Comprehensive authoritative bibliographies of the most popular fields of scholarship are characteristic products of the eighteenth century.[126] They began to appear in the last years of the seventeenth century, when Giulio Bartolocci (1613-1687) published the Bibliotheca magna rabbinica (3 v.; 1675-1693) which Carlo Giuseppe Imbonati (d. after 1696) completed and provided with the supplementary Bibliotheca latino-hebraica (1694). There are many standard bibliographies to set beside it. BarthÉlemy d'Herbelot [de Molainville] compiled the BibliothÈque orientale in 1697, Johann Albert Fabricius published the first edition of the Bibliotheca latina in the same year and continued with such larger and more important works as the Bibliotheca mediae et infimae latinitatis (6 v.; 1734-1746) and his masterpiece, the Bibliotheca graeca (14 v.; 1705-1728). In 1693 Ellies Du Pin published the first volume of the long theological bibliography that only his death was to interrupt. Many of these works were revised and enlarged during the next century and a half. The BibliothÈque orientale was republished for the last time in 1781-1783. An edition of the even more successful Bibliotheca latina was begun in 1773 and remained incomplete. The new edition of the Bibliotheca graeca begun in 1790 was brought to an end, although the work was still incomplete, with an index published in 1838. Excellent bibliographies which are still worth consulting were written for every subject of particular interest to eighteenth-century scholars. J. C. Wolf published four thick volumes of a Bibliotheca hebraea in 1715-1733. William Cave, who had begun his bibliographical activities in the seventeenth century, Jacques LeLong, and (after the middle of the century) J. G. Walch satisfied the demands of theologians. Langlet du Fresnoy, Johann Burkhard Mencken, and B. G. Struve compiled exhaustive lists of historical materials and investigations. The many bibliographies by Johann Albert Fabricius reviewed such subjects as church history, missions, and classical, Christian, Jewish, and heathen antiquities. In brief, the eighteenth-century scholar had on his shelves excellent bibliographies of the subjects that he found most interesting. However, he did not have any good guide to them in the form of a bibliography of bibliographies.[127]
The only bibliography of bibliographies that can be dated in the eighteenth century has, as far as I know, disappeared entirely. It is a manuscript dated 1707 that was sold at Amsterdam in 1743. From the brief auctioneer's description we can infer that it resembled LabbÉ's Bibliotheca bibliothecarum and was a continuation of that bibliographical tradition. I have been unable to learn anything about its author. The description is as follows:
Bibliotheca Alphabetica À Carolo MoËtte collecta cum Indice Auctorum, Parisiis 1707. NB. Opus hoc propriÈ est Bibliotheca Bibliothecarum, MSS. ineditum.[128]
Each epoch in the history of bibliographies of bibliographies has an individuality of its own. In the hands of Conrad Gesner and his successors this variety of bibliography slowly established itself. In the next epoch the work of Philip LabbÉ attracted contemporary scholars to continue and improve it. Although Antoine Teissier was the only one to publish the revision of a predecessor's work, his procedure is characteristic of seventeenth-century scholarship. The eighteenth century neglected the bibliography of bibliographies and let the writings of the sixteenth and seventeenth century in this field sink into obscurity. In the nineteenth century, as we shall see, men undertook to compile bibliographies of bibliographies with an astonishing disregard of the difficulties of the task and a surprising neglect of previous efforts. Without an exception these men were librarians and should therefore have been fully aware of what they were doing and of what had been done. Their behavior is nothing less than amazing. I may anticipate the theme of the next chapter by saying that the characteristic aspect of the making of bibliographies of bibliographies in the twentieth century is cooperation.
When the great French bibliographer Gabriel Peignot (1767-1849) published his RÉpertoire bibliographique gÉnÉrale in 1812, he declared that he had hit upon an entirely new idea. Although he knew and cited such predecessors as LabbÉ and Teissier, he did not clearly see that he was undertaking the task that they had already completed. He did not use their books systematically, and he did not exhaust the information that they had collected.
Peignot shows his competence as a bibliographer in various ways. Like his predecessors (although he seems not to have intentionally imitated them), he includes bibliographies printed as parts of non-bibliographical works. For example, he quotes at the very beginning a bibliography of books about bees from a local agricultural journal. Within the various articles he arranges the titles chronologically and thus suggests the historical growth of knowledge and bibliography in a particular field. Although bibliographers before him had often added comments, Peignot is more systematic and generous than his predecessors. For example, his account of bibliographies of ana—a subject to which he had himself made an important contribution a few years before the publication of the RÉpertoire—even includes useful references to book reviews. Particularly interesting as a technical improvement in bibliographical method are his frequent references to the number of titles in the book that he is citing. Bibliographies published before the RÉpertoire rarely give this information. During the course of the history that we have surveyed, the standards of accuracy and completeness rose and Peignot attains a very high level in this regard. The index of authors in his RÉpertoire is both complete and accurate and so, also, are his citations of titles.
Peignot's RÉpertoire contains perhaps a thousand articles extending from "Abeilles (bees)" to "Zoologie." According to Theodore Besterman, it names two thousand bibliographies. Since Peignot is primarily interested in surveying eighteenth-century scholarship, he does not exhaust LabbÉ's Bibliotheca bibliothecarum and its continuations.
Peignot's decision to arrange his bibliography of bibliographies in an alphabet of many small subject headings has necessarily reduced the permanent value of his labors or, more correctly, has made it more difficult for us to benefit from them. The RÉpertoire suffers from the unavoidable difficulties that arise from the choice of headings.[129] A reader can never know whether a particular subject will appear as a separate entry or as a subdivision of a larger field. Will heresy stand alone or under theology? What will the term philosophy include? Peignot gives no cross-references to aid his reader. Nor is there an alphabetical subject index that would guide the reader to the bibliographies included in the larger headings. Such an alphabetical subject index would have been useful, but I grant at once that an alphabetical subject index to an alphabetical list of subjects seems a strange duplication. There is, to be sure, a brief classified subject index (pp. xv-xix).
A serious and inescapable handicap to the permanent usefulness of Peignot's alphabetical list of many small headings is the rapid obsolescence of technical terms. In some cases we can no longer know exactly what Peignot meant by a particular term and therefore cannot immediately turn to a desired entry. For example, "histoire littÉraire" does not mean the history of literature or at least of literature in the sense of belles lettres. In Peignot's use "mÉtaphysique" includes demonology or, as a modern bookseller would say, "occult" books. A specialist in the history of theological studies will know that Peignot's "thÉologie positive" refers to theology based on God's revelations to man, but two professors in a divinity school did not recognize the term. I am all the more sympathetic with them when I read in Neville Braybrooke's account of Christianity in England the comment on Mr. Billy Graham: "In his way he stood for 'positive theology'."—Cited from The Commonweal, LX (1954), 194. Here the term seems to mean "a convincing religion for the man in the street."
