Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/161

LEIBNITZ AS A LIBRARIAN. 149 which he had collected with great care, and upon which he set great store. 1 Pamphlets in those times mainly consisted of what now correspond to articles in scientific and literary journals. Periodical publications were very rare at the end of the seventeenth century, and the pamphlet literature of that era often contains good and original work, the very opposite to the useless publications issued in book form, so bitterly decried by Leibnitz. Not much is known of Leibnitz's personal asso- ciations in the library at Wolfenbiittel, but he is stated not to have been accessible to strangers, as much of his time was occupied in his duties as court-le<5turer. In 1696 he was appointed privy councillor of justice one of the highest judicial appointments in the country this notwithstanding his not having practised law as a profession. And again, in 1700 he was concerned in a plan for securing a closer connexion between the courts of Hanover and Brandenburg. He was also the principal founder of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. In spite of these distractions, Leibnitz kept a tight hold upon the administration of affairs in his library. It is especially noted of him that he was most generous in sending books to scholars. One of his latest letters to Hertel (1715) enjoined the latter to pay particular attention to the request of an English theologian who was compiling a British martyro- logy, and who had written to know what the library had on the subject. 1 Guhrauer, 'Serapeum,' 1851, xii., p. 10.