Page:Essays in librarianship and bibliography.djvu/304

 284 commentaries upon the Koran actually existing is not small; what would it have been had it been necessary to prove that all history, and geography, and astronomy, and everything else that man needed to know, was implicitly taught therein?

No such gigantic figure as the destroyer of the Alexandrian Library, brandishing, like the spectre of Fawdon, a blazing rafter, whose light streams down the centuries, occupies a post of honour in Mr. Blades' volume. In comparison, he may almost be likened to that poet who adjured, "Now, Muse, let's sing of rats," having previously struck out mice as below the dignity of the subject. The foes he enumerates are Fire, Water, Gas and Heat, Dust and Neglect, Ignorance, Book-worms, Other Vermin, Bookbinders, and Collectors. To these another might be added—Sinister Interests, which cannot be classified under the head of Ignorance, for they know well that the existence of books is incompatible with their own. It would be a curious subject of inquiry whether these interests, whose potency in mutilating valuable books and hindering their dissemination, sometimes until it has become too late for the world to profit by them, is unfortunately quite unquestionable, have ever succeeded in actually destroying any work of real importance to mankind. The number that have on this account never been written at all is no doubt enormous, but from the nature of the case cannot be ascertained, and the loss from this cause must be in every sense of the word inestimable. It would, however, probably be found that the book which