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Page 67
The scope and objects of this unique institution are so admirably set
forth by the trustees in their report to the legislature for 1881 that
we append an extract. "The library," they observe, "differs from most
public libraries. It is not a great general library intended in its
endowment and present equipment for the use of readers in all or most of
the departments of human knowledge.... Beyond its special collections it
should be regarded as supplementary to others more general and numerous
and directly adapted to popular use. It is not like the British Museum,
but rather like the Grenville collection in the British Museum, or
perhaps still more like the house and museum of Sir John Soane in
Lincoln's Inn's Fields, in London, both lasting monuments of the
learning and liberality of their honored founders. Thus, while the
library does not profess to be a general or universal collection of all
the knowledge stored up in the world of books, it is absolutely without
a peer or a rival here in the special collections to which the generous
taste and liberal scholarship of its founder devoted his best gifts of
intellectual ability and ample resources of fortune. It represents the
favorite studies of a lifetime consecrated after due offices of religion
and charity to the choicest pursuits of literature and art. It would be
difficult to estimate the value or importance of these marvellous
treasures, whose exhibition hitherto only in part has challenged the
admiration of all scholars and given a new impulse to those studies for
which they furnish an apparatus before unseen in America.... The
countless myriads of volumes produced in the past four centuries of
printing with movable types have left in all the libraries of all the
nations comparatively few monuments, or even memorials, of so many
eager, patient, or weary generations of men whose works have followed
them when they have rested from their labors. The Lenox Library was
established for the public exhibition and scholarly use of some of the
most rare and precious of such monuments and memorials of the
typographic art and the historic past as have escaped the wreck and been
preserved to this day. That exhibition and use must be governed by
regulations which will insure to the fullest extent the security and
preservation of the treasures intrusted to our care, in the enforcement
of which the trustees anticipate the sympathy and co-operation of all
scholars and men of letters, through whose use and labors alone the
public at large must chiefly derive real and permanent benefit from this
and all similar institutions." The "regulations" adopted by the trustees
for the preservation of their treasures do not seem unreasonable.
Admission is by ticket, which may be procured of the librarian by
addressing him by mail. We have space for but the briefest possible
glimpses at these treasures. The chief rarities in typography are found
in the north and south libraries on the first floor. In "first editions"
it would be difficult to say whether the library prides itself most on
its Bibles, its Miltoniana, or its Shakesperiana. In Bibles the whole
art of printing with movable types is fully portrayed, the series
beginning with the "Mazarin," or Gutenberg, Bible, the first book ever
printed with movable types. There are Bibles in all languages. There is
the first complete edition of the New Testament in Greek ever published,
its title-page dated Basle, 1516. In a glass case in the north library
are the four huge "Polyglot" Bibles, marvels of typography, known as the
Complutensian, Antwerp, Paris, and English Polyglots. In the same case
repose the Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus, and Codex
Vaticanus,--three great folios, in the original Greek and Hebrew, sacred
to scholars as the works on which all authority for the Scriptures
rests. Tyndale's New Testament, the first ever printed on English
ground, dated London, 1536, is here, and that rare copy of the King
James version known as the "Wicked Bible." In this copy the printer, as
a satire on the age, omitted the word "not" from the seventh
commandment, and for this piece of waggery was heavily fined, the money
going, it is said, to establish the first Greek press ever erected at
Oxford. Among its "first editions" the library has that of Homer, 1488,
and that of Dante, 1472. The Milton collection deserves special notice:
in addition to the first editions of the poet's various works, it
contains a folio volume of letters and documents pertaining to Milton
and his family, with autograph manuscripts giving exceedingly
interesting details of the poet's private life and fortunes. One of
these is a long original letter from Milton himself to his friend Carlo
Dati, the Florentine, with the latter's reply; there are also three
receipts or releases signed by Milton's three daughters, Anne Milton,
Mary Milton, and Deborah Clarke, a bond from Elizabeth Milton, his
widow, to one Randle Timmis, and several other agreements and
assignments, with the autographs of attesting witnesses. In folio
editions of Shakespeare, and in commentaries, glossaries, and
dissertations, the library is also exceedingly rich. Its collection of
Americana is the wonder and delight of scholars. We must mention the
first publication of the printed letter of Columbus, one in each of its
four editions, giving the first account of his discoveries in the West,
with three autograph letters of Diego Columbus, his son; the
"Cosmographia Introductio," printed at St. Di�, 1507,--the first book in
which a suggestion of the name "America" occurs; and also the first map,
printed in 1520, in which the name appears. Here is the first American
book printed,--a Mexican work, dated 1543-44; the Bay Psalm-Book, 1640,
the first work printed in New England; and the first book printed in New
York,--the Laws of the Province, by Bradford, issued in 1691: the
Puritan evidently placing the gospel first, and the Knickerbocker the
law.
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