (hat it was seized by the University of St. Andrews, of which he was Lord Rector. Ho would not plead guilty to that—(laughter)—but tho Lord Provost had encouraged him (Lord Rosebery) to hope.that the city 6; Glasgow would allow him, in gratitudo for the long series of favours he had received at their hands, and for the aff(.-c----tionate friendship which ho had always experienced there, to offer a maco to che i hnnicipality.. (Cheers.) . . .. '