ledge, he will never be able to assign to each book its proper place, even if the book has only one proper place; still less successful must he be, if, as is usually the case, a book has two, three, or more places.

"If any one will only take the trouble to think the matter over, he must see that classification, like cataloguing, is relative to some use that is to be made of the classification. As the use varies so does the classification, the principles of which shift about as rapidly as the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope. Let no one be deluded by such a phrase as Subject Catalogue: subject is a vague word, and subjects can be composed in as many ways as ideas can be associated. 'The condition of the poor among the ancient Romans' is a 'subject'; 'Aristotle's quotations from Homer and other poets' is also a 'subject'; and so on ad infinitum. Both these subjects will go, as will most others, under more heads than one.

"Again, there are an immense number of books which refuse to go under any one class whatever; their contents are so multifarious and miscellaneous, that they have the right to enter anywhere and everywhere. Some librarians try to get out of this sort of difficulty by abandoning 'subjects' and taking to 'forms.' They put all 'Essays' together irrespective of subject, all 'Biographies,' and so on. A man interested, let us say, in 'Broadsides' would highly approve of such an arrangement, for he would find all such things, however heterogeneous, classed together, ballads, proclamations, play-bills, posters, and the like. Suppose, again, a man wanted autobiographical sketches from St. Augustine's Confessions down to (or up to) the Memoirs of Finette, he would get them in the catalogue I am now considering; he would not get them in the Bodleian Subject Catalogue, because Autobiography' is a 'form' and not a 'subject.' In any case, however, thousands of volumes in a library so large as ours must

be thrown together into purely arbitrary and artificial classes which have nothing to do either with 'forms' or 'subjects.' A book relegated to such a heading as 'Literary Miscellanies' is, in fact, not classed at all, and all such sham classes (numerous enough in large catalogues) are so many confessions that the attempt to sort books by their subjects breaks down.

"Some books are definitely this or that, and nothing else; but large numbers are as vague and indefinite as the transition tints in a rainbow, or as those excruciating notes somewhere between C and C sharp which may be heard on a summer's night in a conversazione of excited cats. The man with no ear for music has no difficulty in classing the ambiguous note; the man insensible to colour boldly classes the equivocal tint; and some charming book that laughs at classification, a perfectly sane and delightful volume like the Essays of Elia' or 'Fuller's Holy and Profane State' will be seized by the stolid slave of a system, and thrust like a lunatic into the straightwaistcoat of a class where its best friends will never more be able to find it.

"Not to be wearisome, a classed catalogue of a large library is an absurdity and something worse, because all classification is arbitrary; what suits one searcher for wisdom will not suit another, and it is impossible to please all; because the larger the number of classes, the more difficult it is to discover whereabouts your book is likely to be found; because there must be an immense number of double and treble entries and of crossreferences; because large classes containing thousands of volumes are altogether artificial and useless; because the result must be an unwieldy, overgrown thing in the case of the Bodleian, probably twice as big at least as the present alphabetical catalogue; because the labour, time, and expense of it is enormous; because, finally, it can never answer the expectations of those who wish for it.

"Such are some (and only some) of the objections to a classed catalogue. After all what the weak-kneed brethren want is not a classed catalogue; they want what the Undergraduate profanely calls tips'; being not very industrious, and perhaps not overburdened with learning, they want to be directed, with as little trouble as possible, to all the books, pamphlets, articles, and so forth, which treat of any subject that happens to interest them. The need which they dumbly feel and cannot articulately express is for a ready and infallible index to all literature whatever, or failing that to all printed books. As well ery for the moon; the thing is not to be had. An index to the names of such books as are definite enough to admit of classification is not a downright impossibility; large portions of it, more or less complete, already exist, and if more were wanted, more would be made, but such an index would necessarily omit an enormous number of volumes as irreducible to order; the index would never be more than a portion, and a comparatively small portion, of a catalogue. This might, perhaps, assist the toddling babes of literature, but the men do not want it, and I contend that only the men ought to be admitted to such a library as the Bodleian. Be that, however, as it may, it is no part of a librarian's duty to inform readers what books exist treating of Roman roads, London fogs, &c. &c. The reader must bring that knowledge with him, or he must know how to obtain it; and really when one considers how simple an art that of literary research is, it is wonderful that we should sanction the expenditure of Bodleian funds on a work not wanted by robust and expert students, and almost, if not quite, useless to anybody else."

When this Memorandum was written, I had not read one single word of the evidence given by Mr. Panizzi and others, some portions of which are quoted below;

my conclusions were wholly independent; they were not derived from the testimonies of others, but from my own experience. The paper, as far as I know, produced no effect whatever on those to whom it was addressed, and, to tell the plain truth, I did not expect that it would produce any. Two Curators certainly read it, and declared themselves perfectly satisfied with the soundness of the argument; but then they were men so well acquainted with the subject that they needed no persuasion from me. To those who have only a superficial knowledge of the matter, and still more to those who are wholly ignorant of it, the statement that a real classed catalogue of the Bodleian is an impossibility may naturally appear a paradox. But let it be carefully borne in mind what the question really is. It is not perhaps impossible to make a satisfactory classed catalogue of a small library; the question is whether it is possible to make such a catalogue of a library so large as the Bodleian is. Many things are possible on a small scale which are impossible on a large one. A ship a quarter of a mile long may be possible; a ship four miles long is not.

I am unable to give a history of the Bodleian classed catalogue; but assuming the correctness of certain information now before me, it would appear that it was commenced in June, 1878, and that something like £1400 had been already spent on it by the end of 1886. At the British Museum they began a classed catalogue in June, 1826, and after wasting upon it £5335 18s. 8d. they abandoned it in 1834. What ours will cost no man can tell or even guess; but from what I must regard as a wildly sanguine estimate, based throughout on suppositions which never can be realized, it cannot cost less than £5650, in addition to the money already spent on it; in all £7000 in round numbers. If this sum were doubled, or even trebled, it is certain that the thing could

not be done, and it is for the University to seriously consider whether it will persist in throwing good money after bad, or whether it will at once close a profitless account, and write off its losses as a bad and irrecoverable debt. Convocation has the right to spend its own money exactly as it pleases; but I see what I fancy to be a plain staring piece of folly, a downright waste of money, and, having said so publicly I wash my hands of the business.

The time which it will take to complete the catalogue, supposing its completion possible, is as uncertain as the money which it will cost. Assuming a number of conditions to be satisfied which never can be satisfied, that is to say, if we suppose that to happen which certainly will not happen unless miracles recommence, it cannot be completed for some five and twenty years. And even then it would not be really completed, because the whole catalogue would need revision, duplicate or multiple slips would still have to be written and arranged, and supposing all this done there would still remain an alphabetical index to the subjects contained in it, for without that index the classed catalogue, even supposing it ever completed, would be far too unwieldy for use. So much appeared to be clear in September, 1886. In January, 1888, we are told that it is possible this estimate of the time required for the work may have been excessive. So far from being excessive, it vastly underrated the difficulties of the task, and by consequence took an over-sanguine view of the time necessary for its completion.

As to its size, it is estimated that it would fill quite one thousand volumes folio, and it would no doubt fill more than that number. A thousand or more large folio volumes will insist on occupying a very considerable space, and that man is not to be envied who is condemned to use a catalogue so ponderous and so formidable.

It seems then that, if we spend an unknown but vast