depromptus ; seu apud dominum janitorem[1] remotus ; seu a muribus exesus ; seu propter pulverem haud facile agnoscendus; seu unus inter ducentos super eundem pluteum incomposite collocatos ; sive forsitan, libro alias translato, prisca notitia libraria nihilominus in catalogo exstiterit ; seu catalogus ipse negligenter exaratus fuerit; seu sphalma aliquid typographicum irrepserit; seu ob alias quascunque causas diabolo soli notas, quasque, ut ait cl. Dundrearius, nullus homo exquirere queat."
"Yes, faith, the thing is so, unless your book have been made away with, or be worn out and in need of binding, or lost, or anyhow be non inventus, or asked for by some other maker of books, or taken out of its press by a youthful library attendant for mental recreation without leaving a 'board,' or be far away with Mr. Porter, or eaten by mice, or barely recognisable for dust, or be one of a couple of hundred placed higgledy-piggledy on the same shelf. Or, it may be, the book has been removed to a fresh place, but the old press-mark still remains in the catalogue, or the catalogue itself has been carelessly drawn up, or a printer's error has crept in; or for any other reasons, which the Devil alone knows, and which, as the great Dundreary says, no fellow can possibly understand."
There is in the Italian and Belgian, and possibly in other Continental, libraries an excellent regulation, that if for any reason a book is denied to a reader his demand-ticket shall be kept, and a report made of the number of such tickets. In this way it is easy to ascertain whether the service of the library is being hampered by the misplacing of
- ↑ Translate "Mr. Porter." The reference is to a former assistant keeper of that name.