Peignot does not offer an index of subjects because he believes that his table of contents and his alphabetical arrangement make it unnecessary. This belief is not well-founded because he subdivides many long articles and gives no cross-references and no indication of subdivisions in the table of contents. The bibliography of an individual classical author appears in its alphabetical place in the article "Classiques" (pp. 155-244) and of a religious order in "Ordres monastiques" (pp. 432-437). Without a cross-reference from "Bible" (pp. 26-32) one will perhaps fail to find a list of polyglot Bibles under the heading "Polyglottes" (p. 447). It is not immediately obvious that Peignot has arranged his valuable list (pp. 40-75) of catalogues of public libraries alphabetically according to places. He would have added little to the size of his book by adding cross-references and he would have made it much easier to use.
Although Peignot feels the temptation that comes to every bibliographer to wander afield and include works of little pertinence to the task, he apologizes for yielding to it in a prefatory "Nota" to the useful article "BibliothÈques" (pp. 32-135). He includes here such works as Richard de Bury, Philobiblon (a book about collecting books); Claudius Clement, Musaei (a general treatise on library science that contains little bibliographical information); and Louis Jacob, TraictÉ des plus belles bibliothÈques (an excellent account of European libraries in the early seventeenth century). In general, however, Peignot adheres very strictly to his intention of listing only bibliographies.
We must look with a critical eye at Peignot's classification. Since he has an article on the bibliography of bibliographies, he should not put LabbÉ, Bibliotheca bibliothecarum, in "Des livres en gÉnÉral" (p. 387). Boulard's treatise on bibliographical method stands on the border of what is admissible and should certainly not be placed with "Des livres rares," a list of catalogues of rare books (p. 396). Georg Draud, Bibliotheca classica, a classified compilation of titles listed in the semi-annual catalogues of the German booktrade, includes juridical works as a matter of course, but it is not correctly placed in "Droit" (p. 254). Anton Francesco Doni's La libraria is a catalogue of Italian books and is not, as Peignot lists it (p. 95), a catalogue of a private library.
Peignot has seen many of the books that he cites and in this regard surpasses his predecessors. He does not, however, report German authors' names and titles (even titles written in Latin) with satisfactory accuracy.[130] I am not disposed to judge him very harshly for this fault because the language was no doubt strange to him and the books were probably not available. A more serious fault is, it seems to me, his neglect of obviously important books that he either could have seen or should have known. I cannot understand how he overlooked such authorities on church history and theology as Louis Ellies Du Pin, Jacques LeLong, and J. G. Walch. He knows only two of the six eighteenth-century bibliographies of diplomatics that Namur commends (pp. xvii-xix), but all of them are, it must be acknowledged, German works and therefore probably not within his reach.
These comments on Peignot's faults can easily obscure our estimate of his merits. His succinct and abundant comments were no doubt useful when he wrote and are still valuable. His chronological arrangement of titles is a spur to historical meditations on the development of many fields of study. A modern scholar finds it hard to duplicate some information that Peignot has assembled. Where else can he easily find bibliographies of the collections of Latin poets,[131] dictionaries,[132] encyclopedias,[133] translators of the classics,[134] and accounts of royal and noble writers?[135] His review of bibliographies of incunabula lays a foundation for a history of such works,[136] and so also does his survey of bibliographies of medicine.[137] The most amusing list in Peignot's RÉpertoire is a collection of bibliographies of men who practised trades or were members of professions having little connection with literature.[138]
Peignot's abundant and informative critical notes deserve special praise. For example, he comments on catalogues of public libraries (pp. 40-75), and although we have longer lists of these catalogues, his comments have not been superseded. A modern cataloguer would probably have separated the catalogues of manuscripts from the catalogues of books. An even more important survey deals with catalogues of private libraries (pp. 75-135) arranged according to the owners' names. He tells the number of lots offered for sale, remarks on the presence or absence of indexes, and warns us when the catalogue was printed in a small edition. He praises the superb Catalogus Bibliothecae Bunavianae (p. 86), calls attention to varying editions of the Cambis catalogue (pp. 87-88), and commends the Imperiali catalogue (pp. 104-105). He points out the noteworthy collections of journals entitled Mercure and books on the theatre in the Pompadour catalogue (p. 119). He often notes the use of a novel system of classification. One could only wish that Peignot had devoted even more effort to this list. He would have enriched the comments and would have eliminated various works that are not properly included among catalogues of private libraries.[139]
In sum, then, Peignot's RÉpertoire represents a definite advance in the progress of bibliographies of bibliographies for its relative accuracy and its abundant comments. It is what he intended it to be: a survey of eighteenth-century bibliography rather than a comprehensive bibliography of bibliographies.
Pie Namur, who wrote a very large bibliography of bibliographies a short generation after Peignot, regarded the RÉpertoire and two contemporary compilations by T. H. Horne and A. F. Delandine as his only predecessors. Although these compilations are brief selective lists of a sort not included in this essay, Namur's recognition of them makes it necessary to characterize them briefly.
The bibliographical portion (pp. 403-758) of Thomas Hartwell Horne (1780-1862), An Introduction to the Study of Bibliography (1814) is mentioned here only because Pie Namur, the author of a bibliography of bibliographies next to be discussed, names it along with A. F. Delandine's "Bibliographie spÉciale" and Peignot's RÉpertoire as a predecessor. Like other writers of handbooks of bibliography, Horne cites bibliographies without aiming at completeness. Horne's Part III, "A Notice of the Principal Works, Extant on Literary History in General, and on Bibliography in Particular," gives the information that it promises but contains no subject bibliographies and therefore cannot be called a general bibliography of bibliographies. It contains a brief account of "Dictionaries of Literary History" or works that we would call universal biobibliographies (pp. 403-408). The interesting survey of "Treatises, &c. on Literary History" (pp. 408-418) includes G. M. KÖnig, Bibliotheca vetus et nova (1678) and J. P. Niceron, MÉmoires pour servir À l'histoire des hommes illustres dans la rÉpublique des lettres (43 v.; 1726-1745) that should have appeared in the preceding section and two histories of philosophy for which his plan had no place. "Writers on British Literary History" (pp. 419-431) and "Writers on Foreign Literary History" (pp. 431-447) are accounts of national biobibliographies, histories, and bibliographies of literature, and of specialized biobibliographical writings. One finds in them occasional titles of infrequent occurrence like Christopher Wordsworth, Ecclesiastical Biography, or Lives of eminent men connected with the history of religion in England, from the commencement of the Reformation to the Revolution (6 v.; London, 1810) or Giovanni Agostini, Notizie istorico-scritiche intorno la vita e le opere degli scrittori Vineziani (2 v.; Venice, 1752). His rather full account of British works has some value but his incomplete foreign list is noteworthy chiefly for such curiosities as Matthias Bellus, Exercitatio de vetere litteratura Hunno-Scythica (pp. 433-434) or Giambattista Toderini, Della letteratura turchesa (p. 447). Horne devotes the following sections to writers on the materials used in writing and printing (pp. 448-450), writers on the origin of languages, letters, and writing (pp. 451-469), and writers on the history and the art of printing (pp. 469-513). A strictly bibliographical "Chapter IV. Books" (pp. 513-550) contains books on bibliomania, handbooks of bibliography, catalogues of rare books and incunabula, dictionaries of anonyma and pseudonyma, and lists of burned, suppressed, or censured books. The most valuable part of Horne's Introduction is the fifth chapter, on bibliographical systems and catalogues. The account of bibliographical systems (pp. 551-563) is not very important, but the review of British and foreign public and private library catalogues (pp. 564-733) has not been entirely superseded. Although far from complete, it contains information not easily found elsewhere. It resembles Peignot's similar review, on which Horne has drawn heavily. He concludes with a brief survey of publishers' catalogues (pp. 733-741), references (pp. 741-742) to two of Peignot's bibliographies that he believes to be adequate guides to subject bibliography, and addenda (pp. 743-758). Horne did not intend his Introduction to be a bibliography of bibliographies and we need say no more about it.
