Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/461

421 CHARLES EDWARD MUDIE: THE LENDING LIBRARY. T EAVING for a while the publishers and vendors -* * of books, we come now to the truest dissemina- tors of literature among those who would otherwise have formed a non-reading, non-thinking, untaught class in the community a class who, originally at all events, were shut out from the inheritance of the precious garnerings bequeathed by long generations of writers having aught of genius, wit, or industry to leave behind for they were debarred from all enjoy- ment of such heritage through their sheer inability to pay the literary legacy duty demanded by the ap- pointed tax-gatherers, the booksellers. In former times, of course, the very capability to read was confined to the student, and to the poor student especially were the early circulating libraries addressed. The first circulating library of which we have any authentic history for most history is much other than authentic was, according to Dr. Adam Clarke and other eminent antiquarians, founded at