454
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. VIIL NOV. so, 1901.
contains no hint of the publisher, but was
probably bought in Glasgow or Edinburgh
many years ago. I shall be happy to let
M. N. G. look at this, if he is unable to
procure a copy. E. MEIN.
Sandford, Blundellsands, Liverpool.
This Covenant consists of three parts. The first and third parts are set out in Masson's 'Life of Milton,' vol. i, edition of 1881, pp. 728-32. The second part, according to Masson, consists only of recitals of certain Scottish statutes by reference. T.
"TEENAH"=FIG TREE (9 th S. viii. 344). The question is answered almost precisely in 1 Encyclopaedia Biblica,' s.v. 'Fig Tree.'
C. S. WARD.
THURLOW AND THE DUKE OF GRAFTON (9 th S. viii. 405). According to Charles Butler's ' Reminiscences ' (1824, vol. i. pp. 188-90), Thurlow's celebrated reply to the Duke of Graf ton was made "during the inquiry into Lord Sandwich's administration of Greenwich Hospital." This inquiry, which was made on the motion of the Duke of Richmond, lasted from March to June, 1779 Pail. Hist.,' xx. 484). G. F. R. B.
NOTES ON BOOKS, &o.
The Care of Books. By John Willis Clark, M.A.,
F.S.A. (Cambridge, University Press.) THOUGH appealing naturally and necessarily to bibliophiles, and destined to find a home on the shelves of every place entitled to be called a library, this book of the Registrar of the University of Cambridge is wholly unlike almost anything in the department of bibliography. With that now popular branch of' knowledge, indeed, Mr. Clark disclaims any connexion or concern. Bibliography will, he says in his opening pages, be "wholly excluded." Books are, from his point of view, "simply things to be taken care of," and their external features even concern him " only so far as they modify the methods adopted for arrangement and preservation." The title adopted is brief and adequate. The scope of the book might, however, have been more adequately defined had it been expanded. ' Books : their Housing, Arrangement, and Preservation,' would commend itself to us, though the exception we take, if regarded as such, is frivolous. At any rate, the volume is welcome, and constitutes a chapter in our knowledge con- cerning libraries and their contents deeply interest- ing and in its way unique. Disclaim as he may the adjective " bibliographical," the author cannot
prevent its application. A work written concern-
ing books must necessarily be bibliographical, and
in portions of his volume when, for instance, he
deals with chained books our latest bibliographer
is on ground previously occupied by the late William
Blades. It was while writing his * Architectural
History of the University of Cambridge' that the
notion arose that the study of the customs affecting
monastic libraries might prove remunerative. In
the Rede Lecture of June, 1894, he attempted a
reconstruction of the monastic library, and showed
the value of illuminated MSS. as depicting the life
of a mediaeval scholar and scribe. As Sandars
Lecturer on Bibliography he developed the subject
in 1900 so as to include the libraries of Greece and
Rome. Since that time he has, in the course of
travels undertaken for the purpose, gone further
into various libraries, making himself careful
measurements, accompanied in many instances by
sketches, and invoking successfully the co-operation
of numerous librarians at home and abroad. The
result is a work creditable in all respects to the
writer, and in many respects to the publishers, and
laiming the homage of book-lovers throughout
the world. It is brilliantly illustrated, and
many of the designs, those especially from illumi-
nated manuscripts, are of great beauty and interest.
If we have reluctantly to hint at censure, in which
the author is no wise involved, we would declare
that the book is, for its size, marvellously heavy,
suggesting the use of the appliances for perusal in
vogue in mediaeval times, and that the most careful
treatment of the volume scarcely precludes the risk
of plates or pages becoming detached from the
remainder.
It is, of course, superfluous in the case of readers of ' N. & Q.' to draw attention to the fact that the earliest documents, so soon as perishable records w r ere substituted for stone, were altogether unlike the books of to-day, and that the receptacles for hold- ing them were no less unlike our present shelves. When we reach classic times, and, indeed, almost until the use of printing, books were in rolls, and the pious scribe, at the end of his long labour, not seldom wrote " Explicit. Laus Deo." The earliest library which Mr. Clark presents consists of the record rooms discovered by Layard, and depicted in his ' Nineveh and its Remains.' These are in the palace of Assur-bani-pal. This involves a respectable antiquity, and Dr. Wallis Budge is disposed to think that the bilingual lists which that monarch had drawn up for his library in Nineveh were intended for the use of students. In well-known passages in the epitome of the first book of the ' Deipnosophists ' of Athenseus we hear of extensive libraries six centuries before our era in the possession of Polycrates. tyrant of Samos, and Pisistratus, tyrant of Athens, the latter, according to Aulus Gellius, accessible to all who cared to use it. From the same quarter we hear of the possession of considerable libraries by Euri- pides the poet and Aristotle the philosopher.
In ' The Frogs ' of Aristophanes yEschylus refers to the books of Euripides, and Xenophon speaks of the number of books in the possession of Euthy- demus, a follower of Socrates. The passage in Aristophanes is as follows
KOL /jLrjKfT 1 /xoiye Kar' eVos, aAA' es rov O.TJTOS, TO, TrouSt', rj yvvrj, ~
lyw Se 8v' 7rr] r
and its authority is not undisputed. Evidence, however, as to how books were cared for in Greece during the golden period is not to be had, and even concerning the libraries at Alexandria and that at Pergamon little is known, though Mr. Clark gives a plan of the rooms at Pergamon supposed to have
