private libraries in eighteenth-century ireland

Private Libraries in Eighteenth-Century IrelandAuthor(s): Richard C. ColeSource: The Library Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Jul., 1974), pp. 231-247Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4306411 .

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PRIVATE LIBRARIES IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY IRELAND

Richard C. Cole

Of the many private libraries of eighteenth-century Ireland, records of at least 198 survive. This study focuses on two aspects of these libraries: (1) profession and social class of the library owners, (2) books in the libraries by eight major authors of the time. These libraries were owned primarily by clergymen, landed proprietors, and lawyers, many of considerable distinction, but a few owners were from such fields as arts and letters, government, medicine, commerce, and the military. There were no library owners from the lower classes. This fact probably reflects an educational rather than an economic variable, since the Roman Catholic priests for the most part shared the poverty of the majority of their parishioners. Although the size of the libraries varied from 50 titles to more than 6,000, most of the libraries were in the 500-1,000 range and included the traditional disciplines. The library owners bought the Works of the major contemporary writers, and there is some evidence that they also read the books of these authors. Of works by the eight authors, they preferred the highly varied and extensive writings of Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, and Tobias Smollett. Whether they were prominent jurists or humble Roman Catholic clergymen, the library owners were primarily interested in works of discursive prose, such as histories, essays, lexicography, and biography, rather than fiction, verse, or drama. In their professions and literary tastes the library owners were similar to library owners and users in England and France.

In a recent article for the Library Quarterly, I examined a number of community libraries in eighteenth-century Ireland [1]. These included eighteen commercial lending libraries, eleven book clubs, three subscription library societies, and the two public libraries established by act of Parliament. These libraries met the needs of certain groups within the small reading public, but there were other readers who did not join book clubs or patronize community libraries because they had adequate libraries of their own. It is this latter group of 198 owners and their libraries that I want to analyze in this paper. Sixty-three of these were listed but not described by Francis O'Kelley in 1953 [2], and to these Walter Gordon Wheeler in an unpublished University of London thesis of 1957 made a good many additions, but he did not analyze any of the private libraries [3]. In a study of Irish community libraries in the eighteenth century, Paul Kaufman, apparently unaware of the O'Kelley

[Library Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 3, pp. 231-247] ? 1974 by The University of Chicago. AlI rights reserved.

231



232 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

and Wheeler researches, observed in 1963 that information on private libraries in eighteenth-century Ireland "is almost completely lacking"

[4, p. 312]. Wheeler's important contribution was his discovery in the Royal Irish

Academy of the huge collection of printed sale catalogs of private libraries sold by the Dublin auctioneer Charles Sharpe. Sharpe was an active auctioneer from about 1820 until about 1850, but I have chosen from his collection only the 99 printed catalogs of libraries belonging to Irish owners born before 1775 who were active buyers during the eighteenth century. The Sharpe collection also includes catalogs of a number of libraries begun by Roman Catholic priests in the eighteenth century whose libraries could be more easily sold in the nineteenth centulry after the removal of the penal laws against Roman Catholics. These catalogs do not ordinarily carry the owners' names, but Sharpe in his collected and bound catalogs for each year usually lists the owners' names in a table of contents.1 In addition to the Sharpe collection, forty-six of the libraries were sold by the Dublin auctioneering firm of James Vallance and Thomas Jones during the years 1768-1815, and these printed catalogs are in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, and the National Library of Ireland.2 These two Dublin libraries are also the repositories for 33 other printed catalogs prepared by various Irish, mostly Dublin, auction- eers of private libraries.3 There are manuscript catalogs of ten private

1. Catalogs from the Sharpe collection used in this study are for the libraries of the

following: Alexander, Archbold, Armstrong, Armit, Austin, Barnewall, E. Barrett, J. Barrett, Blake, W. Bradish, Bredin, J. Browne, Brownrigg, C. K. Bushe, G. P. Bushe, Corr, Crofton, Cumming, D'Arcy, Deane, Devereux, Digby, Downes, C. Doyle, W. Doyle, Dunne, Elrington, Lord Farnham, Lord Fitzgerald, Fitzpatrick, Fletcher, Forbes, J. Foster, J. L. Foster, Fox, Freeman, Gandon, Fortescue-Goodricke, G. Goold, Gore, Grace, H-1. Graves, J. Graves, Guinness, Hales, Hamill, Lord Clan- brassil (Hamilton), E. Houghton, Howard, M. Kearney, T. Kearney, Keatinge,

Kelburn, Keogh, Kinsela, Lanigan, Latouche, Lees, Lefanu, F. Lestrange, F. L. Lestrange, Long, M. Lynch, M'Mullen, Newenham, O'Beirne, Ogilby, E. O'Reilly, M. O'Reilly, Otway, Plunkett, Putlanid, Riky, Rolleston, Rorke, Rowan, Russell, Short, Skinner, C. Smith, T. Smith, P. Smyth, T. Smyth, W. C. Smyth, Sneyd, Stock, Stuart, Sweetman, Taaffe, Tandty, Troy, Twigg, Vaandeletir, J. Walker, P. Walsh, P. Ward, S. Ward, Whitty, and an anonymous lady (1825).

