An immense and important portion of every library worthy of the name must be formed by works in the Latin language. By thou who declaim against the study of Latin, as a sacrifice of valuable time to the acquisition of a mere knowledge of the literature of the heathen Romans, it appears to be forgotten that Latin was for about fifteen centuries the language most intimately connected with the history of our own country, as well as of many others. It was in Latin that Caesar wrote his account of the discovery of Britain ; in Latin that the Saxon Bede composed his valuable history of the English church ; in Latin that the monkish chroniclers, Saxon, Norman, and English, com piled their records of contemporary events for century after century. It was the same with France, with Italy, with Spain, with Germany, with Scandinavia. In Poland and Hungary and Holland the usage of Latin continued still later, and the parliamentary speeches of Hungarian magnates almost up to our own times, and the lectures of Dutch pro fessors even now are delivered in the language of Cicero and Caesar. The e'arly productions of printing were mostly in Latin, and for long afterwards the appearance of literary Europe was that of a learned republic, in which Latin was the predominant speech, and the modern languages merely took the position of provincial dialects. The libraries of mark throughout Europe were chiefly filled with Latin, and it might almost have been expected that the happy idea would have occurred to some great potentate to collect together all the Latin books that kept pouring from the press in the different parts of Europe. It was towards the close of the 15th century that King Matthias Cor vinus, of Hungary, applied himself to the task of collecting a mag nificent library, for which his expenses were truly regal, amounting according to some, to 30,000 florins a-year. He is said to have kept thirty copyists constantly employed ; and at his death, in 1490, his collection is stated to have amounted to nearly 55,000 volumes, " almost all manuscripts." Had this expenditure been recorded of a monarch who died in 1390, or before the invention of printing, our admiration might have been excited in a high degree, but it awakens wonder that admi ration should be claimed for a monarch who expended treasures in multi plying manuscripts after he had himself invited the first printer to Buda. The proceedings of King Matthias, however, are still pointed to by some modern writers with unalloyed panegyric. When the collecting of books first came into fashion, the early printed Greek and Latin volumes were those most sought after, and large collections were made of " incunables," or " cradle-books," as those are technically called which were issued in the infancy or cradle-times of printing. The first editions of the classics, however, were those which attracted the most attention, and other works of the 15th century were com paratively neglected. In Panzer's valuable catalogue of the books printed before 1535, a work which, including the German part, extends to thirteen quarto volumes, he is obliged to refer to numerous libraries as the depositaries of the various treasures which he describes from numerous catalogues. There is no library in Europe which approaches to containing them all. Yet there are still floating about Europe so many copies of volumes of the period referred to, not only for sale, but often for sale at very moderate prices, that the steady adherence of a well-provided library for some years to the rule which has, it is said, been adopted by some, of buying every work not in its possession printed before 1500, would probably have a very considerable effect. Four hundred years, and more, have not cleared from the booksellers' shelves the copies of many books which were only printed, it is said, in editions of less than five hundred copies : but here again it is moro than probable that the next fifty years will effect more than all their predecessors have done.
After the literature of the language of ancient Italy, that of the language of modern Italy appears to have entered the earliest into general circulation. In the days of Elizabeth and the early Stuarts, a know ledge of Italian was more common in England than it has ever been since, and for part of the time it was the popular language of the court of France, which was as usual governed by female influence, and was then under the guidance of Italian princesses. There has therefore always been a tendency for Italian books to find their way out of the country, as well as Italian paintings. At the same time the division of Italy into so many rival and hostile states has had a singular effect in pre venting the circulation of its literature within its own boundaries. It has often been the case, that Milan did not know what books were issued at Naples, and Florence was a comparative stranger to the current literature of Rome. The same division in Germany has been productive of exactly the opposite effects, and has led to an organisation of the book-trade superior to that which prevails in France and England.
From the same cause there appears to have been no marked attempt in any Italian library to form a complete collection of Italian literature : the strong local attachment which has been sufficient to preserve in use a host of different dialects, many of them often used for literary pur pges, has, at least until the present generation, prevented the mind from being sufficiently expansive to embrace all Italy from the Alps to the sea. In many of the Italian libraries also the books appear to have been kept in singular subordination to what should have been their accessories ; in the Vatican library not a book is visible till presses have been opened, and the historians of its progress dwell most on its architecture, its paintings, and ornaments. The result has been that the great libraries of Paris and London are probably richer in Italian literature than any within the bounds of Italy, and that in that literature much apparently still remains to be discovered. Roscoe, the historian of Lorenzo and Leo the Tenth, expressed his surprise that after a careful study of his authorities it should still be iu the power of a Bristol collector, Mr. Bright, to show him a volume of Italian popular poetry, on the battle of Pavia and other contemporary events, of which he had never seen mention, and the like of which he had no reason to suppose ever existed. There are only two copies known of a contemporary Italian popular poem of the discovery of America. They are both in the British Museum, for which both of them were bought at different times at sales in Paris. It should be added, that both the sales were of the libraries of Italian collectors.
The literature of Spain, like that of Italy, early attracted attention abroad. Spanish was for a time the language of the court of Vienna, cultivated in France and England, and well known in Italy. There is something peculiarly original and racy about many of its productions : its romances of chivalry, its ballads, its histories of wild adventure in America told by the adventurers themselves, its final comic romance of chivalry destined to throw all the others out of the saddle, its drama that followed Don Quixote, though much of it was as romantic as Amadis de Gaul. But along with the very earliest of this litera ture grew the weed that was destined to choke it, and the decline of Spanish letters kept pace with that of Spanish power. There is perhaps in no other European language, except possibly in that of Portugal, so great a proportion of worthless books as in that of Spain. The moat ardent collector cannot but shrink from the prospect of encumbering his shelves with much of that kind of literature which flourished in Spanish convent libraries till their dissolution in 1835. Meanwhile the fate of Spain in regard to books has been signally un fortunate. Careless of bibliography themselves for a long period, the Spaniards have at length awaked to find that much of their most valuable early literature has left their shores for England, France, Germany, and the United States. In the critical editions which, much to their credit, they are now publishing of Lope de Vega, of Calderon, and others, they are often driven to confess their inability to find at Madrid copies of editions which are irrevocably fixed in the public libraries of Paris and London. A Spanish bibliographer of eminence was accustomed to say that the extravagant prices given at some English sales for a few favourite books were some of the most profit able investments that English capital ever made ; for the effect had been to draw to the London market from Spain a mass of volumes which, once being there, were obliged to be sold for what prices they would bring, and brought much less at London than they would at Madrid. It was at one time much easier, he stated, to find rare Spanish books in England than in Spain, and some that now adorn the Peninsula were redeemed at low prices from English book-stalls. The Spaniards are probably not at the end of their calamities of this kind. They set us the example of planting colonies beyond the Atlantic, and there are nations which speak the Spanish language which will, in the natural course of things, begin to draw literary treasures from Spain. If their political troubles have hitherto retarded the progress of literature among these nations, the fact of their speaking Spanish has produced an interest in that language among their English-speaking neighbours which has already borne its fruits. The best recent con tributions to the history of Spain and Spanish literature have come from Boston, in Massachusetts. On the whole it should be the aim of Spanish bibliographers to ,centralise the collections they still retain, and guard against further loss by establishing as far as possible a com plete national library, in which they should also collect the Spanish publications of South America and Mexico.