HON. W. P. REEVES, HIS NEW APPOINTMENT.

Evening Post, Volume LCCVI, Issue 126, 26 November 1908, Page 3

HON. W. P. REEVES, HIS NEW APPOINTMENT.

(STRIKING INAUGURAL ADDRESS. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, 16th October. At the Royal School of Medicine, 20, Hanover-square, London, on Tuesday evening, the- Hon. W. Pember Reeves, .High Commissioner for New Zealand, delivered his inaugural address as the Director of the London School of Economics. Mr. E. A. Baker, M.A., D. of Litfc., presided. The chairman said in the ordinary way it -was the duty of the chairman to introduce tho speaker, but on this occa-sion he thought the order should be reversed, and he should introduce the audience to Mr. Pember Reeves. He •was a gentleman very well-known to the public, and especially to librarians who had many of his books on their shelves. The colonies and the Old Country knew him as a statesman, but they preferred to know him as an historian and economist, and they next ought to know him as a poet. (Cheers.) While the association was proud to welcome him, it was particularly gratified to know that his controlling eye and sympathy would jji the future* be at the London School of Economics, looking after the interests ; of the library assistants in their education" and technical training. They decided to interest Mr. Reeves in their educational ideas and their hopes for the evolution of liberal-minded' librarians. Thoy wanted him to know they were desirous of evolving the librarian supeiior to the later generation in the same way that the library of the iuture was to be superior to that of the past. (Cheers.) The problem he hoped Mr. Reeves would fiolve was : How to give library assistants the me<.ns of acquiring an education at once liberal and technir"!, corresponding to the facilities which were open to teachers in their various schools. (Cheers.) LIBRARIES AND LIBRARIANSHIPS. Mr. Reeves, who met with a very hearty reception, said he was in the ■unlucky position at the moment of serving two masters, because though he was Director of the London School of Economics, he would not be tree from his duties as High Commissioner for New Zealand until his successor landed in England. The subject of libraries and Jibrarianshipr was an extremely gvod pno, for he was not quite sure lejat where they had an interesting subject a certain amount of ignorance didi not, alter all, lend elasticity to style and freedom of imagination— (Laughter). Shakespeare, who knew little Latin and less Greek, would have given an instructive address on classics at -brief notice, as Burke did on India and America without having a glimpse of either country. But he (the speaker) had some connection with libraries and librarianships because for some years ho j had been vice-chairman of the London University Library at $puth Kensington, and was now Director of the London School of Economics. When he thought of them and their accommodation ihe was inclined to heave many heavy sighs. When he looked round at South Kensington he wondered where all the books were going to be put, and t was a question of which particular passages could be made to hold the surplus. As to the Library of Economic^—well, it was not a library, but what was called' in Ireland a congested district. (Laughter.) There were paseages, halls, cellars, corners, and nooks where piles of books and bundles and heaps of documents were lying. They wanted more space. The public was supposed to be a great patron of libraries, I&>ntl to have a great interest in them, 'but if they compared the libraries of to-day with, those of a past generation, •he supposed it would be said we now had a more enlightened public. There was, however, still a, great deal to be done. Mr. Reeves remarked, that he read tho other day that architects, even when building libraries, sometimes consulted librarians, but the practice was not universal. Yet it was 7 the a'awning of a brighter era. To describe the attitude of the public towards libraries was similar to the old lady who went into a bookseller's shop for a Bible. She said she would be satisfied with a cheap one emaD and light, but it must also be \ printed in the very largest type. (Laughter.) That was the attitude of the public to libraries. They did not want money wasted on sites, fine equipments, or librarians and assistants — they wanted a building equipped, with the best books and to be done with a penny rate if possible. They could do a good many things, but they could not make a pint pot hold a quart, and that was one of the difficulties which librarians had to face. Could anything be done to improve libraries, librarians, the staff and the usefulness of libraries to meet the case of the public? He was 01 opinion that a great deal could be done, and if m his former remarks he seemed to take a somewhat flippant and somewhat erratic attitude, he promised them Me would wind up with a moral. There was such a thing, continued Mr. Reeves, as matter in the wrong place, and when, books had ceased to have any value and encumbered the walls of .libraries which were pressed for space, (and books of no value continued to be added, thsy should be got rid of. Two of the great evils with which librarians and those concerned in books had to contend with were the tendency to preserve old books simply because they were old, and also the tendency to buy new books merely because they were new. Because a book was old it was not necessarily useful ; a number of the old books were extremely bad books — really rubbish. The other day Tho Times, m commenting on a letter from Mr. Runciman, suggested that the mass of new books was probably inferior to the books of the past, inasmuch as reading |J had spread among the poorer classes — the masses of the people — whereas in the past it was confined to the literary classes. He supposed that was a suggestion that years ago books xvere written by scholars for scholars, whereas now they were written by anyone they liked for the masses. That books were previously written by scholars for scholars was a myth. Let them take books that had survived — not the rubbish that had perished, or ought to have perished. Take a few books that had helped to mould the English character and mind. There was the translation of the Bible, of the Praye-r Book, the "Pilgrim's Progress," "Robinson Cruso," and the works of Robert Burns. Were they written for scholars? No, for the masses, and they <get into the hearts of the people and moulded the minds of the people. (Cheers. )■ LITERATURE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Let them look at the literature of the 18th century from a literary point of view ; that began in 1670 with Dryden and ended in 1791 when Gibbon completed his "Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire." Certainly it has a certain classic style, :,hat gave it the air of culture and commended it to certain literary men, and there were survivals in that which they loved and admired and for which they could not be too grateful. 3ut how much did students read of it to-day? It was an age when poetry was written freely and produced same- great poets- They had Pope, Dry-

