But let us suppose the fiction to be a fact; let it be assumed that ‘my idea of a MS. is that it should exist beautifully’; how would that be a flaw in the argument against lending Bodleian books? The argument--to put it in its baldest form--is, that Nothing that tends to damage a library ought to be done by those who really care for it; but lending tends to damage a library, _ergo_. _Minor probatur_: Whatever unnecessarily damages the books tends to damage a library; lending does so, _ergo_. Again, Whatever deters would-be benefactors from giving books tends to damage a library; lending does so; _ergo_, and so on and so on. The ‘Remarks’ can be run out into mood and figure with no trouble at all. How is this argument or any part of it vitiated, if I were to say (what I never have said), that ‘a MS. should exist beautifully’? Let us clench the absurdity: suppose I had been fool enough to say that no book should ever be looked at in the library for more than an hour a day; even that would not vitiate the argument against lending books out of it. Have we forgotten in this once famous University what a contradictory proposition is? Have we as completely lost the art of clear disputation as we have forgotten the use of the rapier? There are times when I think so. Come we now to the second flaw: I ‘immensely under-estimate the value of the work that has been done upon MSS. in recent years’. Suppose for a moment that I do, how does that constitute a flaw in my argument? It beats me altogether: I cannot see it. Do not lend your books, says the argument, for five or six different reasons; and I ask again with positive wonder in what way any of these reasons are contradicted, even if I do under-estimate the work that has been done on MSS.? What has the one thing to do with the other? I could understand it if it were impossible to examine a MS. _in_ the library; but that cannot be Mr. Sanday’s meaning. Or does he mean this? If you do not let your MSS. go out of the Library, and occasionally out of the country, they will not be examined or collated at all? I hope that this is not his meaning; for badly as I think of the state of learning here, I have never thought so badly of it as this supposition would imply. If after thirty years of constant ‘reform’ we are sunk so low that we neither can, nor will, use the treasures of the Bodleian Library ourselves, why in that case I say let us give the whole of it away to some country where scholars are yet to be found. A library in which no man works--a library such as the Bodleian is in the hands of men too ignorant or too idle to use it--is dreadful to think of. I, however, hoped better of the place, and I argued that we should not send our books out of the library, because--as one reason amongst others--it would then be impossible for us to use those books in the library. I wished to think of this University as still living, and of its members as still lovers