Page:On the Difficulty of Correct Description of Books - De Morgan (1902).djvu/13

 have often had occasion, in articles contributed to this work, to notice error and difficulty arising out of incorrect or insufficient description of books. The study of bibliography, that is, of books as books, in all matters which are requisite to avoid the errors and difficulties just alluded to, has been left to librarians and to bibliomaniacs, as they have been called. Recent events, however, have brought bibliography into collision with the want of it, in a remarkbleremarkable [sic] way.

The year 1850 turned the attention of literary men to the subject, both in England and France; but in very different ways in the two countries. In England, the report of the Royal Commission appointed to examine the state of the British Museum became public, and with it the evidence on which it was founded. This report and evidence contained the details of a severe contest between bibliographers on the one hand, and literary men opposed to bibliography on the other hand, as to the mode in which book-catalogues should be made. The report of the Commission, the comments of the leading reviews, and the subsequent silence of the journals which had for years attacked the librarians of the Museum, gave the victory to the advocates of detail sufficient for accuracy, as one side called it, or of unnecessary minuteness leading to confusion, as the other side called it. And the great extent to which both the antagonist philosophies taught by examples, makes this report, with its evidence, an excellent collection of exercises, and a manual, so far as that term can be applied to a blue-book, of practice for the young bibliographer.

The corresponding display made in France was not altogether so creditable to the literary aspirations