But, of course, no sensible man ever really quarrels with his hobby.  A little petulance every now and again variegates the monotony of routine.  Mr. Gosse tells us in his book that he cannot resist Restoration comedies.  The bulk of them he knows to be as bad as bad can be.  He admits they are not literature—­whatever that may mean—­but he intends to go on collecting them all the same till the inevitable hour when Death collects him.  This is the true spirit; herein lies happiness, which consists in being interested in something, it does not much matter what.  In this spirit let me take up Mr. Gosse’s book again, and read what he has to tell about Pharamond; or, the History of France.  A Fam’d Romance.  In Twelve Parts, or about Mr. John Hopkins’ collection of poems, printed by Thomas Warren for Bennet Bunbury at the Blue Anchor, in the Lower Walk of the New Exchange, 1700.  The Romance is dull, and as it occupies more than 1,100 folio pages may be pronounced tedious, and the poetry is bad, but as I do not seriously intend ever to read a line of either the Romance or the poetry, this is no great matter.

LIBRARIANS AT PLAY

No man of feeling will grudge the librarians of the universe their annual outing.  Their pursuits are not indeed entirely sedentary, since at times they have to climb tall ladders, but of exercise they must always stand in need, and as for air, the exclusively bookish atmosphere is as bad for the lungs as it is for the intellectuals.  In 1897 the Second International Library Conference met in London, attended several concerts, was entertained by the Marchioness of Bute and Lady Lubbock; visited Lambeth Palace and Stafford and Apsley Houses; witnessed a special performance of Irving’s Merchant of Venice; were elected honorary members of the City Liberal, Junior Athaeneum, National Liberal, and Savage Clubs; and, generally speaking, enjoyed themselves after the methods current during that period.  They also read forty-six papers, which now alone remain a stately record of their proceedings.

I have lately spent a pleasant afternoon musing over these papers.  Their variety is endless, and the dispositions of mind displayed by these librarians are wide as the poles asunder.  Some of them babble like babies, others are evidently austere scholars; some are gravely bent on the best methods of classifying catalogues, economizing space, and sorting borrowers’ cards; others, scorning such mechanical details, bid us regard libraries, and consequently librarians, as the primary factors in human evolution.  ‘Where,’ asks Mr. Ernest Cushing Richardson, the librarian of Princetown University, New Jersey, U.S.A., ‘lies the germ of the library?’ He answers his own question after the following convincing fashion:  ’At the point where a definitely formed concept from another’s mind is placed beside one’s own idea for integration, the result being a definite new form, including the substance of both.’  The pointsman who presides over this junction is the librarian.