2. James Vallance sold libraries of the following: Baldwin, J. Beresford, A. Browne, Burgh, Clarendon, Cullen, Daly, Erck, T. Goold, Hellen, Mangin, Preston, Robin- son, Lord Clonmell (Scott), Uniacke, Usher, Walcott, Wilson, Lord Avonmore (Yelverton); libraries of anonymous gentlemen from 1796, 1799, 1806, 1808; an anonymous antiquarian from 1800; an anonymous clergyman from 1806. Vallance's partner and successor, Thomas Jones, sold libraries of the following: J. C. Beres-

ford, W. Browne, Caldwell, Conyngham, Eccles, Lady Fitzgerald, F. Fortescue, Harrison, A. Hill, E. Hill, J. Kearney, Kirwan, Mercer, Semple, Vallancey, R. Williams, and anonymous gentlemen from 1810, 1811, and 1814.

3. Bale, J. Barrett, Bindon, J. Bradish, Brinkley, Card, Lord Charlemont, Congreve,

A. Cooper, Cox, H. Cuningham, R. Downes, Doyne, J. Egan, Griffith, H. Grattan, M. Hamilton, Hastings, Lawson, the Duke of Leinster (2), Lloyd, MacNamara, Lord Mornington, O'Connell, Parry, Pococke, R. Scott, Sullivan, Terry, Wade, an anonymous MP of 1760, an anonymous gentleman of 1766, and an anonymous prelate of 1768.



PRIVATE IRISH LIBRARIES 233

libraries in the National Library of Ireland, 4 in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, 1 in the Trinity College Library, and 1 in the Royal Irish Academy.4 Catalogs of the libraries of Henry Cole Bowen of Bowen's Court, county Cork, and Rev. John Wickham, a Roman Catholic priest of county Wexford, are in secondary printed sources.5 The main portion of the great library of the Earl of Charlemont was sold by Sotheby in London, as was also the library of the Reverend Dr. William Martin, rector of Killishandra, county Cavan.6

All these libraries were general rather than simply professional libraries; all contained works from the traditional intellectual disciplines. They varied in size from 50 to more than 6,000 titles, but most were in the 500-1,000 range. To give a focus and unity to the study, I have limited the analysis of the contents of the libraries to books by eight major English authors of the second half of the eighteenth century, the period during which the libraries were assembled. These writers, all chosen because they have stood the test of time, include the four chief novelists of the eighteenth century-Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollett, and Laurence Sterne. Smollett was also well known during his lifetime as a historian and translator, and Sterne as a preacher and letter writer. Four members of the Literary Club founded in 1764 are also included: Dr. Samuel Johnson himself, James Boswell, Edward Gibbon, and Oliver Goldsmith. The four club members all did several types of writing. Johnson's reputation extended to lexicography, poetry, scholarship, literary criticism, the periodical essay, biography, and prose fiction. Boswell was well known as a journalist, libertarian, biographer, and traveler. Gibbon was the famous historian of Rome's fall but also widely known as an essayist, journalist, and letter writer. There were few fields of literary endeavor that Goldsmith did not adorn; his publications included plays, poetry, fiction, essays, and a large number of historical works and compilations. These eight major authors cover a wide range of writing from 1740 to the end of the century, and all were frequently reprinted in Ireland.

It is a striking fact that only ten of these 198 private libraries contained no work by one of the eight major writers. Whether this was true of all the private libraries of the period is impossible to determine, but there are records that permit some comparison to be made between private li-

4. Catalogs in the National Library of Ireland: Bellew, Cane, J. Grattan, Lord Moore, O'Gorman, Wallace, Ware, Lord Wicklow; anonymous gentlemen from ca. 1820 and 1828. Catalogs in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland: Dunbar, Marquis of Downshire, Lords Londonderry and Macartney. Catalog in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin: anonymous gentleman from 1759. Catalog in the Royal Irish Academy: R. Day.

5. Elizabeth Bowen, Bowen's Court (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1942), pp. 191-93; Padraig 0. Suilleabhain, "The Library of a Parish Priest of the Penal Days," Collectanea Hibernica 6-7 (1963-64): 234-44.

6. The Charlemont catalog is in the Royal Irish Academy with Lord Charlemont's papers, and there is also a copy in the British Museum along with the Martin catalog.




braries whose catalogs survive and private libraries whose catalogs do not survive from the period. The best known of the Dublin newspapers during the decade 1750-60, Faulkner's Dublin Journal, contains ad- vertisements of fifty-three auctions of private libraries; only 7 catalogs survive of this number, or less than one-seventh. One cannot assume that this low survival rate prevailed for the next half-century, but it is a reasonable assumption that the 198 surviving catalogs represent a minority of the private libraries.7 This does not mean, however, that the 198 are unrepresentative. There appears to be some correlation between the professions of the owners of the fifty-three libraries from this decade and those of the 198. The main evidence is that the largest number of owners among the fifty-three were twenty-four clergymen, just as the largest among the 198 owners were sixty-four clergymen, and among the seven survivors from the 1750s, the three clergymen. Although the identity of the nonclerical owners of the missing libraries from the 1750s cannot be checked easily, it seems reasonable to suppose that they would correspond to the professional groups among the 198 owners. There would presumably be a similar correspondence in literary taste.

