The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-05-01
Represents Vast Research.

Represents Vast Research.
 In looking over these rows Of volumes my poor Falstan regiments of books'' as Carlyle once humorously described them in a letter to Ralph W aldo Elmer son-the privileged visitor to the Harvard library cannot but be struck with the tremendous amount of research Carlyle die in preparation for the writing of h,s two famous biographies. At one end ol the line there are ponderous tones sLch as Sir Bultsrode Whitlocks Mem orfals of English Affairs" of which Car lyle remarks in his life of Cromwell: 'Bulstrode has a kind of dramaturgic turn in him, indeed an occasional poetic friskiness; most unexpected, if the hippopotamus should show sudden tend ency to dance" At the other end are the "dumpy little quarto" volumes of sermons of which he once said By hu- man volition they can be read but not by any human memory remembered And between these extremes one finds host of histories; cheap books; memoirs; tracts; sermons; biographies; histories of special periods or incidents; diares-in fact, evry form of written matter bear ing however remotely on the respective periods of Cromwell and Frederick These volumes, moreover, represent only part of the material that was dlgested to make the Cromwell and Frederick bo- graphies, for the Harvard collection in- cludes simply in Carlyles own words the books (whateyer of them could not borrow, but had to buy and gather, that Is, in general whatever of them are still here) which I used In writing Crom- well and Frederick"
 Gift Long Considered.
 The gift of these books to some New England institution, as a way of express ing his appreciation of the reception &C., corded his work on this side of the wa ter, had been long considered by Carlyle. Ills own modestly, however, had made him hesitate. In a letter written to Ralph Waldo Emerson in November, 1869 and now part of the Carlyle collection at Harvard. he speaks of the present as one which he had had In mind for many years. The extreme insignificanoe of the gift" he writes, this and nothing else gave me pause. Last summer l was lucky enough to meet with your friend Charles Eliot Norton, and renew many old Massachusetts recollections in free talk with so genial, gracefully social and cheerful a man. To him I spoke of the anair, candidly describing 1t, especially the above questionable feature of 1t, so Tar as l could; and his answer then, and more deliberately afterwards, was so hopeful. hearty and decisive that In erect 1t has decided me. |. l. To say more about the infinitesimally small value of the books would be superlatlve Nay, in truth, many or most of them are not without intrinsic value, one or two are even excellent as books. and all of them, 1t may perhaps be said. have a kind of symbolic or biographic value and testify Ca thing not useless) on what slender commissariat stores considerable campaigns-12 years long or so-may be carried on in this world"
 The 'slender oommissarat stores" which the average mind would shudder at the thought of dIgesting even In 12 years of study, are in several languages, chiefly in English. German and French, and many of the volumes are now num- bered among the rare books that libra rians guard with especial vigilance. Even If they were not rare in themselves the marginal comments of the great English thinker would give them a priceless value to book collectors.
 Notes Are Characteristic.