We lend libraries the qualities of our hopes and nightmares; we believe we understand libraries conjured up from the shadows; we think of books that we feel should exist for our pleasure, and undertake the task of inventing them unconcerned about any threat of inaccuracy or foolishness, any terror of writer's cramp or writer's block, any constraints of time and space. The books dreamt up through the ages by raconteurs thus unencumbered compose a much vaster library than those resulting from the invention of the printing press—perhaps because the realm of imaginary books allows for the possibility of one book, as yet unwritten, that escapes all the blunders and imperfections to which we know we are condemned. In the dark, under my two trees, my friends and I have shamelessly added to the catalogues of Alexandria entire shelves full of perfect volumes that disappeared without trace by morning.
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THE LIBRARY
AS IDENTITY
My library was dukedom enough.
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
I keep a list of books that I feel are missing from my library and that I hope one day to buy, and another, more wishful than useful, of books I'd like to have but I don't even know exist. In this second list are A Universal History of Ghosts, A Description of Life in the Libraries of Greece and Rome, a third Dorothy L. Sayers detective novel completed by Jill Paton Walsh, Chesterton on Shakespeare, a Summary ofAverroes on Aristotle, a literary cookbook that draws its recipes from fictional descriptions of food, a translation of Calderon's Life Is a Dream by Anne Michaels (whose style, I feel, would suit Calderon's admirably), a History of Gossip, the True and Uncensored Memoirs of a Publishing Life by Louise Dennys, a well-researched, well-written biography of Borges, an account of what exactly happened during Cervantes's captivity in Algiers, an as-yet-unpublished novel by Joseph Conrad, the diary of Kafka's Milena.
We can imagine the books we'd like to read, even if they have not yet been written, and we can imagine libraries full of books we would like to possess, even if they are well beyond our reach, because we enjoy dreaming up a library that reflects every one of our interests and every one of our foibles—a library that, in its variety and complexity, fully reflects the reader we are. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that, in a similar fashion, the identity of a society, or a national identity, can be mirrored by a library, by an assembly of titles that, practically and symbolically, serves as our collective definition.
It was probably Petrarch who first imagined that a public library should be funded by the state.326 In 1326, after the death of his father, he abandoned his legal studies and entered the Church as a means of pursuing a career in literature, which eventually culminated in his being crowned poet laureate on the Campidoglio in Rome in 1341. During the following years he divided his time between Italy and the south of France, writing and collecting books, and acquiring an unparalleled scholarly reputation. In 1353, tired of the squabbles at the papal court at Avignon, Petrarch settled for a time in Milan, then in Padua and finally in Venice. Here he was welcomed by the chancellor of the republic, who in 1362 obtained for him a palazzo on the Riva degli Schiavoni in return for the bequest of his by now celebrated library.327 Petrarch agreed on condition that his books be "perfectly preserved ... in some fire- and rain-proof location to be assigned for this purpose." Though he modestly stated that his books were neither numerous nor very valuable, he expressed the hope that "this glorious city will add other books at public expense, and that also private individuals . . . will follow the example. . . . In this fashion it might easily be possible to establish a large and famous library, equal to those of antiquity."328 His wish was granted several times over. Instead of one national library, Italy boasts eight, two of which (those in Florence and in Rome) act jointly as the central library of the nation.
In Britain, the notion of a national library was late in developing. After the dispersal of the libraries following the dissolution of the monasteries ordered by Henry viii, in 1556 the mathematician and astrologer John Dee, himself the owner of a remarkable collection of books, suggested to Henry's daughter Queen Mary the establishment of a national library that might collect the manuscripts and books "of ancient writers." The proposal was ignored, though repeated during the following reign of Elizabeth 1 by the Society of Antiquaries. A third plan was presented to her successor, James 1, who showed himself agreeable to the idea but died before it could be put into practice. His son, Charles 1, had no interest in the matter, despite the fact that royal librarians were routinely appointed during his reign to look after the haphazard royal collections, though with little inclination or success.
Then in 1694, during the reign of William 111, the classical scholar Richard Bentley was appointed to the post of keeper of the royal books. Shocked by the sorry state of the library, Bentley published, three years later, A proposal for building a Royal Library and establishing it by Act of Parliament, in which he suggested that a new edifice should be erected in St. James's Park for the specific purpose of housing books, and that it should receive an annual grant from Parliament. Though his urging received no answer, Bentley's devotion to the nation's books never ceased. In 1731, when a fire broke out one night in the Cotton Collection (which contained, in addition to the already mentioned Lindisfarne Gospels, two of the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament, the Codex Sinaiticus of the mid- fourth century and the Codex Alexandrinus of the early fifth century), the royal librarian was seen running out into the street "in wig and night-dress, with the Codex Alexandrinus under his arm."329
As a result of Bentley's proposal, in 1739 Parliament acquired the magnificent books and objects left by Sir Hans Sloane on his death, and later, in 1753, Montagu House in Bloomsbury, to store them. The house had been designed by an architect from Marseilles in the so- called French style, after the first Montagu House had burnt down in 1686, only a few years after its construction, and possessed many rooms suitable for the display of Sloane's treasures, as well as several acres of fine gardens for visitors to stroll in.330 A few years later, George 11 donated his royal book collection to the library—which was by then called the British Museum. On 15 January 1759, the British Library at the Museum opened its impressive doors. At the king's request, the contents were made available to the general public. "Tho' chiefly designed for the use of learned and studious men, both native and foreigners, in their researches into several parts of knowledge, yet being a national establishment . . . the advantages accruing from it should be rendered as general as possible."
Portrait of Sir Antonio Paniz^i.
During its early years, however, the librarians' main task was not to compile catalogues and seek new titles, but to guide visitors around the museum's collections.331
The hero of the British Library saga is the Italian-born Antonio Pan- izzi, mentioned previously with regard to the shape of the Reading Room. Threatened with arrest in Italy for being a member of the secret carbonari, who opposed Napoleonic rule, the twenty-five-year-old revolutionary had fled to the safety of England. After a brief period as a teacher of Italian, he was named assistant librarian at the British Museum in 1831. A year later he became a British citizen, changing his name to Anthony.