As table I indicates, clergymen make up the largest class of the 198 owners of private libraries, thirty-nine Protestant and twenty-five Roman

TABLE 1 198 OWNERS OF PRIVATE LIBRARIES IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY IRELAND

NATIONAL ORIGIN

MEDIAN EDUCATION Anglo- PROFESSION N N BOOKS AT TCD DNB Irish Irish

1. Church (64): Protestant 39 651 28 10 33 6 Roman

Catholic 25 376 0 1 1 24 2. Land (62):

Peers and baronets 12 1,360 1 3 8 4

Gentry 50 781 4 0 27 12 3. Law 36 1,103 21 12 24 12 4. Government 12 983 3 6 7 3 5. Arts and letters 11 970 7 6 7 3 6. Medicine 5 670 2 0 1 4 7. Commerce 4 1,490 1 1 3 1 8. Military 4 1,043 0 2 3 1

Catholic. All the Protestant clerics belonged to the Church of Ireland, as the Anglican Church in Ireland was called, except Sinclair Kelburn, a Presbyterian pastor in Belfast. Almost all of the Protestant clergy were from Anglo-Irish families,8 and most were graduates of Trinity College,

7. The destruction of the Public Record Office in Dublin during the civil war of 1922 resulted in the loss of many catalogs of private libraries, and other examples could be cited.

8. I am using the distinction between Anglo-Irish and Irish made by Edward MacLysaght, The Surnames of Ireland (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1969) and his




Dublin (TCD). Few of the thirty-nine, however, were simple parish priests like Goldsmith's village preacher in The Deserted Village, "pass- ing rich with forty pounds a year." John Brinkley and John Kearney achieved bishoprics in the early nineteenth century but were professors at Trinity College during the eighteenth century. Eight were higher clergy of various types, six besides Brinkley and Kearney were professors at Trinity College, and two were schoolmasters. Ten had careers of suffi- cient distinction to admit them to the Dictionary of National Biography, (DNB)9 and part of this recognition stemmed from their publications. Although the median number of books owned by the thirty-nine clerics was 651, there were-six large libraries of more than 2,000 titles. All the libraries were heavily oriented toward divinity, but all were represented adequately in other intellectual disciplines. No one seems to have owned works from all eight major authors, but most had works from three to five, two had works from six, and two from seven. Though several of the Anglican clergy were writers of note, their comments on any writers outside the field of divinity seem not to have survived.

The Roman Catholic clergymen are more shadowy figures.10 Because of the rigorous penal laws against Roman Catholics during the eighteenth century, these priests had been forced to obtain their education in the several Irish colleges on the Continent, and for this reason their libraries ran heavily to Latin and French, Italian, Spanish, or Portuguese, de- pending on which Irish college they attended. The French Revolution resulted in the closing of the Irish colleges on the Continent, and a new theological college for Roman Catholics was opened at Maynooth, county Kildare, in 1795. In the eighteenth century only Anglican houses of worship were called churches, while Roman Catholic houses of worship were called chapels and were permitted only on back streets. Most of the twenty-five priests whose libraries we know about were in charge of

three earlier volumes on Irish families. Native families and invading groups who settled in Ireland before the seventeenth century MacLysaght regards as Irish. He regards as Anglo-Irish those who came to Ireland as the result of the Ulster Plantation of 1611, the Cromwellian Settlement of 1652, or the Williamite For- feitures of 1691. Many of the Anglo-Irish upper classes lived in England and visited Ireland periodically. In this study I am including only those Anglo-Irish library owners whose main residence was in Ireland. I am excluding such prominent Anglo-Irish library owners as Lords Sheffield and Shelburne, Edmund Burke, Oliver Goldsmith, and Edmund Malone, because they lived primarily in England. Some of the library owners were neither of Irish nor Anglo-Irish background; there were several Huguenots, for example.

9. J. Barrett, Brinkley, Cox, Elrington, Hales, J. Kearney, Kelburn, Lawson, Pococke, and J. Walker.

10. The best source for information about eighteenth-century Irish Roman Catholic priests is the Irish Catholic journal Reportorium Novum in the first four volumes beginning with 1955. Another helpful source is MS 1548 in the National Library of Ireland, an extensive compilation by Malachy Moran in 1910 of data on Irish Catholic priests of the period 1735-1835.




rude chapels on back streets in Dublin. Martin Hugh Hamill, for example, was priest-in-charge of the Francis-street Chapel in Dublin when he bought the new Dublin quarto edition of Johnson's Dictionary in 1798; he had studied at the Irish College in Rome until 1778 when he came to the Francis-street Chapel as assistant priest. The only Roman Catholic cleric among the library owners to be included in the Dictionary of National Biography is the Reverend Dr. John Troy, Archbishop of Dublin from 1784 until his death in 1823, whose library of 1,089 titles included, in addition to the dominant Roman Catholic divinity, John- son's Rambler essays and Dictionary, Smollett's translation of Don Quixote in the fine 4-volume Dublin edition of 1796, and Goldsmith's History of Rome and his Grecian History. Like most of the clerics, Anglican and Roman Catholic alike, and many of the laymen, Archbishop Troy had no novels or poetry in his library.

Another Roman Catholic leader among the library owners is the Reverend Dr. Patrick Joseph Plunkett, Bishop of Meath from 1779 until his death in 1827. In 1779, on his way back to Ireland from Paris, where he had been a professor in the Irish college, the ship on which he was a passenger was seized by John Paul Jones, the American naval hero, and Plunkett's books were not returned to him until Benjamin Franklin inter- vened on his behalf. His library of 525 titles was almost exclusively Roman Catholic divinity, and the only work he had of the eight major authors was Smollett's History of England, the most popular in Ireland of Smollett's many works. Reverend Dr. Michael Blake, who won renown in the nineteenth century as president of the Irish College at Rome and then as Bishop of Dromore, was a theological student in Rome in 1790 and then an assistant priest in the chapel of Saint Michael and John in Dublin. His library of 1,088 titles in 1825 had eighteenth-century editions of Boswell, Fielding, Goldsmith, Johnson, Richardson, and Smollett. The largest library belonged to the Reverend John Barrett of Francis-street Chapel in Dublin, whose library at his death in 1823 contained 1,822 titles, including eighteenth-century editions of works by Fielding, Gold- smith, Johnson, and Sterne. The smallest library belonged to the Rever- end John Wickham, a parish priest in county Wexford. He had studied at Louvain in 1751, and of his 100 books only 25 were in English, one of these being Smollett's History of England. As with the Protestant clergymen, the Catholic priests bought and presumably read the important books of their day but did not write about them.

