THE HON. W. P. REEVES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 14382, 27 November 1908, Page 10

THE HON. W. P. REEVES.

■ HIS NEW APPOINTMENT. STRIKING INAUGURAL ADDRESS. (From Oca Own' Coiirespokdent.) LONDON,. October 16. At' the Royal School of Medicine, 20 Hanover square, London, on Tuesday evening, the Hon. W. Pomber Reeves, High Commissioner for New Zealand, delivered his inaugural address as the director of tho London School oi Economics. Mr E. A. Baker, M.A.j E. of Litt., presided, Tlic Chairman said that in the ordinary way it was the'duty of the chairman 6 to introduce tho speaker, but oil this occnsiou he thought the order should be reversed, and , he should introduce the audience to Mt Pember Reeves. Ho ivas u. gentleman very well knovm to the public, and especially to librarians, who had many of liis hooks on their shelves. The "olonies and the Old Country knew him a statesman, but they, preferred to know.him as an historian'and economist, and t/lioy 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 eyo and sympathy would in the ■future bo 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-nvinde<l librarians. They wanted him to .know they were desirous of evolving the librarian superior to,the liter generation in the same way that the library of the future was to be superior •to -that. o£ tho past.—(Cheers.) The problem, he hoped Mr Reeves would solve ■was: How to give library assistants the means of acquiring an education at once Eberal and technical, corresponding to the "facilities which were open to teachers in. their ; various schools.—(Cheers.) Mr Reeves, who met with a very hearty Beoeption,. said' he was in . the unlucky position at the moment of. serving two' masters, because, though ho was director of the London School of Economics, he ■wduld not'-be free from his duties as' High Commissioner for New Zealand until his successor landed in England.' The v subject of libraries and librariaiiships was an extremely 'good one, for he was not quite sur<Sfcthat where they had an interesting subject, a certain amount of ignorance did not, after all, lend elasticity to style and freedom o£ imagination.—(Laughter.) Shakespeare, who knew little Latin andless Greek, would have given. ail instructive "address oh classics at 'brief notice, aa Burke ,did on Mia and America without having had a glimpse of either country. he (the speaker) had some connection •with libraries, and librarians-hips, because for some j-ears he had been vice-chairman of tho 'London University Library at South Kensington and was now director of the London School of Economics. When, ■lie thought of them and' their accommo<lation he ,was inclined to heavo many heavy gjghs. When he looked .round at South Kensington he wondered where all the 'books were going to be put, and it was a question of which particular passages could be mado to hold the surplus. . As 'to the Library of Economic— well, it was not a library, but- what was galled in Ireland a congested district.— (Laughter.) There were passages, halls, cetlafa, corners, and nooks where piles of books and .bundles and heaps of documents were lying. They 'wanted more space, "llie public was supposed "to be a great patron of libraries and' to have a,-(great interest in ithem, but if they compared the libraries of to-day with those.of a past generation lie supposed it would be said we now l had a more enlightened public. , There was; however, still a great deal to be done. ' Mr. Reeves remarked that he read' the other day that architects, even when building 1 . libraries, ; sometimes consulted librarians, but the practice was not universal. Yet it was the dawning of a brighter era. To describe the attitude of the public toward 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, small 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, line 1 ■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 tilings,, but they could not make a pint 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 the case of the public? Ho was of opinion .that a great deal could be done, and if in his former remarks he seemed to take, a somewhat flippant and somewhat erratic attitude he promised them he would wind up with a moral. There was such a thing, continued Mr Reeves, as matter in tho 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, they should bo got rid of. Two of the (great evils with which /librarians and those concerned in books had, to contend were the tendency to preserve old books simply because they were old, and also the tendency to buy new boohs Emeroly 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 The, Times, in commenting on a letter from Mr Runoiman, suggested that the mass of new books was probably inferior to tho books of the past, inasmuch as reading had spread among the poorer classes—the masses of the people,—whereas iu the past it- was confined to the literary classes. He, supposed, that was a suggestion that years ago books were written by scholars for scholars, - whereas now they were written by anyone they liked lor the masses. That books w*ere 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 Prayer Book, the "Pilgrim's Progress, "Robinson Crusoe," and the works of Robert Burns. Were they written for scholars.'. No, for the masses, and tliev got into tho hearts of the people and moulded the minds of the people.— (Cheers.) Let them look'at the literature of the eighteenth 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 had a certain classic style that gave it the air of culture and commended it to certain literary men, and there were survivals in that which they loved and ad mired and for which they could not be too grateful. But how much did students read of it to-day? .It was an age when poetry was written freely and produced some great poets. They had Pope, Dryden, Cray, and Burns, and possibly 'Goldsmith. What was written by Fry, Gray, Dt Johnson, Collins, and Cowper was not very much, and that was the product of 120 years. That period, so far as the drama was concerned, did not produce one great tragedy, It was certainly responsible for one. good comic opera and some brilliant comedies. Yet out of five men they did not get 20 plays. As to fiction, how many works of that character were there that people still read? There was " The Vicar of Wakefield," also " Tom Jones" and "Clarissa Harlow," "Humphrey Clinker," and Mrs Bnrney's " Evelina," the latter making her famous all at once. It was an age admirably suited for turning out books of travel, but how many did the eighteenth 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 Robert Louis Stevenson. There was one great satire, Swift's " Gulliver's Travels," and then camo the period of pamphlets, which held a similar position to newspaper articles now—but how many of these were worth even looking at to-day? Again, it was an ago of essayists, beginning with Steele, and ending with Henry M'Kcnzie. How many of those were worth reading?

