9

boys from Westminster School, playing at football, broke in upon the monastic stillness of the place, making the vaulted passages and mouldering tombs echo with their merriment. I sought to take refuge from their noise by penetrating still deeper into the solitudes of the pile, and applied to one of the vergers for admission to the library. He conducted me through a portal rich with the crumbling sculpture of former ages, which opened upon a gloomy passage leading to the Chapter-house and the chamber in which Doomsday Book 10 is deposited. Just within the passage is a small door on the left. To this the verger applied a key; it was double locked, and opened with some difficulty, as if seldom used. We now ascended a dark narrow staircase, and passing through a second door, entered the library.

I found myself in a lofty antique 11 hall, the roof supported by massive joists of old English oak. It was soberly lighted by a row of Gothic windows at a considerable height from the floor, and which apparently opened upon the roofs of the cloisters. An ancient picture of some reverend dignitary of the church in his robes hung over the fire-place. Around the hall and in a small gallery were the books, arranged in carved oaken cases. They consisted principally of old polemical writers, and were much more worn by time than use. In the centre of the library was a solitary table with two or three books on it, an inkstand without ink, and a few pens parched by long disuse. The place seemed fitted for quiet study and profound meditation. It was buried deep among the massive walls of the abbey, and shut up from the tumult of the world. I could only hear now and then the shouts of the school-boys faintly swelling from the cloisters, and the sound of a bell tolling for prayers, that echoed soberly along the roofs of the abbey. By degrees the shouts of merriment grew fainter and fainter, and at length died away. The bell ceased to toll, and a profound silence reigned through the dusky hall.

*) verger Stabträger, Kirchendiener, (v. fr. verger v. verge, lat. verga Ruthe).

10) doom Urtheil, Gericht (ags. dôm, nhd. Thum; frühzeitig in Zusammensetzungen viel verwendet und theilweise in den neueren Sprachen nur noch als zweiter Theil von solchen erhalten); doomsday also = Gerichtstag; Doomsday-Book A book compiled by order of William the Conqueror, containing a survey of all the lands in England, their ownership, value, etc. It consists of two volumes, a large folio and a quarto (Webster).

11) antique Fremdwort aus dem Franz. mit franz. Betonung (i = ee). Irving, The Sketch Book.

10

I had taken down a little thick quarto, curiously bound in parchment, with brass clasps, and seated myself at the table in a venerable elbow-chair. Instead of reading, however, I was beguiled by the solemn monastic air, and lifeless quiet of the place, into a train of musing. As I looked around upon the old volumes in their mouldering covers, thus ranged on the shelves, and apparently never disturbed in their repose, I could not but consider the library a kind of literary catacomb 12, where authors, like mummies, are piously entombed, and left to blacken and moulder in dusty oblivion.

How much, thought I, has each of these volumes, now thrust aside with such indifference, còst some aching head! how many weary days! how many sleepless nights! How have their authors buried themselves in the solitude of cells and cloisters; shut themselves up from the face of man, and the still more blessed face of nature; and devoted themselves to painful research and intense reflection! And all for what? to occupy an inch of dusty shelf to have the title of their works read now and then in a future age, by some drowsy churchman or casual straggler like myself; and in another age to be lost, even to remembrance. Such is the amount of this boasted immortality 18. A mere temporary rumour, a local sound; like the tone of that bell which has just tolled among these towers, filling the ear for a moment lingering transiently in echo and then passing away like a thing that was not!

While I sat half murmuring, half meditating these unprofitable speculations, with my head resting on my hand, I was thrumming with the other hand upon the quarto, until I accidentally loosened the clasps; when 14, to my utter astonishment, the little book gave two or three yawns, like one awaking from a deep sleep; then a husky hem; and at length began to talk. At first its voice was very hoarse and broken, being much troubled by a cobweb which some studious spider had woven across it; and having probably contracted a cold from long exposure to the chills and damps of the abbey. In a short time, however, it became more distinct, and I soon found it an exceedingly fluent, conversable little tome. Its language, to be sure, was rather quaint and obsolete, and its pronunciation, what, in the present day, would be deemed barbarous; but I

12) to consider mit doppelt. Accus.: etwas ansehen als.