The landed proprietors were almost as numerous among the library owners as the clergymen, with eight peers, four baronets, and fifty gentry. Ireland was predominantly agrarian, and most members of this class lived on estates in the country, but some lived in town houses on the great squares of Dublin such as Merrion or Rutland Square. The group is headed by the Duke of Leinster; the Earls of Charlemont, Clanbrassil, Londonderry, and Mornington; Viscount Wicklow; and Lords Farnham




and Moore.'" Most members of this class were involved in the affairs of their estates or other private interests, but several were active in political life, and one, Lord Mornington, father of the famous Duke of Wellington, was a professor of music at Trinity College, Dublin. All peers were members of the House of Lords by virtue of their positions, but the Duke of Leinster and the Earls of Charlemont and Clanbrassil were not merely nominal members. Members of the Irish House of Commons included Alexander Stewart of Newtown and Mount Stewart; Philip Doyne of Wells, who was also a well-known poet; and James Grattan of Tinne- hinch, eldest son of the great Henry Grattan. Many of the gentry were magistrates or sheriffs of counties; Wogan Browne of Castle Browne, county Kildare, is perhaps the best known. Anglo-Irish names dominate, but the sixteen members of old Irish, though not necessarily Roman Catholic, families are headed by James Fitzgerald, Ireland's only duke.

The internationally renowned name in the group is that of Lord Charlemont, active member of the Irish House of Lords, member of Samuel Johnson's Literary Club, patron of literature, collector of rare books, the general of the Irish Volunteers in 1782, and first president of the Royal Irish Academy in 1785. His was the great library of Ireland, with many rare editions from the Renaissance including Shakespeare's First Folio, but he also owned books by five of the eight contemporary writers. As a member of the Literary Club, he knew personally four of the eight writers-Johnson, Boswell, Gibbon, and Goldsmith-and many of their works were in his library, though, strangely enough, nothing of his fellow Irishman, Goldsmith. Lord Charlemont is the only library owner from the landed class whose remarks on the books in his library survive. Francis Hardy, Lord Charlemont's Irish friend and biographer, reported that though Lord Charlemont liked both Johnson and Boswell as men, and he found Boswell's Life of Johnson an admirable work in many ways, he found Boswell's method of reporting conversation objec- tionable. Recalling Lord Charlemont's objections, Hardy noted: "John- son he highly esteemed, and honoured; but to raise up a literary monu- ment to him, by setting in a note book, and afterwards divulging to the public, the casual expression, or opinions, with all the petty inci- dents, whether of gaiety or asperity, that took place in his company, was unjust to the society which was occasionally gathered round him" [5, vol. 1, p. 401]. The catalogs of Lord Charlemont's library list no work by Goldsmith, but writing to Lord Bruce in July 1774 about Lord Chester- field's Letters, Lord Charlemont likened Chesterfield's son to Goldsmith's buffoon Tony Lumpkin in She Stoops to Conquer [6]; possibly Lord Charlemont had seen the play but had not bought the printed edition.

Lawyers make up a third sizable group of library owners after the

11. Other peers won their honors through distinction in law or government and are included with these groups.




clergy and the landed proprietors. A writer in The Flapper of Dublin for February 16, 1796, observed that the only people who read much in Ireland were lawyers. Certainly many lawyers owned large and well- planned libraries, if this group of thirty-six is at all representative. The average library was large, and there were six with more than 2,000 titles. All the libraries were well supplied with legal books, but all were also well represented by the humanities. Only the great libraries of the Earl of Clonmell and Viscount Avonmore had all eight authors, but most had three to five. In Ireland, as in England and elsewhere, the law was a popular avenue to fame and fortune, and several of the lawyers achieved high place in the judiciary. There were three Lord Chief Justices of the King's Bench, a Chief Baron of the Court of the Exchequer, and seven other judges of the higher courts. Among the politicians, John Foster was Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, and Daniel O'Con- nell, in the eighteenth century a young barrister in Dublin reading Gibbon, Johnson, and Boswell in the Dublin Library Society, became the "Liberator" of the Roman Catholics in the nineteenth century. O'Connell, James Devereux, and Martin Lynch were Roman Catholic barristers who were leaders in the new movement at the end of the century for Catholic Emancipation; prior to the Catholic Relief Act of 1792, Roman Catholics could not enter the legal profession. Among the library owners the lawyers were the most distinguished, with twelve of their number attain- ing recognition in the Dictionary of National Biography.12

The lawyers were the most articulate of all the library owners about the significant books they had purchased for their libraries. Books in private libraries are not always read by the owners, but it is certain that at least eight of the lawyers read some of the books they owned because they wrote about them.18 Many of these comments are casual remarks of approval or disapproval, but such lawyers as Arthur Browne, C. K. Bushe, Daniel O'Connell, and the Earl of Clonmell wrote at greater length about the important books that they owned. Browne, a law professor at Trinity College, Dublin, and also an influential member of the Irish House of Commons, wrote about Boswell, Fielding, Gibbon, Gold- smith, and Johnson in his published Essays. Since Gibbon's two massive works were among the most widely purchased by the library owners, Browne's comments are of special interest. In his "On the Stile of Gibbon" he finds the great historian's style monotonous and obscure, and he concludes with a personal confession: "With heavy and tedious splendor, like a garment of glittering brocade stiffened with gold and silver, it [style] oppresses me with its weight, and offends me with its violation of taste . . ." [7, vol. 1, p. 461. In another essay, however, Browne finds Gibbon's later work more attractive: "Gibbon in his

12. A. Browne, C. K. Bushe, Caldwell, Egan, John Foster, J. L. Foster, O'Connell, W. C. Smyth, Stuart, Sullivan, the Earl of Clonmell, and Viscount Avonmore.