l'lie age produced one great biography— Uoswell s. ''.Life of Johnson." There wore also a few good sketches in Johnson's "Lives of tlio Poets," and there was also liis " Life ol'Hichard Savage." There was one economist J who towered head 'mid shoulders above his contemporaries—one who could write Knglish, una wrote it, so well that ho.thought Lliey could claim for his books excellent literature, and ■ that was Adam: Smith. He was by 110 means a, showy mini, but lio.wiis a beau in regard to his books—he li&ed them nicely bound, as he (the speakor) and his humblest I disciples did.—(Hew,,hear.) [ Finally, continued the High Commissioner, it was an ago of letter-writing,'and if there was ono thing more than another I impressed upon poor mortals it was that the art of letter-writing had long since been lost—an art which was practised to perfection by their ancestors. Horace \Valpolo was a superlative idler-writer, and then there was also Lady Mary -Wortley Montague, and' Hood, and Gray, the poets. Pope took enormous pains witii his letters, but he did not think most .people would find l'ope either very amusing, instructive, or useful.- The same might be said of Swift's letters,. wliicli owed a great deal of their enduring fame to (be fact that they made ji 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 lie had named, and added a few lie had omitted, how many shelves would be required to hold them"? He believed two of* the ordinary size would be large enough-and that was the'surviving literature of 120 years; Did that represent a. tenth, twentieth, or fiftieth of the books published? Of cdurso not. Therewas 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 110 reason to suppose that the spread' of writing in the main had Jed to degeneracy ampng the people of to-day. The difhciiltv of the librarian was to ' dciil with the enormous quantity that was turned out. They must remember tliat libraries were made for the public, and not the public for the libraries,-(Cheers.) It 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 the troubles of librarians. The publishing trade was not organised, and, never had been, and. the extremo and keen, compehtioii, among the whole of the numerous tribe-of publishers led to an enormous , number .Of books being issued. A great number'of 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.) There were numbers of books coming into life every day that ought to be destroyed as quickly as possible. The speaker eairl he was not referring merely iSffT i OO but toßtl, P id . brainless, • ji! Js -W'«c were plenty of them fnn V if ° f ' ficfioll. Heaven only knew how they got prmted-he did not know Ihey knew that novelists were credulous and ambitious, and many had a iU ,e u money . when v t],ey began-(laughteL)-lie did not say ivhat they had at the finish How. sq many of'these books got into print, however, was a thing that no one outside the walls of we publishers office eoiild Understand. He was not protesting oiily against' immoral and imbecile - books! but 'against unnecessary publications. , So far as the public was concerned, . was no guarantee that the. books they clamoured for were heads ami .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.. a?e'of the wodd when well-equipped, well-trained, Well-qualified librarians were more pres. singly needed than at. the present time, the moral of liis discourse was that their services were wanted; secondly, that a great deal more than their services was rcquiied, and there was wanted from them a great deal more, .in the future tnan they had'done, or were allowed to do, in the past, and they would have to qualify themselves for the great, task before them. There was no doubt at the present day that- the librarian and his assitants were looked • upon with more respect than formerly—they wei-p n" longer regarded as something, between XJominie aampson and a shop porter.— (Laughter.). But the public had 'yet to wake to the fact that the librarian, occupied an immensely important part in the educational world of the United' Kingdom.—(Cheers.) He ought to bo better paid, and there should not be so much boy labour employed. in libraries.—" Hear, hear. ) The outlook for those boys was very sad. When there was no hope of promotion, and after being in the libraries a few years, they were turned off and younger lads put in'their places. If the public thought a great co-ordination of libraries could be organised without the liberal treatment of the library staffs, it was greatly mistaken.—(Cheers.) They must not think that because they were only carrying out a certain, course of lectures now that they had nothing broader and greater in their minds. Let them have patronage and the funds, and a great deal more would .be done.— (Applause.)