The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-11-10
F FAMOUS LIBRARIAN WILL SOON RETIRE Dr. Fortescue Has Been the
 Keeper of Many Books PECULIAR REQUESTS
Patron Asked for Barrie's Little Monster" British Museum Li- brary Most Valuable in the
 World and Is Youngest

nearly 100000 volumes and form the largest library in the world, will, after the last of this month, be under entirely goes. This vast assemblage of books is housed at the British museum, and on the date above mentioned Dr. G. K. For tescue, who has served for forty-two years in the museum library, and, with the official title of keeper of printed books, has been it's head since 1899, Is going to retire. The doctor is s4, and says that hereafter he will devote him. self to his favorite hobby. which con- sists of collecting European butterflies.
 It is literally true that there are forty six miles of books at the British museum, whose closely packed shelves would stretch from London io Brighton. The exact number of volumes is not known even to the venerable keeper himself, who estimates that there must be nearly 4.O0O, GOO. but can't be sure to within a few hundred thousand. Nor is this surprising when you consider that the annual num- Der of new pieces received at the mu- scum every year is 1zo,ooo--a piece be- ing anything from a tiny printed pamph- let to history of the world in one hun dred volumes Since pr. Fortescue en- tered the library in 1870, over two million volumes have been added.
 Oddly enough, although the largest and admittedly the most valuable library in existence, that at the British museum IS also the youngest of the great libraries of the world. The other most famous ones. such as the Vatican library. the Bibliotheque Rationale in Paris, and the royal library at Munich had whole cen turies the start of it, yet now the only one of them that approaches 1t In size is the Paris library, which is next big sest with 3,5o0,0o0 volumes. Third place is occupied by the imperial library of St. Petersburg. which contains 1881, ,62S books, while the United States claims fourth for tho congressional library In Washington, with i,Ds.1tS.
 Cary, the translator of "Dante," was a custodian of the British Museum library in It's early days, when the institution had no regular income, and could buy books only by getting a special grant from the treasury which was about as easy as obtaining blood from q stone. It's real nlSlOfy Us n tADIdTy Ut iISt IdfSt DeBdii in 1S30, when an obscure Italian refugee, Antonio Panizzi, for whom, however, fame and tho title of sir were waiting-was ap- pointed keeper of printed books. He found a collection of 250,000 volumes some of them immensely valuable, but all of them i'll cared for, i'll arranged and i'll nataiogued When ahe resigned after 30 yaars of work that had been true labor of love, he left behind him magnificent and ordered library of 1,50o.000 books, sec ond in importance only to the Bibliotheque Rationale.
 pr. Fortescue entered the librarye five years later and his record as keeper of printed books does not suffer by complri- son wffh Panizzis. Seen at the library, the other day, the doctor said that 1t was "somewhat alarming to him to think that 2.ooOoo0 books have been added to the library since he took charge.
 ''Of course, said he, the vast ma jority of these are what Lord Rosebery called dead books But who can say that book is dead? How many authors whose books are entombed here may yet prove more alive than those whose books arc now enjoying transient life? The vital question is when does a book really die? Certainly not when and be- cause it comes from the press unnoticed by reviewers and public. The history of literature provides many instances of au- lthors who passed almost unnoticed in their life time, and whose dead books came to be looked upon by posterity as living treasures. Fitzgerald and Butler might be cited as examples. In our own time and horr who ever heard while they lived of Sygne or Francis Thompson?"
 No end of Americans make use of the British Museum library and it was one of them who started Dr. Fortescue off or the work on which he brides himself l mai ixr {n6ex -1lsi la five volumes and contains the subjects of all books printed between 1880 and the present time.
 "One day." said he, 'one of your coun- trymen asked me what is the best guide to the Canary Islands,? Browns l re- piled. Thanks retorted my questioner, but which of them? There are three whole volumes of Browns here This struck me as so absurd that I immedi- ately started to compile my subject in- dex. That was in 1893, and the task was completed only quite recently
 Most of the visitors to the British Mu- scum library. of course, are students who are not likely to perpetrate involun- ftary "howlers' in naming the titles of the books they want. Such howlers, for instance, as the one committed by the person who asked at an American library for "David's Harem,' or those that are recorded in an entertaining book just puDlSneu Dy Joseph SndylOr, WHO eNl- |, dently knows the book business from A to Z He tells how one librarian was asked for Barres Little Monster" and another for his Widows Thumbs" (the subscriber meant "A Window in Thrums while third was requested to supply "Pharaoh's Life of Christ" the actual work being by Dean Farrar. Some of the laughs in Shaylor's book, however are against librarians. He tells how diff ferent specimens of the genus listed Max Muller's Chips From German Work shop as work on carpentry, Sir Sam uel Bakers Albert Nyanza" as book fof biography and Sir Walter Peasant Al in a Garden Fair" as treatise on gardening. We are told also of would be book sellers assistants who asserted in their examination papers that Herbert Spencer wrote ''rhe Faerie Queen. that IThackeray was the author of Paul and Virginia, and-most beautiful of all-that "Bacon's Essays were written by an American,
 The proud father who regales all and sundry with the bright sayings of his young hopeful is & favorite butt oi the funny men, but there is at least one such parent who can afford to laugh at the sneers of testers on this . subject. This batter familias, who k known personally to the writer and who by profession is a proofreader or ee'"n re~-spapcr, declared that ever since his little boy, whose years mum able to make observation. about things iM general, his childish , utterances have paid for all his clothes Apparently this youngster is Mark Twain of the future. and his juvenile , quips already would fill small volume and may Some day. His father. news tt,u m 0fYl1 1QV tra in