13. Browne, C. K. Bushe, Caldwell, Day, Hellen, O'Connell, W. C. Smyth, and the Earl of Clonmell.




laboured writings has to me a stiff, pedantic, odious dress, and I dislike him; in his letters he is the easy, pleasant, amiable gentleman, and I love him . . . " [7, vol. 2, p. 359]. The young Daniel O'Connell took a more favorable attitude toward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. After completing six volumes of the work on January 13, 1798, he wrote in his journal: "It is an extraordinary, it is an admirable, work. The genius, the critical acumen, the laborious research, of the author are unrivalled. He has mended my style. He has improved my thoughts. He has enriched my memory" [8, p. 72].

These two lawyers also read Boswell's Life of Johnson, another popular work with the library owners, and both reacted coolly. For Browne, Boswell, rather than revealing what an intellectual giant Johnson was, showed him "in religion a bigot, in politics a tyrant, and in manners a barbarian." Boswell had not intentionally disparaged Johnson, but he had "brought to light the hidden dross of his friend and mistaken it for ore" [7, vol. 1, pp. 68, 80]. The young O'Connell first read Arthur Murphy's Life of Johnson and then Boswell's biography in 1796. Through the first two volumes of the Dublin edition of Boswell's work his reaction was a negative one, but after completing the third volume he observed that his initial reaction had been based on prejudice, in part because of the conservative political views of Johnson and Boswell. Charles Kendal Bushe, in the eighteenth century a young lawyer in Dublin like O'Connell, was much more enthusiastic about the Life of Johnson. His friend and biographer, William Henry Curran, said Bushe found the work "the most delightful of books, first because he found everything in it so charming in itself; and next, because he no sooner finished it, than he forgot it all, and so could return to it, toties quoties, and be sure to find it all as charming as before, and almost as new" [9, vol. 1, p. 78].

A final proof that at least some of the lawyers not only bought books for their libraries but read them carefully is provided by John Scott, who on the basis of his achievements as Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench from 1784 until his death was made Earl of Clonmell. The earl filled his copy of Sterne's second novel, A Sentimental Journey, with marginalia. Many of these marginal notes are technical and sophisticated, and almost all are enthutsiastic about the work to the point of extrava- gance. For example, he wrote of Yorick's words of love to the lady from Brussels at the Remise door in Calais: "I think this Paragraph the truest Investigation of the Heart and most adequately described of any Passage I ever met in any Book in any Language" [10, p. 38].

As table I indicates, 162 of the 198 library owners or about 82 percent were clergymen, landed proprietors, or lawyers, but the five small groups of library owners should be briefly mentioned. Many of the twelve statesmen and civil servants were also landed proprietors, but they were much more directly involved in carrying out government responsibilities than the large group of sixty-two. Political figures recognized in the Dictionary of National Biography included John Beresford, holder of




many positions in Irish government, sometimes known as the "King" of Ireland at the end of the eighteenth century; Denis Daly, a leader in the Irish House of Commons; Henry Grattan, the leading Irish states- man of the eighteenth century; Wills Hill, Marquess of Downshire, a sometime secretary-of-state in England and Benjamin Franklin's host in Ireland; Lord Macartney, an Irish Chief Secretary and holder of many diplomatic posts; and Archibald Hamilton Rowan of the United Irish- men. There were several large libraries in the group, and all eight of the major writers were represented in the library of Lord Fitzgerald, though most libraries had three to five. Although the Daly library contained works only of Fielding, Gibbon, Johnson, and Sterne of the leading contemporary authors, it should be mentioned as one of the great Irish libraries. The Daly library of more than 1,400 titles sold for ?4,000 in 1792 at an auction in Dublin attended by collectors from Ireland, England, and Scotland. Daly was well known as a bibliophile, like his close friends Lord Charlemont and Edmund Malone; Lord Charlemont wrote to Malone in London of the auction that Dublin went "book mad." Like all groups of library owners except the Roman-Catholic clerics, this was an Anglo-Irish group for the most part, but old Irish names include Daly, Erck, and Fitzgerald. John Beresford, Henry Grattan, and Lord Macartney were graduates of Trinity College, Dublin; Denis Daly, of Oxford; and Archibald Hamilton Rowan, of Cambridge. Lord Macartney's views on books by the eight authors in his library are among the few that have been preserved. Lord Macartney knew Sterne and sub- scribed to the first London editions of Sterne's Sermons in 1766 and his Sentimental Journey in 1768. He was also a member of the Literary Club and thus knew Boswell, Johnson, Gibbon, and Goldsmith personally. He gave his own annotated copy of the first edition of the Life of Johnson to Boswell, and in the preface to the second edition Boswell acknowledged Lord Macartney's assistance and added that there was an inscription "of such high commendation, that even I, vain as I am, cannot prevail on myself to publish it" [11, vol. 1, p. 13].

