Libraries and Literary Pleasures Available to Purchase

WHAT a title this makes for the hypothetical ideal biography of a librarian! I adapt it from a note on Archbishop Temple:—“Few will forget his Presidential address, the subject of which was the rather neglected one, on such occasions, of books and literary pleasures.” Few will; but what was the implication of the tail of the assertion? What was it to convey to me—to you—its readers? For, after all, only you and I, my reader, at this moment are concerned with the interpretation. It is the essence of literature, this “between you and me” intimacy which we may share over an idea or argument. Why are literary pleasures rare conference subjects? For me the implication of the phrase was: the librarian is too absorbed in the routines of his bread‐and‐butter existence to recognise, and certainly to realise, the inner life of his books. And, lacking that realisation, he can have no real love of what is written.