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By Root 2191 0

with popularity: with a readership small and fixed, the effects of the deposit "tax" were maximized. With the current law in effect, Brydges demanded, "Can any Author or Publisher be insane enough to embark in an expensive publication, at the certainty of the frightful loss which would thus be inflicted on him?" Clearly the answer was no. So "the man of genius, or of science, or learning, dies in obscurity; and his talents or acquirements are buried with him in the grave!"60

It seemed obvious to Longman, Brydges, and their allies that universal deposit must therefore be an evil even for the libraries. In practice, universal libraries would be infinitely large reservoirs of triviality. The realization of the Enlightenment ideal would mean its own degeneration. And it would get worse over time, as the libraries became "overgorged" with frivolous and unimportant books, costing prohibitive sums to house, arrange, and bind-money that might otherwise have been used to fund purchases of worthwhile works. And they could never escape from the commitment to stockpile more and more. This would have knock on effects on future scholarship. It was human nature to be depressed by excess, Brydges noted. A crammed library catalogue provoked in any sensitive soul "a temporary depression of spirits, and an ebb of that energy which in the limited furniture of his own little library has carried him through years of fatigue and self-privation." Even those determined enough to persevere would find their minds rotting under the influence of so many worthless books. One certain effect of universal libraries therefore would be to concentrate damaging books in such a way that they would do their damage most effectively. Authorship would die out, as potential geniuses, confronting this dispiriting mass of scribble, decided not to take the trouble. "If the reverence and celebrity which in enlightened ages have attended Authorship are destroyed, bygiving equal preservation and the same place of distinction to whatever the Press vomits forth, who will foresake the inviting pleasures of youth, and the enjoyments which court the senses, for the solitary lamp, and the anxious and abstracted toils by which the capacity for the higher sorts of literary composition, or success in the more difficult branches of science, is cherished and attained?" Deposit thus not only threatened present genius and corroded that of the next generation. It also extended into the indefinite future the slew of mediocrity that popular print now produced.61 The real effect of a universal library would be to render eternal what might otherwise be a regrettable but transient cultural predicament. Anachronism aside, the lament remains today very recognizable. Its value lies in directing attention away from sheer accumulation andto issues oftaxonomy, classification, and selection.

So what should be preserved, and how? Properly, according to Brydges, preservation should be a gesture of civility, not copyright. It should be shorn of commerce and reserved for those works that at least might warrant it, "otherwise the honour of the palm fades to nothing."62 But Brydges acknowledged that no transcendental criteria existed by which to determine such desert, so he conceded that it might be useful to have one repository of all books published. It should simply not be public. Decoupling access from accumulation, he revealingly suggested that the copy presently required by anti Jacobin legislation be used for this. The resulting collection should be confined "in special custody" at the British Museum. It looks very much as though what Brydges had in mind was that the Enlightenment's universal library and the "private case" of the British Museum Library should swap places.

It remained to correct the law itself, and somehow reconcile collection, copyright, and culture. Brydges and his allies proposed four principles. First, nothing should have to be deposited if the impression were smaller than a given threshold. They did not stipulate a number, but probably had ioo or 250 in mind. At least,