A fifth group of library owners consists of eleven men more directly involved in arts and letters than the other groups: writers, artists, scholars, and teachers. Dictionary of National Biography entrants include Francis Bindon, the painter; Ambrose Eccles, the Shakespearean scholar; James Gandon, the architect, who though of English birth spent the last forty- two years of his life in Ireland; William Preston, poet and critic; Richard Kirwan, philosopher and scientist; and Henry Ussher, the professor of astronomy at Trinity College. There were several large libraries in the group, and William Preston and Paul Twigg of the Royal Hibernian Academy of Painting had works of all eight major writers. Although these library owners had a professional interest in literature and the arts and presumably were most apt of all groups to read the books in their libraries, only William Preston's comments on books in his library survive. In 1788 in his "Essay on Ridicule, Wit, and Humour," Preston




[12] discussed the nature of ridicule in part 1 and in part 2 four sources of the ridiculous. Preston found one of these sources to be incongruity, especially the incongruity between the manner of speaking, acting, and thinking, of a character, and the civil or political situation he occupied; a good example was Parson Trulliber in Fielding's Joseph Andrews. Preston also seems heavily indebted to the theory of the ridiculous de- veloped in the preface to that novel.

Little needs to be said about the three remaining groups beyond what table 1 offers. There is no record of comments by any of the physicians or military officers on books in their libraries. Two of the soldiers, Gen- eral Vallancey and Colonel Keatinge, are recognized in the Dictionary of National Biography, in part because of their writing, but they apparently did not write about the eight authors, even though General Vallancey met with Dr. Johnson on at least three occasions in 1784 [11, vol. 4, pp. 272-78]. General Q. J. Freeman was of English birth, but he spent almost his entire military career in Ireland and lived on a great estate there. Freeman and Vallancey had libraries of more than 1,000 titles, and the four libraries contained from four to seven of the major writers.

The small commercial group consists of two bankers, one merchant, and a civil and mining engineer. Christopher Dillon Bellew deserves special mention as the owner of a great library and as a representative of a new Roman Catholic middle class, which, excluded by the penal laws from the professions, had turned with marked success to commerce. The Bellew family made a fortune in flour milling during the eighteenth century, and this Bellew was heir to an estate in county Galway worth more than ?5,000 a year. The Bellew library of nearly 3,800 titles contained all eight authors except Gibbon, who was anathema to Roman Catholics and many Protestants because of the famous fifteenth and six- teenth chapters against the Church in the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Sir Richard Griffith was also from a wealthy merchant family, but he earned the fame that got him into the Dictionary of National Biography as a civil and mining engineer. Griffith represents the third generation of a distinguished Anglo-Irish family, the first of whom was a well-known Irish writer and friend of Sterne, and the second a prosper- ous merchant. The first Richard Griffith, who started the library and acquired the Dublin 1774 edition of Sterne's Works in 7 volumes, wrote of Sterne's Tristram Shandy on several occasions. In the preface to his novel The Triumvirate, published in 1764, he calls Sterne "that anoma- lous, heteroclite genius" whose principal end was to inculcate humanity and benevolence. But Sterne was writing for the moment rather than for posterity, and hence he gave his readers "rather more sauce than pig." Later volumes of Tristram Shandy were an improvement, though Griffith seems to damn the last volume with faint praise: "There is a good deal of laughable impertinence in it. He has repeated the same empty humour there, of an unlettered page, and given us a carte blanche, in this last. Whatever is neither quite sense, nor absolute nonsense, is true Shandeic.




However, through the whole, there is some entertainment for a splenetic person, though none at all for a rational one" [13, pp. xiv-vii].

These Irish library owners-largely clergy, gentry, and lawyers-stocked their libraries with the masterpieces of yesteryear but also bought the significant books of their own time in respectable numbers. As shown in table 2, Dr. Samuel Johnson's famous Dictionary was the only work by

one of the leading contemporary writers bought by a majority of the library owners. Of the 109 libraries, forty-four had the best-known of the several Dublin editions of the work, the Thomas Ewing 2-volume quarto edition published by subscription in 1775, and fifteen of the library owners were among the original subscribers to the work; twenty-four had the 1798 Dublin edition, also published by subscription. Of the eight authors, Samuel Johnson was clearly the favorite. His Dictionary, Lives of the Poets, Rambler essays, and his collected Works, rated first, second, fifth, and eighth in popularity with them, and Boswell's Life of Johnson was seventh. Other works by Johnson owned by at least 10 per-

TABLE 2 WORKS BY MAJOR ENGLISH AUTHORS, 1740-1800, IN 198 IRISH PRIVATE LIBRARIES

1. Johnson's Dictionary 109 2. Johnson's Lives of the Poets 69 3. Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 63 4. Sterne's Works 50 5. Johnson's Rambler 48 6. Gibbon's Miscellaneous Works 47 7. Boswell's Life of Johnson 42

Smollett's History of England 42 8. Johnson's Works 40

Smollett's Don Quixote 40 9. Goldsmith's History of the Earth 35

10. Sterne's Tristram Shandy 33 Sterne's A Sentimental Journey 33

11. Fielding's Tom Jones 31 Goldsmith's History of Rome 31 Johnson's edition of Shatespeare's Plays 31

12. Boswell's An Account of Corsica 30 Richardson's Clarissa 30

13. Steme's Sermons 29 14. Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland 28 15. Fielding's Works 27

Smollett's Roderick Random 27 16. Goldsmith's History of England 26 17. Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides 25

Smollett's Gil Blas 25 18. Fielding's Amelia 22

Goldsmith's Grecian History 22 Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield 22 Johnson's Letters 22 Johnson's Rasselas 22

19. Goldsmith's Citizen of the World 21 20. Fielding's Joseph Andrews 20

Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison 20




cent of the library owners were his edition of Shakespeare's Plays, his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, his Letters, and his Rasselas. Nearly 80 percent of the library owners bought at least I book by Johnson.

