For the remainder of the 17th century and for the earlier half en the 18th, the Bodleian continued the only library of national import ance. The taste for private libraries arose and flourished, and one among them was remarkable for containing an immense assemblage of pamphlets, which might well have been made the foundation of a national collection. It may be supposed that the number of 350,000, which has been mentioned as that of the pamphlets, English and foreign, in the Harloian library, was much exaggerated, but there can be no doubt that a great and perhaps irreparable loss to literature was sustained, when that collection was allowed to be dispersed in 1741. Twelve years after, by the fortunate will of Sir Hans Sloane, and the fortunate acceptance of its provisions by the legislature (in case of whose refusal the library and museum were to be offered to St. Petersburg), a great library was at length, after more than one project had proved abortive, founded in London. The presentation to it by George 11. of the library of the kings of England at once stamped it as national : but it was not till the presentation of another royal library, seventy years later, that of George III., by George IV., in 1823, that the Museum collection took the first rank among the libraries of England.
The time of the foundation of the Museum was only later by a few years than the time in which any general attention was first attracted abroad to English literature. In Holland indeed, for a full Century previous, owing to commercial and political connection of the two countries, our language had been frequently studied, and in Germany and the north, theologians and scholars had occasionally mastered it for their purposes, but it was in Western Europe almost unknown. Gamier, a French Jesuit, who published a method of the arrangement of libraries in 1678, gave no directions respecting English books, because, as be observed, English books seldom crossed the sea. It was not till the memorable visit of Voltaire to England that a know ledge of the language and literature was introduced into France, and the study became so general, that Mr. Buckle in his' Historyof Civilisa tion,' gives a list of more than a hundred and fifty French authors who are recorded to have had a knowledge of English. The English collector however found no competitors in foreign bibliographers for the purchase of rare and curious English books. The few specimens of the press of Caxton, some of them rare and curious, that are to be found on the continent, are in general those which he printed abroad in French, before he introduced the art into England. Of early English bibles, Christopher Anderson reports in his Annals,' that he found but a scanty provision in the great library of Paris, and it may be doubted if in all the continent half a dozen specimens exist of a quarto Elizabethan play. If the library of the Museum had then been provided with funds for the purpose, a good opportunity existed for many years of furnishing it with an excellent collection of English literature at a moderate expense. Books did not begin to fetch high prices till the sale of Dr. Askew's library in 1775, and then the general run was on classics or works of foreign literature.
That opportunity was lost, when soon after the commencement of the 10th century, the " biblioznania " awoke in England, and one of its most frequent forms was the craving for early English literature, to be gratified at any cost. During the early years of the century, at
the times of the sale by auction of the library of the Duke of Rox burghe, and the foundation of the Roxburghe club, to commemorate the enormous price that was given there for an edition of Boccaccio 's ' Decameron,' the competition at public sales was almost entirely between private purchasers, and the British Museum took no part in it. Few of the books that were sold in those years went out of England ; they mostly passed into the hands of collectors, at whose death it was expected that they would again come under the hammer of the auctioneer ; and the varying prices of even the most coveted books showed the expediency of waiting in many cases till the fever of the day was over. The Roxburgh° copy of tho Valdarfer Boccaccio' itself, which had gone at the sale for 2260/., sold for less than I000/., n via • str. ant I s•nr when it was a second time in the market, and the early editions of the classics, about which the contest was then carried on most warmly, have since descended considerably in the scale of commercial value. With many other bibliographical rarities, however, the market has risen; and it has risen most remarkably in English books of almost every character of the date of the 16th century, and in foreign books, such as Roman Catholic liturgies, connected with the history of the old religion, and of the Reformation in England. Another, and a world-wide influence was next to come into operation, to raise, in the language of political economy, first the supply of English books, and then the demand for them—an influence which will probably work as great a change in the commerce of books as in that of cotton.
A hundred years ago, at the accession of George HI. in 1760, the English language is supposed to have been spoken by about twelve millions of persons. In the year 1860 it is probably spoken by not less than sixty millions, and each year adds to the census of those who speak it a number as great as the whole population of those who speak some of the secondary languages of Europe. The French and German languages, which at the commencement of the century far surpassed it in that respect, are now far below it. Russia is the only form of speech in Europe that owns at present a larger number of speakers, having about sixty-five millions ; and if the advance of popu lation continues for a few years as before, Russian will be outnumbered. The English language is at the same time the vernacular of a great kingdom in Europe, and of great colonies in America, in South Africa, and in Australia, all of which are growing and some are rushing into importance. But the dominion of the English language is not bounded by the limits of the British empire, wide as they are. It is also the language of a great republic, or rather cluster of republics, whose territories now extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and will probably in the course of another century be teeming with population. English is now spoken by more persons out of Europe than within it, and the disproportion is certain to grow greater every year. While in Old England it has yet been unable to supplant the Welsh in the Course of centuries, in New England it has long swept from before it all trace of the languages of the aboriginal nations, except the bOoks that were written for them by the missionaries of the 17th century.