den, Gray, and Burns, and possibly Goldsmith. What was written by Fry, Gray, Dr. Johnson, Collins, and Cowper, was not very much, aud that was the product oi 120 years. That period, so 'far as the drama was concerned, did not produce one great tragedy. It wan certainly responsible for one good comic opera and some brilliant comedies. Yet, out of five men, they did not get twenty plays. As to fiction, how many works of that character *vere there that people still read? There was "The Vicar of Wakofield" also "Tom Jones" and "Clarissa Harlowe," "Humphrey Clinker," and ]\Jrs. Burney's "Evelina" — the latter making her famous all at once. II was an age admirably suited for turning out books of travel, but how many did the 18th century produce that were worth looking at? Of all of them, Laurence Sterne's "Sentimental Journey," was the best, but that had since been beaten probably by Robeit Louis Stevenson. There was one great satire, Swift's "Gulliver's Travels," and then came the period of pamphlets, which held a similar position to newspaper articles now — but how many of these were worth eveu looking at to-day? Again, it was an age of essayists, beginning with Stoele aud ending with Henry M'Kenzie. How many of those were worth reading? The age produced one great biography — Boswell's "Life of Johnson." There were also a few good sketches in Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," and there was also his "Life of Richard Savage." There was ont? economist who towered head and shoulders abov« his contemporaries — one who could write English, and write it so well that he thought they could claim for his books excellent hteratuie, and that was Adam Smith. Ho was by no meant, a showy man, but he was a beau in regard to his books — he liked them nicely bound, as he (the speaker) and his humblest disciples did. (Hear, hear.) LETTER- WRITING. Finally, continued the High Commissioner, it was an age of letter-writing, and if there was one thing more than another impressed upon poor mortals, it was that the art ot letter-writing had long since been lost — an art which was practised to perfection by their ancestors. Horace Walpole was a superlative letter- writer, and then thero was also Lady Mary Wortley Montague, and Hood and Gray the poets. Pope took enormous pains with his letters, but he did not think most people would find Pope either very amusing, instructive, or useful. The same might be said of Swift's letters, which owed a great deal of their enduring fame to the fact that they made a part of a strange and most interesting human tragedy. It might seem to them that the list he had given them was a very fairly long one, but if they put together all the works he had named, and added a few he had omitted, how many shelves would be required to hold them? He believed two ot the ordinary size would be large enough — and that wa* tho surviving literature of 120 years. Did that represent a tenth, twentieth, or fifteenth of the books published? Of course not. There was an immense amount of poor stuff put into print in English — bad paper, in fact bad in every way. There were piles of it still knocking about the world taking up space in libraries that might be given to better and more readable books. There was no reason to suppose that the spread of writing in the main had led to degeneracy among the people of today. The difficulty of the librarian was to deal with the enormous quantity that was turned out. They must remember that libraries were made for the public and not the public for the libraries. (Cheers.) If the public had not lost its way and was utterly bewildered among its labyrinth of contemporary literature, they probably would not hear half so much about libraries and tho troubles of librarians. The publishing trade was* not organised and never had been, and the extreme and keen competition among the whole of the numerous tribe of publishers led to an enormous number of books being issued. A great number ot them never ought to have been published, never ought to have been printed, and as infants should have been strangled in the cradle without delay. (Laughter.) STUPID, IDIOTIC BOOKS. There were numbers of books coming into life every day that ought to be destroyed as quickly as possible. The speaker said he was not referring merely to immoral books, but to stupid, brainless, idiotic books — there were plenty of them in the realms of fiction. Heaven only knew how they got printed — he did not know. They knew that novelists were credulous and ambitious and many had a little money when they began — (laughter; — he did not say what they had at the finish. How so many of those books got into print, however, was a thing that no one outside the* wivlls of the publisher's office could understand. He was not protesting only against immoral and imbecile books, but against unnecessary publications. So far as the public was concerned, there was no guarantee that the books they clamoured for were head and shoulders above other books or that they were in any way the best — but they were the books that were pushed. There never was an age of the world when well equipped, well trained, well qualified librarians were more pressingly needed than "at the present time. The moral of his discourse was that their services were wanted, secondly that a great deal more than their services was required, and there was wanted from them a great deal more in the future than they had done, or were allowed to do, in the past, and they would have to qualify tnernselves for the great task before them.