Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/131

Record of Bibliography and Library Literatim. 119 Authors and their Public in Ancient Times : a sketch of literary conditions and of the relations with the public of literary producers, from the earliest times to the invention of print- ing. By Geo. Haven Putnam. G. P. Putnam's Sons : New York and London, the Knickerbocker Press. 1894. 8vo., pp. xvii., 309. Mr. Putnam has compiled a very readable book, but he has nothing new to tell, and his work by no means carries out the promise of its title page. It begins, it is true, with the earliest times, in which the fragments of book-lore which have come down to us from Chaldaea, Egypt, China, Japan and other ancient countries, are pieced together -from various popular manuals. The two chapters on Greece and Rome, where Mr. Putnam had his ground prepared for him by such writers as Birt and Schmitz, are fairly full and interesting, especially that on Rome, which brings us down to the fourth century of our era. Half-a- dozen pages are then devoted to Constantinople, and with a reference to printing at Venice the book comes to an end. Mr. Putnam was under no obligation to collect materials for the history of " literary conditions 1 ' in Europe from, say, the 8th to the 1 5th centuries, but to advertise a work which wholly omits them, as extending "from the earliest times to the in- vention of printing," is as though an English history professedly coming down to the time of the Tudors, were to consist of some stories of the Heptarchy, a fairly good account of the Norman Conquest, and a reference to Cardinal Wolsey. After all, a good deal more is known about book- production in the middle ages, than in Chaldasa, India and Persia, and the other ancient countries, to which Mr. Putnam gives up more than fifty pages. As we have said, however, the two chapters on Greece and Rome give a useful summary of their subject, though even in these the reader must be warned to be on his guard against the too frequent misprints. The Library of James VI., 1573-1583, from a manuscript in the hand of Peter Young, his tutor, edited with introduction and notes, by George F. Warner, M.A., F.S.A. Edinburgh: printed at the University Press by T. and A . Constable for the Scottish History Society. 1893. 8vo., pp. Ixxxvi. (Extracted from the Miscellany, vol. xv. of the Publications of the Scottish History Society, December, 1893.) When he came to man's estate, James VI. of Scotland was a lover of fine books, and both in England and Scotland employed good binders. The library, however, of which Mr. Warner has to tell, was formed not by the king, but for him, and consisted partly of such works as his tutors thought fit for his education, partly of such wreckage as could be got together of the interesting collection which had belonged to his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, and had been first confiscated, and then nibbled away piecemeal after her flight into England. The story of this hand-list of the young king's books is a strange one, and we may leave Mr. Warner to tell it in his own words : " Although its very existence," he says, " was unknown until a year ago, there is every reason to believe that it came to the British Museum when the Royal Library was removed thither, as far back as 1759. Probably it was regarded merely as a rough list of some portion of the collection made public property by George II. ; in any case, instead of being classed and catalogued, as it ought to have been, among the MSS.