Edward Gibbon's 2 works were bought in significant numbers, but Oliver Goldsmith, a native Irishman, was the most widely known of the eight writers after Johnson; over half the library owners had at least 1 of his many books. His books bought by at least 10 percent included, in order of popularity, History of the Earth, History of Rome, History of England, Grecian History, Vicar of Wakefield, and Citizen of the World. The striking fact about these 6 works is that only the latter 2 have stood the test of time, while Goldsmith's historical writings are regarded today as hack work. As well as for his novel and essays, Goldsmith is valued today for his poems and plays, but only fifteen of the library owners bought the collected edition of the Poems and Plays, and fourteen the collected Poems. Judging from the number of Irish editions of Gold- smith's writings, Goldsmith was the most widely read of the eight major authors; his Vicar of Wakefield with 15 Irish editions in the eighteenth century was more often reprinted than any single book by a major author, and his histories of Rome and England rated second and third. The purchasers of the Vicar of Wakefield, however, were not the library owners or the middle- and upper-class readers of which the library owners were representative. For these groups Goldsmith was a historian; lower- class readers apparently anticipated posterity's judgment that the Vicar of Wakefield, along with the poems and plays, were Goldsmith's major works.

The four novelists-Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne-fared poorly, except for Sterne. A fourth of the library owners bought Sterne's collected Works, but this was not necessarily because of his novels, since the Sermons were bought as often as either of the novels. Smollett to the library owners was primarily a historian and translator of Don Quixote and Gil Blas, while the three novels for which he is known today- Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, and Humphry Clinker-were bought by few, except for the first. Nevertheless, some book by Smollett was in 120 libraries. Fielding's three major novels-Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, and Amelia-were bought by at least 10 percent, but they ranked well below the nonfiction works of Johnson and Gibbon. Two of Richardson's 3 novels were bought by at least 10 percent, but they are low on the list, and the famous Pamela was owned by only nineteen.

The library owners apparently preferred works of discursive prose, works represented by such genres as lexicography, history, biography, and the essay. Many of these were essentially reference works, which would be consulted by one seeking particular facts, rather than for entertainment. History rated especially high; included in the top ten were histories by Gibbon, Smollett, and Goldsmith, and 3 other histories of Goldsmith were not far behind. Novels and other types of prose fiction were not purchased in any numbers except for Smollett's Don Quixote and part of




Sterne's Works. It was not simply novels that the library owners did not buy in large numbers, but other examples of belles lettres such as poems and plays. No contemporary poems were read by as many as 10 percent of the library owners, except possibly a few by Johnson included in his complete Works. Plays by contemporaries were also bought by few; Johnson's edition of Shakespeare's Plays was bought by thirty-one, but this was probably for Shakespeare rather than Johnson. In a previous article I noted that this preference for nonfiction was also characteristic of the two public libraries in Ireland and the three library societies but not of the commercial lending libraries, which were oriented toward the novel reader [1, pp. 119-23].

Studies that have been.made of English libraries show that this interest in the factual, the empirical, and the historical was not peculiar to Ireland. A useful comparison may be made with the reading tastes of the members of the Bristol Library Society, Bristol, England, whose bor- rowing record is one of two surviving from eighteenth-centtury British libraries open to the public [14]. During the period 1773-84, there were 13,497 withdrawals of 900 titles from the library by its 137 members, all from the middle and upper classes, like the Irish library owners. Six of the 10 works most often checked out were from the classification of "History, Antiquities, and Geography," which was the largest classification with 283 titles. The two most widely read works were John Hawkesworth's Voyages and Brydone's Tour through Sicily. Of works by the eight major authors, Goldsmith's History of the Earth was the most popular with 150 withdrawals. The only novels in the top 10 were Sterne's Tristramn Shandy, in eighth place with 127 borrowers, and Field- ing's Works, in tenth place with 120. Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was checked out ninety-six times, and Johnson's Lives of the Poets ninety-two times.

Additional evidence of the interest of English library users in discursive prose rather than fiction is provided by an analysis of 218 English private libraries during the period 1754-1800. R. S. Crane in 1923 studied sale catalogs of these libraries in the British Museum for evidence about English readers of Voltaire. Works of Voltaire were in 172 of the libraries, and of the 7 books most often purchased by the library owners, four were histories. Voltaire's two most popular works, his Histoire de Charles XII and his SiUle de Louis XIV, were purchased by seventy-two and sixty-eight library owners, respectively. His famous novel Candide was in only forty-two libraries, and such widely known English works as Pope's Homer and Young's Night Thoughts were in sixty-five and thirty-five libraries, respectively [15, pp. 266-67]. Crane also analyzed the professions of the 218 English library owners, and there is some correspondence with the Irish library owners. The fifty-nine English owners who were clergymen correspond to the sixty-four Irish clergymen as the largest group. This is the most striking comparison; Crane's categories are not the same as those used in table 1 of this study. Crane finds




only twenty gentlemen and twelve lawyers, but he classifies other gentlemen and lawyers with such groups as government officials, members of Parliament, and Fellows of the Royal Society. He also notes that forty- six "Esquires" not identified in the catalogs were probably gentlemen.