A "Bibliographie spÉciale et chronologique des principaux ouvrages sur l'imprimerie et la bibliologie" by Antoine FranÇois Delandine (1756-1820) is printed in his BibliothÈque de Lyons (Paris, 1816). I have not seen Delandine's original list but have used a later and slightly enlarged version. In this, Etienne Psaume has, according to Namur, added a few books printed between 1812 and 1822 and the new title "Appendice de l'Essai sur la bibliologie" (1824). This, is an annotated chronological list of nearly three hundred and fifty books on the history of printing, catalogues of public and private libraries, and bibliographies of miscellaneous scope. This somewhat casual performance is useful at best for a few curious or informative notes. The bibliographies do not amount to many more than a hundred and do not offer either in number or variety a satisfactory survey of bibliography. A selection of good catalogues of private libraries (chiefly French) is the best feature of the "Appendice." The distressingly careless citations show that the compilers did not see some of the books. This list shows some originality and is worth reading, but it deserves no significant place in the history of bibliographies of bibliographies.
Almost a generation passed after the publication of Peignot's RÉpertoire before anyone tried again to write a bibliography of bibliographies. [Jean] Pie Namur (1804-1867), a librarian ("second bibliothÉcaire") at the University of LiÉge, gave a sample of such a work in his Manuel du bibliothÉcaire in 1834 and published his complete Bibliographie palÉographico-diplomatico-bibliologique gÉnÉrale in 1838. Despite its many serious faults this forgotten book deserves some recognition. Namur emphatically disclaimed (I, p. xiv) any dependence on Peignot's RÉpertoire, which he called a "chaos" that yielded only a few titles. In writing his Manuel he had perceived that there were no adequate bibliographies of paleography, diplomatics, and "bibliologie" and he therefore set about compiling them. In the section of "bibliologie" he recognized only Peignot's RÉpertoire, Horne's Introduction, and Delandine's or Psaume's list as predecessors. Although he found them unsatisfactory, he would have left his collections unpublished but for the urging of friends, especially Baron de Reiffenberg, librarian of the Royal Library at Brussels (see I, p. xx). The announcement of his plan led L.-A. Constantin, who wrote a short handbook of library science a few years later, to send two hundred slips and to renounce the idea of making a bibliography of bibliographies (I, pp. xxi-xxii).
We can best appreciate the not inconsiderable merits of Namur's Bibliographie by squarely facing its faults. A comprehensive bibliographical account of paleography, diplomatics, the history of printing and the booktrade, bibliography, the history of libraries, and literary and critical journals is too large a task for one man or one book. I confine my comments to a discussion of the fourth section, which deals with bibliography.[140] Here as well as elsewhere Namur's choice of a classified arrangement involves great difficulties in arrangement. Namur's table of contents is inadequate and he provided no subject index. In assigning books to categories Namur fails sadly. He apologizes in a footnote (II, 5, n. 1) for a confused alphabetical list of 198 general bibliographies by saying that he has been unable to see the books and therefore cannot classify them. In this tangled heap lists of books recommended for various kinds of specialized libraries, trade catalogues, critical journals, Giovanni Cinelli (later Giovanni Cinelli Calvoli), Della biblioteca volante (a bibliography of ephemeral publications), G. F. DeBure's Musaeum typographicum (a list of rare books),[141] and general bibliographies lie side by side. Even if he had had to leave a few titles unidentified, he had sufficient bibliographical resources within easy reach to bring order into this confusion. But, he should not be judged on the basis of a list that he confessed himself unable to classify. The following section 3, which should have been numbered 2, is entitled "Bibliographie des livres rares, etc." (II, 12-14). This heading gives the reader no good idea of what to expect. Namur includes here lists of rare books, lists of ana, John Hartley's Catalogus universalis (which is described by its title), and J. B. B. van Praet's catalogues of books printed on vellum. The anomalous items are in all perhaps a dozen of the fifty-two titles in this section. If we disregard the interlopers, which could easily have been put elsewhere, this section is a not altogether unsatisfactory account of a very important variety of eighteenth-century bibliography. Almost all catalogues of rare books can be readily recognized by their titles and a critical account of them—an account which is greatly to be desired—might begin with Namur's list. In section 4, the bibliographies of anonyma and pseudonyma, Namur succeeds better than in section 3. These bibliographies are usually sufficiently identified by their titles and mistakes should not occur. Two black sheep have, however, found a way into the fold (II, 14, Nos. 272, 273). Books like these with the title Bibliotheca anonymiana are sale catalogues and not lists of anonymous writings. The title corresponds to the modern "Library of a Distinguished Collector" and Namur should have recognized it. This error shows the dangers that a bibliographer runs in classifying books without examining them.
Bibliographies of the individual languages and literatures are ordinarily easy to recognize, but Namur makes a few egregious mistakes in classifying them. One example is sufficient. He puts a book on Icelandic literature correctly in the same class with books on Danish and Swedish literature and then enters it once more among American bibliographies. He introduces a further complication by copying "Irlandiae" that a predecessor had misread for "Islandiae" in the title of a second book by the same author and puts it among British biobibliographies. Nor is this enough. He cites the author's name, HÁlfdan Einarsson, as both "HÁlfdanus Einar" and "Einari, H." and enters the first under "H" and the second under "E" in the index of authors.[142] One can grant that the proper form of entry for Icelandic names is difficult for foreigners, but a bibliographer must learn it or at least adopt a consistent rule of his own making. Although Namur knows directly or indirectly many bibliographies, he has failed to find obvious titles. A librarian at LiÉge who knows Anton Sander's Flemish biobibliography should also have known his local books of similar character for Bruges and Ghent.[143]
Enough of this! The picture is not all black. Namur's account of dictionaries of anonyma and pseudonyma[144] contains more titles printed before 1838 than any other bibliography. There are some duplications but few outright errors. His important list of books dealing with the history of libraries and including catalogues of institutional libraries[145] is the most useful one that I know. He has ranged so widely as to cite the library catalogues of the American Philosophical Society and the Library Company of Philadelphia and (inaccurately) the Harvard College Library catalogue of 1790. Such titles rarely come to the knowledge of European bibliographers. The following section (II, 167-226, Nos. 721-2573) is an equally full review of catalogues of private libraries. As he says in a footnote at the beginning, he has made a special effort to attain completeness. I can cite no list of trade catalogues and publishers' catalogues comparable to Namur's (I, 171-193, Nos. 1283-1857). I cannot judge competently his list of printer's type facsimiles (I, 144-146, Nos. 673-768), but its extent and the variety of printers named is impressive. His list of national biobibliographical dictionaries (II, 106-122, Nos. 86-390) is far from complete, but I see in the Italian section (II, 108-110, Nos. 129-169) several unusual titles. The subject bibliographies seem less rich to me, but there are one hundred and sixteen bibliographies of medicine (II, 77-83, Nos. 1457-1573) and eight bibliographies of veterinary medicine (II, 84, Nos. 1574-1581). More examples of Namur's diligence would be wearisome and would add nothing to the picture. In spite of vexatious errors of all kinds Namur often names a title not easily found elsewhere.
A development characteristic of nineteenth-century bibliography consists in the publication of collectanea at more or less regular intervals in appropriate journals. These collectanea may be lists of recently published books and articles, books received, or brief critical accounts of current publications. Since they do not intend to be comprehensive, we need not examine at length those including bibliographies. A. G. S. Josephson mentions perhaps a score of such periodical bibliographies of bibliographies.[146] Perhaps the earliest and most influential publications of this sort were those in the Anzeiger fÜr Literatur der Bibliothekswissenschaft (1840-1846), which was continued until 1886 by the Neuer Anzeiger fÜr Bibliographie und Bibliothekswissenschaft. The editor, Julius Petzholdt, used these lists of current bibliographical publications, bibliographies of particular subjects, and critical comments on antiquarian catalogues in the making of his Bibliotheca bibliographica, but those published after 1866, when the Bibliotheca appeared, are not very well-known. Various other journals devoted to bibliography, bibliophily, library science, criticism, and the interests of publishers and dealers printed similar collectanea. For example, a very full and carefully compiled list of current bibliographical publications may be found in the Centralblatt fÜr Bibliothekswesen, which was founded in 1884. These numerous lists are convenient collections of useful materials, but I am not sure that the makers of bibliographies of bibliographies have, with the exception of Petzholdt, made full use of them. With the rise of annual bibliographies of bibliographies[147] that aim at comprehensiveness their importance has somewhat declined. I have mentioned these collectanea because they represent a new development and are to some extent the foundation of the book next to be discussed.
After the lapse of nearly three generations the Bibliotheca bibliographica (1866) by Julius Petzholdt (1812-1891) is still a standard bibliography of bibliographies. Its position will doubtless remain unchallenged. More recent works—notably Theodore Besterman, A World Bibliography of Bibliographies—contain more titles and naturally include those published after 1866, but Petzholdt's critical comments and careful collations are still indispensable. The Bibliotheca bibliographica deserves its reputation for its great merits. It also owes this reputation to some extent to Petzholdt's position as head of the famous library at Dresden with a long and honorable bibliographical tradition,[148] his editorship of a successful journal of library science, his standing as the author of professional handbooks, and, last but not least, his vigorous condemnation of other bibliographies. Petzholdt's self-assurance now and again arouses resistance, and leads one to judge him as severely as he judged others, but the Bibliotheca bibliographica will remain a landmark in bibliographical history.
Petzholdt's Bibliotheca bibliographica is noteworthy for its extent, its careful organization, its detailed collations, and its useful critical comments. We must nevertheless admit some qualification of all these merits. In extent, Petzholdt falls short of his predecessor Pie Namur. Namur had in 1838 cited 10,236 titles. Many of these did not, to be sure, fall within the limits set by Petzholdt for his work. A generation later Petzholdt cited only an estimated 5500 titles (I take the figure from Besterman). He achieved this figure by excluding many old bibliographies (chiefly works of the seventeenth century), disregarding bibliographies published as journal articles, and including antiquarian catalogues and a few catalogues of private libraries. Although completeness is desirable, it is also unattainable. A comparison in terms of numbers is not very important.
In the matter of organization the Bibliotheca bibliographica has long been regarded as a model. Nevertheless one cannot defend Petzholdt's inclusion[149] of a detailed list of schemes for classifying books. He had collected a great deal of information about such schemes because they interested him as a librarian, but the subject is not pertinent to a bibliography of bibliographies. Petzholdt's relegation of the alphabetical index of authors to a clerk or, if he did have a clerk, to as inaccurate a clerk as he chose, was unfortunate. His decision to provide no alphabetical index of subjects makes the Bibliotheca bibliographica hard to use. His exclusion of articles in journals denies the purpose and spirit of bibliography. If bibliographical collections are to guide seekers after knowledge to information, then a bibliographer cannot justify the deliberate neglect of materials which do not happen to be in a particular physical condition. The best bibliography of the Tuamotus may be, let us say, in a journal article. The bibliographer who is aware of it and omits it merely because it is a journal article is guilty of a serious fault. We can pardon him for not finding it, but we cannot pardon him for rejecting it. We must not confuse the situation by making such an excuse as "avoiding the burden of inconsequential references." Petzholdt deliberately omitted journal articles and therefore does not serve the man who comes to his book as fully as he might have served him. Petzholdt's inclusion of books dealing with the invention, history, and practice of printing stretches the definition of his purpose, but custom is on his side and we shall not protest unduly. Lists of books issued by a famous publisher are of course within the scope of the Bibliotheca bibliographica.
A serious criticism of Petzholdt's plan concerns the inclusion of bibliographies, which (although pertinent) can be easily found and might have been dealt with briefly. The bibliography of individuals "Personale Literatur," (pp. 156-272) is a branch of bibliography and must therefore be included. Nevertheless, few bibliographies are more easily found than lists of an author's works. The great biobibliographical dictionaries from Conrad Gesner's Bibliotheca universalis of 1545 down to the various editions of the Biographie universelle and the Nouvelle biographie universelle contain this information. Biographies, wherever published, ordinarily contain bibliographies of the books written by the author in question. There are excellent indexes of these biographies. Antoine Teissier had added, in his Catalogus and Auctuarium, some two thousand biographies to LabbÉ's Bibliotheca bibliothecarum. E. M. Oettinger had just published two editions of the Bibliographie bibliographique universelle,[150] which is still a very convenient and full list of biographies. Any good edition of a classical text is almost certain to contain bibliographical information, and scarcely needs to be cited in a bibliography of bibliographies.[151] He could have written an entirely adequate bibliography of bibliographies of individuals in much less than a hundred and sixteen pages. He might, for example, have omitted the bibliography of R. Salomo b. Abraham b. Adereth (p. 166)—I cite the first name in his list—that is found in a biography of this worthy and the bibliography of Martial (p. 226) that is found in an edition of his works. Such omissions would not have impaired his book and would have substantially reduced its bulk.
This section devoted to bibliographies of individual authors exhibits some faults typical of Petzholdt's plan. A subdivision (pp. 156-166) without any heading begins the section and is terminated by three asterisks in the middle of the page. Although it is set off typographically, the lack of a heading makes it difficult to perceive that we have in it a list of the very important biobibliographical dictionaries of religious orders and learned academies. There is no indication of this category in the table of contents and the names of the religious orders and the academies do not appear in the index. I do not see how one can readily find a biobibliographical dictionary of the Dominicans or the Jesuits in this arrangement. Not all of us can bring to mind immediately the names QuÉtif and De Backer that are needed to find the references. In his list of individual bibliographies Petzholdt goes so far as to include books (not bibliographies, be it noticed) dealing with such artists as Jost Ammann, Rembrandt, and Velasquez. He could have found another place for books about famous publishers named Aldus and should probably have made a special place for dictionaries of homonyms.[152] He follows this section of individual bibliographies with a list of books containing portraits ("Ikonographische Literatur," pp. 273-279). Its pertinence to a bibliography of bibliographies seems debatable to me.
Petzholdt's execution of his plan leaves something to be desired. He provides the obviously necessary table of contents, but fails to include in it many subdivisions that he expresses by means of headings or typographical devices or only implies by the arrangement of titles. Experience teaches a reader that Petzholdt begins a section with general works, often a modern annual bibliography, proceeds through a chronological list, and concludes with specialized antiquarian catalogues. This is an altogether logical order. Subdivisions of a large category follow the general section. After the general bibliography of medicine, for example, Petzholdt continues with bibliographies of pathology and therapeutics (pp. 597-600). This arrangement makes necessary a full record of the subdivisions in an index, but Petzholdt's index is only an author index. There are occasional failures to include authors' names in the index. We must judge these flaws kindly, for all men are fallible, and bibliographers are no exception to the rule.
Writers of bibliographies of bibliographies have usually preferred a classification according to subjects to an alphabetical arrangement of titles with subject indexes. Joris Vorstius defends their preference eloquently and with good arguments.[153] There is, however, something to be said against it. Convenient as a classified bibliography is as first issued, it cannot be easily revised or enlarged.[154] When library cataloguers adopt new methods, when new categories are set up in science, theology, law, and literary history, a classified bibliography of bibliographies becomes difficult to use.
In the history of bibliographies of bibliographies we can look back to at least three occasions when men discarded the classified bibliographies made by their predecessors. Men of the seventeenth century seem to have made little use of Gesner's Pandectae, men of the eighteenth century found as little use for the difficult classification employed in LabbÉ's and Teissier's books, and few of us can use Petzholdt's categories easily. The lesson is that each age must create its own bibliography of bibliographies.
Petzholdt's Bibliotheca bibliographica is a classified bibliography that shows signs of obsolescence. The organization of knowledge and the categories that seemed suitable to Julius Petzholdt in 1866 are often confusing rather than helpful today. Keenly interested as he was in the theory of classification, no one was more competent than he to select the right headings. But a modern scholar who consults the Bibliotheca bibliographica must put himself in the place of a man who lived almost a century ago. For example, he must remember that Hungary was associated politically with Austria and Austrian cataloguers and dealers listed and sold Hungarian books. Consequently, Petzholdt cites (pp. 320-321) bibliographies of Hungarian books along with bibliographies of German books and makes no entry in the table of contents for Hungarian bibliographies. I do not say that he was wrong, but I do say that a modern reader must remember the political situation of 1866 to use Petzholdt's book.
Petzholdt's adoption of a classified arrangement required him to be very careful in assigning books to categories and to provide abundant cross-references. As we have seen, his subdivisions of categories are not clearly marked and may escape the notice of an experienced user of bibliographies. For example, a bibliography of "Programme" (learned essays issued with the annual reports of German secondary schools) appears (p. 293) properly enough among the bibliographies of German and Swiss publications but few will find it. A few pages later (pp. 298-299) Petzholdt lists bibliographies of German and Swiss journals. Since these two categories are not named in the table of contents or the index, the information is almost completely buried. "Prognostica" or prophecies of future events—a genre of writings that was very popular in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance—gave Petzholdt trouble. Some of these are listed as pseudo-philosophy (see p. 467: Heuschling), and others are perhaps more appropriately found with almanacs ("Calenderliteratur," pp. 539-540). A bibliography of Swedish almanacs (p. 399) appears in the section for Swedish literature without a cross-reference to or from the bibliography of almanacs. "LoosbÜcher" or books telling how to interpret omens are in the section for psychology (p. 467), and this is a heading under "Philosophische Litteratur." Examples are wearisome, and I shall give no more.
A classified bibliography must have an exhaustive table of contents, a full index of authors, and an adequate alphabetical subject index. Petzholdt's Bibliotheca bibliographica is probably as carefully made as any such book can be made, but its table of contents is a scanty recapitulation of the very largest headings, its index of authors is incomplete, and a subject index is lacking. I have already expressed sincere admiration for the book and feel all the more keenly the presence of these defects.
Petzholdt's frequent disparaging remarks show that he did not esteem highly the bibliographical achievements of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We need not defend them here, but we must recognize that his low opinion of them explains many omissions of early bibliographies in his own work. His admirable survey of books that a scholar would find useful in 1866 gives no adequate account of the historical development of bibliography or of the wealth of bibliographical work before 1750. His very convenient chronological arrangement of titles in the various categories does often suggest the historical development and at times his choice of older books is generous.
Petzholdt has not compared his accounts of some fields with easily available bibliographies and therefore fails to include obviously important books. In the field of national bibliographies, Petzholdt chose to pass over many older bibliographies that seemed to him to be no longer useful. Both the Latin and the German editions of Heinrich Pantaleon's rare sixteenth-century German biobibliography could perhaps be dispensed with, and I shall not object to his omission of them.[155] I think he should not have passed over without mention Henning Witte's biobibliographical dictionaries, which are still useful sources of information about obscure seventeenth century writers. To be sure, Witte's Repertorium biblicum is cited (p. 286), but this is the least useful of Witte's books. Petzholdt's account of German regional biobibliographies (pp. 299-322) can only be called superficial. In Robert F. Arnold, Allgemeine BÜcherkunde zur neueren deutschen Literaturgeschichte,[156] which I have compared only for the first page (the entries extending from Aargau through Bayern), I find twelve books published before 1866 that Petzholdt does not name. If we turn to works of larger scope, one cannot easily find a reason for omitting D'Herbelot, BibliothÈque orientale. First published in 1697, improved and enlarged in later editions, and brought up to date by J. T. Zenker's continuation of 1846-1861, it remains the only general account of Oriental studies for its period. Petzholdt neglects to mention the seventeenth-century biobibliographies of Italian and French Orientalists compiled by Paul Colomies and deemed worthy of revision by no less a scholar than J. C. Wolf. With all its faults Namur's Bibliographie could have helped Petzholdt to fill such gaps.
Petzholdt lavishes labor and space on antiquarian catalogues. He cites them in closely printed pages in double columns at the end of every major subject division and obviously intends the reader to regard them as subject bibliographies. Some antiquarian catalogues are very valuable and others are worthless for this purpose. We have no adequate appraisal of them except these lists by Petzholdt and for this reason he deserves high praise. In fields where no good bibliography is available we are glad to use these catalogues, even though the books have been dispersed. When institutions have purchased the collections en bloc, the catalogues have a special importance because the books can still be found with little difficulty. Kuczynski and Knaake are such well-known guides to the poorly-recorded books of the Reformation that they are ordinarily cited simply by the authors' names.[157] The sale catalogues of the libraries of K. W. L. Heyse, K. H. G. Meusebach, and Viktor Manheimer are indispensable aids in the almost uncharted sea of German seventeenth-century literature.[158] Bibliographers and bibliophiles use antiquarian and sale catalogues in tracing the history of particular copies of famous rarities.[159] A student of the Dance of Death consults the Susan Minns catalogue,[160] and Mario Praz compiled a bibliography of emblem books almost exclusively from antiquarian catalogues and catalogues of private libraries.[161] Indispensable, then, as these catalogues often are, the compiler of a list should be alert to reject those of little value. Petzholdt should not have devoted seven pages (pp. 691-696) to antiquarian catalogues of classical Latin and Greek authors. Excellent bibliographies were available and a highly selective list of catalogues would have been sufficient. He could surely have omitted a catalogue (p. 696) of twenty pages issued by E. Weingart in 1864 that contains chiefly ordinary German books. The choice of catalogues for permanent record in a bibliography of bibliographies calls for the judgment and experience that Petzholdt had and did not use.
The list of catalogues (pp. 98-101) appended to the general bibliographies is perhaps the most unfortunate exhibit of Petzholdt's selections. His wide experience in this field should have told him the right catalogues to cite. He offers us a strange hodgepodge consisting of one early eighteenth-century catalogue (the Duboisiana), a handbook of bibliography, several nineteenth-century catalogues of private libraries, and a few dealers' catalogues. The Duboisiana, Michael Denis's Einleitung in die BÜcherkunde, and Part II of the Libri catalogue (1861) are not hard to justify, but the remaining titles appear to be a random selection. Inasmuch as he devotes almost one quarter of the space to a full-length citation of a part of the Libri catalogue, he should have taken the trouble to find the other parts. Although Petzholdt's list of catalogues interesting to bibliographers has the merit of being more international in scope than most of his lists for special disciplines, he overlooked many large and admirable polymathic catalogues. He does not mention the Thott and Heber catalogues or the Firmiana, to name no others.
Petzholdt's abundant descriptive and critical comments ensure the Bibliotheca bibliographica of a permanent place on every bibliographer's desk. He expresses an extensive analysis and usually accurate opinion about almost every book that he cites. It did not occur to him to tell the reader the number of titles in these books, but bibliographers have been slow to realize the value of this detail.
There are, however, some qualifications of any praise of Petzholdt's comments. His unsympathetic feeling for sixteenth- and seventeenth-century bibliographers leads him to dismiss (p. 7) Teissier's bibliographies of bibliographies with "Virtually worthless today (GegenwÄrtig so gut wie werthlos)." His condemnation of Raffaelle Soprani's Genoese biobibliography (pp. 360-361) and Leo Allacci's Apes Urbanae (p. 362) for listing authors by their first names can be properly called naive. In describing Agostino Oldoini's similar book for Perugia (p. 363), he says that this was the usual procedure in the seventeenth century and involved only the inconvenience of consulting an index of last names. These Renaissance bibliographers had inherited this procedure from medieval scholars who knew men by their Christian names and used other designations only when a differentiation of individuals was necessary. Even today a bibliography arranged in this fashion can prove to be a useful tool. The medieval mathematician Richard Suisset, whose last name occurs in various spellings, can be easily tracked down by use of his Christian name. He is not easy to find in a modern book unless one remembers the particular spelling of his name that the author prefers.
Petzholdt passes some very severe judgments on some books that were once highly esteemed and on some that are unique surveys of a particular field. Whatever defects such books may have, they should not be damned hastily and completely. For example, Petzholdt's rejection (p. 160) of Johannes Tritheim's catalogue of Carmelite writers as "bibliographically completely worthless (Bibliographisch ganz ohne Werth)" is far too harsh. In 1576, after it had circulated in manuscript for almost a century, the Carmelites believed it deserved to be printed. Three more editions (1596, 1624, and 1643), all of which Petzholdt cites, came out during the next seventy years. Men obviously found it useful, and it is the basis of the modern Carmelite bibliography. The remark "Of altogether inferior bibliographical value (Bibliographisch von ganz untergeordnetem Werthe)" is even more unjust to Theodore Petreius's Carthusian bibliography (p. 161). However bad it may be, Petzholdt knew no other Carthusian bibliography. The only bibliography of a field may be incomplete, inaccurate, or badly arranged and it may even have all these defects, but it cannot be altogether worthless. Paul Lehmann, a competent authority in medieval bibliography and literary history, mentions Petreius and some other early writers of biobibliographies of religious orders and says that scarcely one of these writers has been superseded, although details in their work may need correction.[162]
Petzholdt's critical remarks on bibliographies written in the second half of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century are very full and informative. Rarely does he err as badly as he does in a comment on Emil Weller's Annalen. This partial revision of G. W. Panzer, Annalen der deutschen National-Literatur (1792-1805) is, like the original work, still valuable for German publications between 1500 and 1525. Weller's notes on books that he had seen contain no great number of serious mistakes. Nevertheless, Petzholdt says (p. 708): "A book that deserves very much to be noticed, although it by no means lacks bibliographical defects and [shows] hastiness and carelessness. It owes its great value to the wealth of the collections that the compiler was able to use." Weller was as difficult in his manners as Magliabecchi, Fontanini, and other bibliographers have been on occasion and had spoken unkindly of Petzholdt, but he did not deserve such a patronizing slur.
Petzholdt's self-assurance carries him to the length of condemning books that he has not seen. Of a Catalogo di commedie italiane published in 1776 he says: "It is said to be an extremely rare pamphlet that contains all the Italian comedies arranged in alphabetical order according to the authors' names. The rarity of the pamphlet seems to be greater than its bibliographical value."[163] As he indicates by an asterisk, he has not seen the Catalogo. Any complete or relatively complete account of Italian comedies is obviously a useful book.
All that I have said in qualification of Petzholdt's merits does not diminish my admiration for him and his book. The Bibliotheca bibliographica deserves a close and critical reading and only a great book survives such study. It is a masterpiece of modern bibliography.
I turn now to a smaller book by another famous bibliographer. It is one of his minor efforts and will not detain us long. Joseph Sabin (1821-1881), a bibliographer of Americana, found John Power's little Handy-Book about Books (London, 1870) very unsatisfactory. Although Power intended only to offer a brief selective list of books useful to a bibliographer or bibliophile, Sabin rejected it and wrote a much larger list. He entitled it Bibliography of Bibliography, or a handy book about books which relate to books, being an alphabetical catalogue of the most important works descriptive of the literature of Great Britain and America, and more than a few relative to France and Germany (1877). It names perhaps twelve hundred titles and includes a few bibliographies printed as parts of non-bibliographical works and a few journal articles. The word "literature" in the title means publications in any field of learning and not merely belles lettres. Since Sabin provides neither a table of contents (his strictly alphabetical arrangement did not call for one) nor a subject index, one must read his book from cover to cover to find what it contains or to discover a particular subject bibliography. His occasional brief critical comments are often drawn from Petzholdt. As his subtitle indicates, he has included many books that are not bibliographies. Some he has carried over from Power's list that he has included in its entirety, although with misgivings, and some he has added on his own responsibility. Beloe's Anecdotes of Literature and Scarce Books contains much bibliographical information, but can hardly be called a bibliography. Bonnardot's treatises on repairing bindings, Botford's and Clarke's books about libraries, and Constantin's treatise on library economy are books about books in the modern sense of the term. Like most writers of a bibliography of bibliographies, Sabin includes works dealing with the history of printing.
In his title Sabin announces an intention of naming chiefly bibliographies written by British and American scholars or dealing with British and American subjects. Since he was an agent and bookdealer specializing in Americana and the author of a bibliography in that field, his account of bibliographies of Americana is naturally adequate. It begins with Bishop White Kennett's Bibliothecae Americanae Primordia (1713) and extends through later standard works down to the antiquarian catalogues of such dealers as Frederik Muller, Otto Rich, and Henry Stevens in Sabin's own day. His selection of strictly British bibliographies is more cursory. Although he had Petzholdt's description before him, he reports John Bale's sixteenth century biobibliographies inaccurately. He passes over John Pits's Renaissance account of British authors without mention. Thomas Tanner's Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica, which was still a very valuable reference work when Sabin was writing, either was so rare that it escaped his notice or seemed, although wrongly, to have been replaced. Sabin is obviously not much interested in British biobibliographies. His account of bibliographies in special fields is fairly satisfactory. He gives many useful references to British and American catalogues of private libraries, and his comments on them are often helpful. His arrangement of these titles is extremely clumsy. I cite the catchwords under which Sabin lists a few of these catalogues: Askew, Bibliotheca Heberiana (he neglects to mention the thirteenth part), Bibliotheca Smithiana, Catalogue of Books ... in the Collection of Colonel Joseph Aspinwall, and Crevenna. These are references now to the collector's name and now to the first word in the title. The Catalogue of the Valuable Library of Stanesby Alchorne, Esq. is under the compiler's name, T. F. Dibdin. There are no cross-references and the arrangement is confusing. Sabin's interest in T. F. Dibdin led him to cite an autobiography, a book that cannot be called a bibliography.
Sabin promises to give "more than a few" bibliographies relative to France and Germany, but does not make clear how he chooses them. He passes over Johannes Tritheim and Conrad Gesner without mention and seems to know little about other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century bibliographies. His wide acquaintance with Americana leads him to mention Antonio LeÓn Pinelo's Epitome of 1620, perhaps the first important bibliography of Americana. On the whole, his choice of eighteenth century bibliographies is judicious. He cites the encyclopedic Georgi and such standard catalogues of rare books as Clement and Freytag, although he does not know the last and largest edition of Johannes Vogt, Catalogus librorum rariorum. He makes a good selection of eighteenth-century subject bibliographies, which were for the most part still valuable reference works in the 1870's. History is sufficiently represented by Lenglet du Fresnoy and Meusel's edition of Struve. Cave, Du Pin, and Walch are the right books to recommend to a theologian. As far as he goes, Sabin is generally successful in naming histories, which are virtually bibliographies, of national literatures, but J. A. Fabricius, Bibliotheca mediae et infimae latinitatis and J. C. Wolf, Bibliotheca hebraea are lacking. He mentions only a few regional biobibliographies and seems to have had no plan in selecting them. I have examined only his references to Italian examples of this genre, but these are well-known and easily found. In other fields than history and literature he has usually chosen wisely. He knows Pritzel's botanical bibliography and Van der Linden's medical bibliography. He has a blind eye for bibliographies of the religious orders. As we might expect, De Backer's Jesuit bibliography is present, but it is surprising to see no mention of Wadding's account of the Franciscans, who had a large share in the cultural development of the Spanish colonies in America, or QuÉtif and Echard's biobibliographical dictionary of the Dominicans. In brief, Sabin's book is probably as good a book as can be written in one hundred and fifty pages. A classified and an alphabetical index of subjects would have vastly increased its usefulness. Had he made them, he would have perceived and filled the gaps.
Sabin's purpose in writing A Bibliography of Bibliographies remains somewhat mysterious. I cannot understand how he failed to see the necessity of making indexes. How, for example, is the user to discover the bibliographies of precocious children, mnemonics, and chess in F. Cancellieri, Dissertazione intorno agli uomini dotati ad [read ed] a quelli divenuti smemorati, colle biblioteche degli scrittori sopra gli eruditi precoci, la memoria artificiale ed il giuoco degli scacchi (pp. xxviii-xxix) without a subject index? We can commend Sabin for enlarging Power's dilettante list into a reference work. We can commend his care in citing books and his industry and judgment in choosing them, but accuracy, industry, and learning are not the only virtues required of a bibliographer. A bibliographer must be a practical man who sees how his book will be used.
Sabin's book has remained almost unknown, but the next book to be discussed has an unenviable reputation. No one has a kind word for LÉon VallÉe, Bibliographie des bibliographies (1883-1887), but in damning it few have effectively supported their opinions. It is not a good book, but it has perhaps been judged too severely. As an example of a sweeping and unsupported condemnation I cite what A. G. S. Josephson wrote in 1901:
This work is of comparatively slight value in spite of the vast material that it contains. It is very uncritical and gives in most cases no hint as to the whereabouts of bibliographical materials in the books referred to. The alphabetical arrangement by authors, even with the subject index, makes the work difficult to consult. [It may] be a useful basis for a more scholarly work.[164]
This is not only Josephson's judgment but also the judgment that bibliographers have generally passed on VallÉe. Reviewers contemporary with VallÉe are perhaps somewhat more favorable in their estimates, but make their dissatisfaction altogether plain. In an article suggested by Josephson's bibliography in which this criticism appears, Vilhelm Grundtvig expressed an equally condemnatory opinion about VallÉe's book.[165] He declares that only Petzholdt's Bibliotheca bibliographica and Henri Stein's Manuel (which is yet to be mentioned) deserve mention among bibliographies of bibliographies. This means passing over LabbÉ, Teissier, and Peignot, who were very respectable workers indeed. He goes on to say that VallÉe's book does not even deserve review and is altogether unworthy of a member of the staff of the greatest library in the world. Theodore Besterman's judgment (I, p. x) is equally severe:
It is difficult to say much in praise of this compilation, which has, indeed, been universally condemned. Its general plan is basically wrong, and it contains far too many irrelevancies, mistakes, omissions, and second-hand descriptions. To indicate the general standard of accuracy maintained by VallÉe, it is perhaps enough to say that, although a large part of his volume was taken bodily from Petzholdt, that scholar's name is spelt incorrectly throughout the entries under his name.
VallÉe's book is unsatisfactory, but I cannot listen to this chorus without examining the criticisms briefly. Josephson's damning notice signifies very little. As far as such rough tests as I have used can show, VallÉe does not include an unreasonable proportion of unsuitable titles. I have examined the first entry on page 25, and each succeeding twenty-fifth page without finding an instance of a non-bibliographical title. If Josephson means that VallÉe gives many unnecessary references, I should agree with him. VallÉe should not choose to cite Thomas Stapleton's biography of Sir Thomas More (p. 519, No. 6048) because it contains bibliographical information or to give hundreds of similar references. I cannot however agree with Josephson's remark that VallÉe fails to indicate where this bibliographical information appears in the books cited. It seems altogether unnecessary to cite a bibliography found in a biography, an edition of a classical Latin or Greek author, or a general treatise on some subject, but when VallÉe cites it, as he does in imitation of Petzholdt with distressing frequency, he ordinarily gives reference to pages. I cannot see that an alphabetical arrangement according to authors with a subject index is very much more difficult to use than an alphabetical or classified arrangement according to subjects with an author index, but in this opinion I stand alone against general bibliographical practice and shall say no more here. In any event, VallÉe's choice of arrangement seems a comparatively minor fault, when compared with Petzholdt's and Stein's choice of a classified arrangement with altogether unsatisfactory subject indexes and hastily-made author indexes. I speak in VallÉe's behalf partly because of Josephson's arrangement of a bibliography to be mentioned at the end of this essay. Josephson chose to arrange the titles in chronological order without providing either an author or a subject index. No one has ever recommended such an arrangement.
I shall let VallÉe's book speak for itself. Like the bibliographers who immediately preceded and followed him, VallÉe struck out for himself and gave little heed to earlier work. This appears even in his references to bibliographers of bibliographies. In an "Avertissement" he recognizes only three predecessors: Tonnelli in 1782, Petzholdt in 1866, and Sabin in 1872 [the date is wrong]. This is a bad start. Francesco Tonnelli's book[166] is a worthless mixture of a biobibliographical dictionary and a bibliographical handbook. The biobibliographical information is a disorderly collection of notes, referring chiefly, but by no means exclusively, to men whose names begin with the first letters of the alphabet. The bibliographical information is a miscellany of facts about libraries. Tonnelli, who has occasionally buried bibliographies in this rubbish heap, had no intention of writing a bibliography of bibliographies. I cannot guess what use VallÉe made of Tonnelli's queer book. If he actually consulted it, he should have objected to its disorderliness and its lack of materials for his needs. Petzholdt's book is, as VallÉe says, a classified bibliography of bibliographies made by a competent scholar. It is regrettable that he did not fully accept it as his model. He gives the wrong date for Sabin's book, which began to appear serially in 1875 and was published in 1877. He does not make it clear that he has seen and used it.
If we turn to VallÉe's references to the works mentioned in this essay, we find nothing to encourage us. He puts Peignot's RÉpertoire, Teissier's edition of LabbÉ's Bibliotheca bibliothecarum, and LabbÉ's first edition in the Novae bibliothecae specimen[167] of 1653 in a section entitled "Bibliographies gÉnÉrales." In other words, he does not consider them to be bibliographies of bibliographies. I cannot see that he cites LabbÉ's Bibliotheca bibliothecarum at all. Namur's Bibliographie is in a section entitled "Bibliologie" (p. 621) with a mistake in its title. All this indicates, I am afraid, that VallÉe did not recognize a bibliography of bibliographies when he saw it. This grievous fault is all the more grievous because he emphasizes in his preface the importance of careful classification.
VallÉe is guilty of many more faults. He includes titles that do not belong in a bibliography of bibliographies.[168] As I have already said, their number does not seem to me to be very large and many of them lie on the fringes of bibliography. His descriptions and entries are incomplete and inaccurate.[169] He cites bibliographies that can be easily found and scarcely need mention.[170] He fails to analyze the long subject entries in his index.[171] He makes serious errors in names, dates, titles, and places of publications and is careless about editions and the continuations of works that spread over several years. In his supplement of 1887, he fails to repair the faults that reviewers had pointed out. More serious than anything in this long list of faults is, in my opinion, his rash attempt to survey all bibliographies anew with little or no regard for his predecessors.
Two things must be said in reduction of this severe judgment on VallÉe. He is the first compiler of a bibliography of bibliographies to base his work on the books in a particular library and to indicate, although incompletely and inaccurately, what he has seen there. He has included many references to bibliographical sections in non-bibliographical books. Although these and other references of slight value are numerous, he has accumulated a very large number of bibliographies. Almost everyone will find something useful in VallÉe's book. The first volume contains 6894 titles, and the supplement raises the total to 10,246. In a savage criticism[172] Henri Stein declared that perhaps 2500 titles should have been omitted and 3000 should be added. This amounts to saying that VallÉe collected about three-quarters of the bibliographies he should have found. I cannot vouch for the correctness of these estimates but they may suggest what the book is worth. It is regrettable that Henri Stein, to whom we now turn, did not give the additional titles as a supplement instead of writing a new bibliography of bibliographies.
In the Manuel de bibliographie gÉnÉrale (1897) Henri Stein (b. 1862), a member of the staff of the BibliothÈque Nationale, offered the world a new bibliography of bibliographies. He calls it nothing less than a summary of all bibliographies published before 1897,[173] but seems at times to be content to supplement Petzholdt's Bibliotheca bibliographica. He falls far short of completeness and does not make his intention entirely clear. Although the task that he undertook is beyond any man's strength, his treatment of his colleague VallÉe does not awaken sympathy for him.
Stein yields to the same temptation to which his predecessors had succumbed. He includes material of little pertinence to a bibliography of bibliographies. For example, he could have omitted a long list (pp. 555-636) of places where books were printed before 1800 and the names of the printers. This information is very useful to a historian of printing, but has no proper place in Stein's book. His list of indexes to journals is useful but is also not altogether pertinent.[174] His long list of printed catalogues of public libraries, a list which is limited almost exclusively to rather recent publications, is something of a luxury.[175] Neither logic nor custom justifies an objection to the inclusion of bibliographies of individual authors, but Stein could have reduced their number without loss.[176]
Stein based his classification on Petzholdt's book but introduced modifications of his own. As Vilhelm Grundtvig correctly says, the classification is "at times nothing less than amazing, for example, hippology is under 'sciences pÉdagogiques' [and] dentistry under 'medicine interne.'"[177] Although he provides a table of contents and an alphabetical subject index, he has not made his book easy to use. There is no index of authors' names.
The Manuel does not contain all the available bibliographies or even a satisfactory collection of the best ones. Stein's surveys of universal and national bibliographies are inadequate and so, too, are the sections dealing with philosophy, chemistry, education, sport, and linguistics.[178] He shows very little interest in bibliographies printed before 1800. He does not carry out systematically or successfully an announced intention of expressing critical judgments.[179] Finally, he is inaccurate in details.[180]
This recital seems to leave little to be said in Stein's favor, but no bibliographer who has made a serious effort to write a useful book has ever failed to be helpful. Any list of 5500 bibliographies—the figure is Besterman's—will contain titles and information worth noting and remembering. He calls attention to books that other men have not seen or have neglected to cite. For example, I have not seen "Ahm. Zeki-Bey, Elmevsonat (Boulak, 1904)," which he describes (p. 264) as a bibliography of Arabic encyclopedias, mentioned elsewhere. We owe to him the interesting and important fact that the unpublished manuscript of Mazzuchelli's enormous work, Gli scrittori d'Italia, is in the Vatican Library.[181] He adds many titles to those cited by Petzholdt and VallÉe. I lay aside the Manuel with the regret that Stein's zeal has given us a less useful book than we might have hoped for. Had he named, as I have suggested, the three thousand bibliographies lacking in VallÉe and had he continued the collection from VallÉe's supplement of 1887 to his own publication in 1897, he would have given us an invaluable book. What we have is one more demonstration of the unwillingness of bibliographers in his century to join hands with their predecessors and contemporaries.