18) deutsch etwa: Das ist es, worauf es bei dieser gerühmten Unsterblichkeit hinauskommt.. 14) vergl. S. 117, Anm. 19.

shall endeavour, as far as I am able, to render it in modern parlance.

It began with railings about the neglect of the world about merit being suffered to languish in obscurity, and other such common-place topics of literary repining, and complained bitterly that it had not been opened for more than two centuries; that the Dean 15 only looked now and then into the library, sometimes took down a volume or two, trifled with them for a few moments, and then returned them to their shelves.,,What a plague 16 do they mean," said the little quarto, which I began to perceive was somewhat choleric 17,-,,what a plague do they mean by heaping several thousand volumes of us shut up here, and watched by a set of old vergers, like so many beauties 18 in a harem, merely to be looked at now and then by the Dean? Books were written to give pleasure and to be enjoyed; and I would have a rule passed 19 that the Dean should pay each of us a visit at least once a-year; or if he is not equal to the task, let them once in a while turn loose the whole school of Westminster among us, that at any rate we may now and then have an airing.“

,,Softly, my worthy friend," replied I;,,you are not aware how much better you are off 20 than most books of your generation. By being stored away in this ancient library, you are like the treasured remains of those saints and monarchs which lie enshrined in the adjoining chapels; while the remains of their contemporary mortals, left to the ordinary course of nature, have long since returned to the dust."

15, Der Dean (v. lat. decanus, woraus fr. doyen, urspr. der über 10 Mönche etc. gesetzte Vorsteher, v. decem zehn) Dechant, Decan von Westminster. Dean ist der oberste Geistliche unter einem Bischof, gehört aber nur zur Kathedralkirche und ist das Haupt des Chapter, d. h. der sämmtlichen zur Kathedrale gehörigen Geistlichen. Dean and Chapter bilden ein Collegium, welches dem Bischof in geistlichen und weltlichen Angelegenheiten des Bisthums berathend zur Seite steht (Hoppe).

16) what a plague (im Sinne von Pest, Pestilenz) = what the devil, was zum Henker, vergl. Shaksp. Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1: What a plague means my niece?

17) spr. kóleric.

18) so many ist überall, wo ein Vergleich sich auf viele Einzelne bezieht, deutsch nicht zu übersetzen; z. B. (Dickens, A Christmas Carol) we were packed up like so many herrings, wir waren zusammengepackt wie (die) Heringe (Hoppe).

19) to pass von Gesetzen = durchgehen lassen, genehmigen, votieren, erlassen: Ich wünschte, dass eine Verordnung erlassen würde. 20) to be better off: besser daran sein.

,,Sir," said the little tome, ruffling his leaves and looking big 21,,,I was written for all the world, not for the bookworms of an abbey. I was intended to circulate from hand to hand, like other great contemporary works; but here have I been clasped up for more than two centuries, and might have silently fallen a prey to these worms that are playing the very vengeance 22 with my intestines 23, if you had not by chance given me an opportunity of uttering a few last words before I go to pieces."

,,My good friend," rejoined I, ,,had you been left to the circulation of which you speak, you would long ere this have been no more. To judge from your physiognomy, you are now well stricken in years: very few of your contemporaries can be at present in existence; and those few owe their longevity 24 to being immured like yourself in old libraries; which, suffer me to add, instead of likening to harems, you might more properly and gratefully have compared to those infirmaries attached to religious establishments, for the benefit of the old and decrepit, and where, by quiet fostering and no employment, they often endure to an amazingly good-for-nothing old age.

,,You talk of your contemporaries as if in circulation 25 where do you meet with their works? what do we hear of Robert Groteste of Lincoln 26? No one could have toiled harder than he for immortality. He is said to have written nearly two hundred volumes. He built, as it were, a pyramid of books to perpetuate his name; but, alas! the pyramid has long since allen, and only a few fragments are scattered in various libraries, where they are scarcely disturbed even by the antiquarian.

21) to look big = eine stolze Miene annehmen, stolz aussehen; vergl. to talk big = das grosse Wort führen.

22) to play the very vengeance: the very vengeance ist hier eine ,,apology" (Ersatz, Surrogat) für the devil schändlich zurichten, ein Teufelsspiel treiben; vergl. im Dtsch. das sehr vulgäre: Schindluder spielen mit; andere apologies sind: to play the deuce, the dickens, old Gooseberry, old Nick.

28) spr. intéstines.

24) In longévity spr. g = dsch, weil es von dem lat. Wort longaevitas (v. longus, a, um und aevum) d. lange Lebensdauer, d. lange Leben abgeleitet ist.

25) as if in circulation: Verkürzter Bedingungssatz = as if they were in circulation.

26) Robert Grosseteste od. Grosthead, Bischof von Lincoln, † 1253. Es sind noch viele Werke von ihm handschriftlich vorhanden; die gedruckten bestehen hauptsächlich aus Commentarien zu Aristoteles und einer Sammlung philosophischer Werke.

What do we hear of Giraldus Cambrensis 27 the historian, antiquarian, philosopher, theologian, and poet? He declined two bishoprics that he might shut himself up and write for posterity; but posterity never enquires after his labours. What of Henry of Huntingdon 28, who, besides a learned History of England, wrote a treatise on the contempt of the world, which the world has revenged by forgetting him? What is quoted of Joseph of Exeter 29, styled the miracle of his age in classical composition? Of his three great heroic poems one is lost for ever, excepting a mere fragment: the others are known only to a few of the curious in literature; and as to his love verses and epigrams, they have entirely disappeared. What is in current use of John Wallis, the Franciscan, who acquired the name of the tree of life? Of William of Malmsbury; of Simeon of Durham; of Benedict of Peterborough; of John Hanvil of St. Albans 30; of -?

,,Prithee, friend," cried the quarto, in a testy tone,,,how old do you think me? You are talking of authors that lived long before my time, and wrote either in Latin or French, so that

27) Gerald de Bary († 1223), Sohn eines normannischen Vaters und einer dem wallisischen Fürstengeschlecht verwandten Mutter, bekannt unter dem Namen Giraldus Cambrensis. Er schrieb in latein. Sprache eine Topographia Hiberniae, Expugnatio Hiberniae, Topographia Cambriae (Wales). Interessant ist auch seine Selbstbiographie De gestis Giraldi laboriosis und sein Speculum ecclesiae, eine heftige Satire gegen die Mönche und die römische Curie.

28) Heinrich, Archidiaconus v. Huntingdon, schrieb, nachdem er in seiner Jugend lateinische Verse gemacht und im Jahr 1135 in seiner Schrift De summitatibus rerum die damals brennende Frage nach dem Zeitpunkt des Weltendes erörtert hatte, auf den Wunsch des Bischofs Alexander von Lincoln eine Geschichte von England, die er zuerst bis 1135, später bis 1154 fortführte.

29) Joseph von Exeter bearbeitete um 1188 in lateinischen Versen die angeblich von dem Phrygier Dares, einem Theilnehmer des trojanischen Krieges, verfasste Schrift De excidio Troiae historia. Seine Bearbeitung ist namentlich in formeller Hinsicht von Interesse, insofern sie sich durch eine für jene Zeit höchst gebildete, ja glänzende Diction auszeichnet. Sodann schrieb er die Antiochesis oder den Krieg von Antiochia, aus der Geschichte der Kreuzzüge. Von einem dritten Heldengedicht ist nichts bekannt.

30) Simeon von Durham (circa 1095-1143) schrieb eine. Historia de gestis regum Anglorum (bis 1129); bald nach ihm trať in Wilhelm, dem Mönch und Bibliothekar im Kloster zu Malmesbury, ein Schriftsteller auf, der eine zusammenhängende, pragmatische Behandlung des Stoffs versuchte. Die Erforschung der altenglischen Geschichte, nicht am wenigsten der Litteraturgeschichte, findet in seinen Schriften reiche Ausbeute: Historia regum Anglorum (von der englischen Einwanderung bis 1120), Historiae novellae (von 1126 bis 1143), vier Bücher De