Clearly, the separation imposed by the Irish Sea did not make for any marked differences between the library owners or users in Ireland and their counterparts in England. Similarly, the separation imposed by the English Channel did not make for any significant differences between the library owners of the English-speaking world and their counterparts in France. Daniel Mornet in 1910 studied 500 private libraries in eighteenth- century France. Of the 331 owners whose professions he was able to identify, the large groups were sixty-two higher- and thirty-four lower- ranking nobles, all of the landed class; eighty lawyers and judges; seventy- four civil servants, and forty-five priests [16, p. 453]. As with the library owners of Ireland and England, there were no lower-class owners and few representatives from commercial classes. The French library owners shared the preference of their fellows in Ireland and England for discursive prose. Their favorite book was Bayle's Dictionnaire, which was in 288 libraries. Buffon's Histoire naturelle and Pluche's Spectacle de la nature rated third and fourth after Marot's Oeuvres in second place [16, p. 460]. It should be noted that both Buffon and Pluche were important sources for Goldsmith's work most widely purchased by the library owners of Ireland, his History of the Earth.

Conclusion

This survey of 198 of the many private libraries in eighteenth-century Ireland has concentrated on the professions of the library owners and their purchases of works by eight major authors of the time. Most of the owners were clergymen, landed proprietors, or lawyers, with a few representatives from other professions, but none from the lower classes. Most were of Anglo-Irish background, with a significant number edu- cated at Trinity College, Dublin. All held positions of influence in society, and many were political, intellectual, and spiritual leaders of Ireland. Some were men of wealth, but many were not, and some must have sacrificed other values in order to acquire and maintain their libraries. This would be especially true of the Roman Catholic priests, who for the most part shared the poverty of their parishioners in a country that was largely Roman Catholic. They presumably did not find the several types of community libraries adequate for their needs; the most common of these libraries were the circulating libraries catering to a novel-reading clientele.

They did buy the significant books of their time, and there is specific evidence that some of them read what they bought. A majority of the library owners bought Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, and nearly 80 per-




cent owned some book by Johnson. Goldsmith and Smollett were also represented in a majority of the libraries, though not for the works for which Goldsmith and Smollett are valued today. Although Sterne was not nearly as prolific a writer as Goldsmith, Johnson, or Smollett, at least one of his books was in nearly half the libraries. There seem to have been no marked differences between the literary tastes of the famous jurists and statesmen on the one hand and the humble Roman Catholic priests on the other. All preferred to buy works of discursive prose- history especially-but also biography, travel books, dictionaries, and essays. They were not attracted much to the popular novels of the day, either those by the four master novelists or those by the hack writers in vogue. These literary tastes suggest that the library owners sought information rather than entertainment from their libraries. Their professions and tastes were shared by patrons of community libraries in their own country, by library owners and patrons of community libraries in En- gland, and by library owners in France. Although eighteenth-century Ireland was a backward land in many respects, its private libraries, like its community libraries, did not lag far behind Anglo-French library development.

REFERENCES

1. Cole, Richard C. "Community Lending Libraries in Eighteenth-Century Ireland." Library Quarterly 44, no. 2 (April 1974): 111-23.

2. O'Kelley, Francis. "Irish Book-Sale Catalogues before 1801." Papers of the Biblio- graphical Society of Ireland, vol. 6, no. 3 (1953).

3. Wheeler, Walter Gordon. "Libraries in Ireland before 1855: A Bibliographical Essay." Thesis for the University of London Diploma in Librarianship, 1957.

4. Kaufman, Paul. "Community Lending Libraries in Eighteenth-Century Ireland and Wales." Library Quarterly 33, no. 4 (October 1963): 299-312.

5. Hardy, Francis. Memoirs of the Political and Private Life of James Caulfield, Earl of Charlemont. London: T. Cadell, 1812.

6. Historical Manuscripts Commission Reports 12, Appendix, pt. 10. London: Her Majesty's Printing Office, 1891.

7. Browne, Arthur. Miscellaneous Sketches: Or Hints for Essays. London: G. G. & J. Robinson, 1798.

8. Houston, Arthur, ed. Daniel O'Connell: His Early Life and Journal, 1795 to 1802. London: Sir I. Putnam & Sons, 1906.

9. Curran, William-Henry. Sketches of the Irish Bar. London: H. Colburn, .1855. 10. Monckman, Kenneth. "An Annotated Copy of Sterne's Sentimental Journey."

Antiquarian Booksellers' Associational Annual 1 (1952): 34-39. 11. Boswell's Life of Johnson. Edited by G. B. Hill. Revised and enlarged by L. F.

Powell. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934. 12. Preston, William. "Essay on Ridicule, Wit, and Humour." Transactions of the

Royal Irish Academy 2, pt. 2 (1788): 69-90. 13. [Griffith, Richard]. The Triumvirate: Or, the Authentic Memoirs of A., B., and C.

London: W. Johnston, 1764.




14. Kaufman, Paul. Borrowings from the Bristol Library 1773-1784: A Unique Record of Reading Vogues. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1960.

15. Crane, R. S. "The Diffusion of Voltaire's Writings in England, 1750-1800." Modern Philology 20 (February 1923): 261-71.

16. Mornet, Daniel. "Les enseignements des bibliothNques privees." Revue d'histoire litteraire de la France 17 (1910): 449-96.



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