BOOK III.

Chapter II.

Almost half a century later (1546) we have cataClassificatory logues of Robert Estienne, in which the following divisions appear:

Systems.

1. Hebræa.

Gesner's scheme of

2. Græca.

3. Sacra.

4. Prophana.

5. Grammatica.

6. Poetica.

7. Historica.

8. Rhetorica.

9. Oratoria. 10. Dialectica.

11. Philosophica.

12. Arithmetica.

13. Geometrica.

14. Medica.

In 1548, we arrive at what some writers have termed classification. "the first bibliographical system," published with a view to the use rather than to the sale of books; it is that of Conrad Gesner, and appeared in the shape of an index of matters to his "Bibliothèque universelle," under the title of "Pandectarum sive partitionum universalium libri xxi." Cuvier has given a minute account of the work in the excellent notice of Gesner which he inserted in the Biographie Universelle, adding that the author (like many other authors) never considered it "as complete as it ought to be," and therefore never permitted the section "Medicine" to be printed. Brunet, too, praises Gesner as a man of good sense, who knew how to keep clear of "those arbitrary combinations of

BOOK III.

Chapter II.

Systems.

several sciences into a single class, which have captivated so many learned men."1 M. Brunet appears, Classificatory however, to have overlooked that synthetical grouping of the various divisions and subdivisions which Gesner placed at the head of his section entitled "Partitiones theologica." If only as the first scheme of its kind, this synopsis deserves to be quoted at length. It is as follows:

The system of classification, next in order of date, is that which was proposed by Florian Trefler, a Bavarian Benedictine, in a work published in 1560, which I know only by M. Albert's citation of it in his "Recherches sur la classification bibliographique;" and by Dr. Edmund Zoller's brief epitome, in his tract, entitled "Die Biblio

1 Manuel du libraire, Introduction, vii (4th edition). Gesner has dedicated each of his twenty books or chapters to a celebrated printer, and usually appends to the dedication a list of the most important books printed by each of them respectively.

BOOK III.

Chapter II.

thekwissenschaft." Its arrangement of classes runs thus: Classificatory I. Civil Law; II. Canon Law; III. Casuistry; IV. and Systems. V. Dictionaries, etc.; VI. and VII. Hagiography, Chronography, and Topography; VIII., IX. and X. Theology;

C. de Savigny's

scheme.

XI. Philosophy; XII. Oratory and Rhetoric; XIII. