BIBLIOGRAPHY
THE term Bibliography lias passed through different meanings. The βιβλιόγραφος of the Greeks, like the librarius of the Romans, was a mere copyist. When the name bibliographie was adopted by the French, it was used, as late as the middle of the last century, to signify skill in deciphering and judging of ancient manuscripts. Its special application to printed books may be said to date from the Bibliographie Instructive of De Bure in 1763; not that he appears to have coined the new meaning of the term, but his work first popularized the study which the growth of libraries and the commerce in literature had created.
Bibliography, thus understood, may be defined as the science of books, having regard to their description and proper classification. Viewing books simply as vehicles of learning, it would undoubtedly be correct to extend our inquiry to the period when the only books, so called, were manuscripts. And such is, in fact, the view adopted by bibliographers like Peignot, Namur, and Hartwell Horne. But a survey so extensive is open to practical objections. In the first place, bibliography as a science was unknown until long after printing had laid its first foundations, and indeed made it a necessity, with requirements increasing with the multiplied productions of the press. The materials for comparative study were wanting in an age when books were regarded as isolated treasures, to be bought at prices corresponding with their scarcity. In the second place, the critical study and comparison of ancient manuscripts, their distribution into families deduced from one or more archetypes, and the investigation of ancient systems of writing, embrace a subject so wide in its scope and special in its character, that convenience of treatment, confirmed as it is by the facts of history, would alone suggest the propriety of distinguishing between manuscript and printed bibliography. This distinction it is here proposed to observe, the subject of MSS. being reserved for the article Palæography, the name which in its maturity it received.
Amid much variety of treatment in detail, two main divisions underlie the general study of bibliography, viz., material and literary, according as books are regarded with reference to their form or their substance. The former belongs chiefly to the bookseller and book-collector; the latter to the literary man and the scholar. Material bibliography treats of what Savigny terms the "äussere Bücherwesen," or the external characteristics of books, their forms, prices and rarity, the names of the printers, the date and place of publication, and the history of particular copies or editions. It involves a knowledge of typography, not, indeed, as a mechanical process, but in its results, and, in fact, of all the constituent part of books, as a means of identifying particular productions. Its full development is due to the gradual formation of a technical science of books. Considerations of buying and selling, which were first reduced to a system in Holland, and afterwards advanced to their present complete form in France and England, gave an impetus to this branch of bibliography. The growth of private libraries, especially during the last century in France, promoted a passion among rich amateurs for rare and curious books; and literary antiquarians began to study those extrinsic circumstances, apart from the merit of their contents, which went to determine their marketable value, and to reveal the elements of rarity.
Literary, or, as it is sometimes called, intellectual bibliography treats of books by their contents, and of their connection in a literary point of view. It has been sub-divided into pure and applied, according as its functions became more complex with the spread of printed books and the increasing requirements of learning. Catalogues expanded into dictionaries, whose object was to acquaint literary men with the most important works in every branch of learning. Books were accordingly classified by their contents, and the compiler had to distinguish between degrees of relative utility, so that students might know what books to select. This duty, which devolved in most cases on men of learning, has led French writers in particular to exaggerate the province of bibliography. "La bibliographie," says Achard, "étant la plus étendue de toutes les sciences, semble devoir les renfermer toutes;" and Peignot describes it under his proposed title of Bibliologie, as "la plus vaste et la plus universelle de toutes les connaissances humaines." We know of no excuse for such pretensions beyond this, that books represent, in its transmissible form, the sum total of all kinds of knowledge. The bibliographer has to determine the genuineness, not the authenticity of a book; its identity of authorship or publication, not the correctness of its contents. When he pronounces judgment on its intrinsic merits he usurps the office of the critic. Some works, indeed,—like Baillet's Jugemens des Savans, sur les Principaux Ouvrages des Auteurs, augmentés par M. de la Monnoye, 8 vols., Amst., 1724; Blount's Censura Celebriorum Auctorum, London, 1690; Morhof's Polyhistor Literarius, Philosophicus, et Practicus, the best edition of which is that of Fabricius in 1747; the Onomasticon Literarium of Saxius, Utrecht, 7 vols., 1759-90; and the Censura Literaria of Sir Egerton Brydges, 10 vols., 1805-9,—are collections of critical bibliography of extreme value to the literary historian; but there is a wide difference in design between compilations even of this kind and works devoted to original criticism. In like manner the proper objects of classification have been neglected by many bibliographers, who have indulged in refinements of method, not as a means of facilitating reference, but for the purpose of illustrating a philosophical system of learning. Pretensions such as these, have, unfortunately, done much to discredit bibliography as a science of practical application, by investing it with a false air of mystery, and exposing it to the charge of empiricism. Its real value, in a literary aspect, depends on the recognition of its purpose as ancillary to the study of literature; not, in short, as an end, but as a means to the attainment of knowledge, by the investigation of its sources.
France must be regarded as the real mother of bibliography.[1] Italy was the field in which book-collections first began on a large scale, and that country can boast of names like Magliabecchi, Apostolo Zeno, Bandini, Audiffredi, Mazzuchelli, and Morelli, besides provincial works like Moreni's Bibliografia della Toscana, and Gamba's Serie di Testi. But the labours of French bibliographers, especially after Naude, converted a study, more or less desultory, into a science and a systematic pursuit. In Germany, poor in public and almost destitute of private libraries, bibliography has been studied almost exclusively in its literary aspect. Belgium has shown much recent activity; but neither Holland, Spain, nor Portugal can show any modern work of importance. In England the paucity of bibliographers is the more to be regretted from the wealth of her resources. Richard de Bury, in his Philobiblion, had descanted on the cliarms of book-collecting as early as the 14th century; but Blount's Censura, published in 1690, was the only regular
- ↑ The term bibliognoste originated with the Abbé Rive; words similarly compounded, and involving fanciful niceties of distinction, are common among French writers on this subject (Peignot).
