We venture to think that the only duty of the ideal librarian is to provide a catalogue with press-marks appended to the titles of the books, and not, as a rule, to do for readers what they are quite capable of doing for themselves. To make this system work with absolute smoothness it is necessary to have the catalogue arranged on a system of quite Arcadian simplicity, and as the original Ninety-one Rules of the British Museum would be quite a moderate allowance for a modern scientific (German or American) system, the librarian cannot be regarded just yet as a book-bringing automaton.
The different causes that may operate to prevent a reader at the British Museum from obtaining the book he requires were once set forth in Latin by a high official of that institution. This was elicited by a too flattering assertion of Professor Chandler, who was an uncompromising adversary of the proposed class-catalogue of the Bodleian Library, and equally a champion of the Museum catalogue, to the effect that if a book could be found in the catalogue the reader could always get it. We give this jeu d'esprit both in the decent obscurity of the original and an unabashed translation : —
"Ita mehercle, res se habet, nisi liber iste surreptus fuerit ; sen amissus, aut saltern non inventus ; sen obsoletus et concinnatoris indigus ; seu ab alio scriniorum compilatore postulatus; seu ab adolescentulo bibliothecse inserviente, animi recreandi gratia, nulla tessera relicta, ab armario
