24
24
already, Dr Tenison established a very similar institution in 1684-5 and
Dr Plume may have derived his own scheme from that and the
exhortations of Dr Thomas Bray in the 1690s for the establishment of
parochial libraries [33]. Plume was one of the original members of the
Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge [8] and a benefactor
of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, in both
of which Thomas Bray worked for the acceptance of his library
schemes. These movements in the 1680s and 1690s, and the story of
how he came to the idea of a Professor of Astronomy as late as 1698,
point towards so late a date as 1684-1698 for the formation of Dr
Plume’s decision to found a distinctive reference library in the
symbolically designed house at Maldon.
Moreover, he amassed the books too late in his life to have time for
their classification or to edit the stock. They arrived at Maldon arranged
only by size (the shelving is fixed, had therefore been in place since c.
1700
and so the space required had been by then calculated) but not in
any arrangement by subjects. Over 1,000 titles were still unbound, there
were many duplications and there were some items which any donor
would surely have purged from his public benefaction. (One thinks of
The Bassa of Buda
and
Rome’s Rarities or The Pope’s Cabinet
Unlockt).
His catalogues and guides for this work span the years
1672-1697 [7.1-7.8]
but the existence of only two early issues of
The
Works of the Learned... books newly printed
[7.6]
suggests a slackening
concern for the purchase of new stock from 1692 (or 1693, in which his
former patron’s remark was printed that “repletion of authors hath begat
loathing”) which is reflected in Figure 3. As a guide to the sufficiency of
his collection on Theology he had two standard works by Louis Ellies
Dupin [7.7] which are both dated 1692. Of these, the
New Library of
Ecclesiastical Authors
is a late edition of only the first of many volumes
(
its first edition was in 1686) and Dr Plume did not acquire any more of
the volumes issued by Dupin up to (and beyond) 1704, which again
suggests that 1692 was the last year of extensive purchasing: he did not
require guides for any material published after 1692. The Librarian, the
“
Scholar that, knows books”, was needed to complete these tasks rather
than to superintend their use.
What is thus proposed here is that this is an attempt at a general