102
NOTES AND QUERIES. [* s. ni. JT*B. 11,
reader having access to them will communi-
cate with me I shall be glad.
I may mention that the pictures probably date from about the end of the sixteenth cen- tury or from the beginning of the seven- teenth. T. Koss.
65, Frederick Street, Edinburgh.
CATALOGUING.
IN my last note on ' Book Terms ' (9 th S. ii. 521) I made an observation about the Cata- logue of the British Museum, and began the following as a foot-note to explain my obser- vations. On finding it exceeded the original note in length I left it out entirely.
It is as well to give credit, when one can, to rules which have produced such a biblio- graphic fiasco as those of the Catalogue of the British Museum. I do not understand how the librarians who have had to work them out kept their tempers perhaps they did not. They have had to disregard the rules in numerous instances before printing, but have retained some with which I observe Mr. Bernard Quaritch is unacquainted. I see by his Catalogue No. 138, p. 33, that he likes these rules. He has a copy of the 1847 Cata- logue, letter A (far more to my taste in the style of printing than the present B.M. Catalogue), arid he says, "Prefixed are ninety- one admirable rules for cataloguing." I should agree with him if he had written another not unpopular, though very naughty word of opposite meaning, and yet had concluded with the "able." Mr. Quaritch appeals for orders, as his " rough lists " are expensive ; so I am still considering which of the two books he begins his rough list with will suit me best. No. 1 is priced at 5,000/., No. 2 at 5,250/.
Although he admires these rules, he does not, as I have remarked, compile his catalogue in accordance with them ; for if he did, he would not put the B.M. Catalogue under British Museum. That would be far too un- scientific ; the proverbial schoolboy could do that. No ; he should start something in this manner : The World : America, Asia, Africa, Europe, Great Britain and Ireland ; Acade- mies : London. Then under this last heading in alphabetical order he should put British Museum. But if the book has an author's name, it must be referred from that name to the World, &c., Academies, &c.
He must not catalogue British Association in the same way. That, instead of coming under the sub-heading London, should be put (of course after going round the world) under Europe, Great Britain and Ireland.
People who have the conceit of thinking they
can find books easily in a catalogue had
better have a try at the British Museum and
look for such a book as " Rome, Pagan and
Papal. By an English resident in that city.
London, 1846." If you want instances of the
perverse, the wrong-headed, the monstrous
in cataloguing, you can find them all in the
B.M. Catalogue, without the least difficulty
or at all events I can.
Mr. Quaritch's customers would probably not understand what he meant, but they would perhaps think what a wonderfully scientific man he was, and bear with it as readers have had to put up with the farrago of scientific nonsense in the Catalogue of the National Library for half a century.
A librarian is an autocrat ; and so much the worse for students if he gets a crank. It is hopeless to object. You are snubbed, told to mind your own business, or else that you are not a " sensible person." The hatred of autho- rities, official or self-constituted, to any out- side interference has lately been shown in the case of the Manacles lighthouse (on the wreck of the Mohegan), and the very same week in the case of the extra lifeboat at Yarmouth, a self-constituted society adver- tising against it as unnecessary, as it was not theirs.
Some time ago, because I objected to dark churches being made darker with stained- glass windows, I was absurdly accused of objecting to stained glass. Now in order to protect myself against being accused of not appreciating the great Catalogue of the British Museum, let me say I think I under- stand its good points, the vast labour, erudition, and care that have been bestowed upon it, as much as it is possible for the average man to do.
I depreciate it by criticizing it only in the same way as we do the 'Hist. Eng. Diet.' One day talking about this dictionary, I said to one of the librarians at the Boclleian I thought it was the greatest work ever done in England. At the moment we were both consulting the printed Catalogue of the British Museum. "Oh," he said, "don't you think this is a greater work 1 "
I must reserve my other ninety objections to the B.M. Catalogue until I have a little more leisure ; but I should like to tell an anec- dote of one of the officers, for all of whom that I have known I have had the greatest respect. I think after the very mild remarks I have made about the defects of the Cata- logue I must say this.
In 1866 I was from time to time working on my bibliography of swimming, 2nd hap-
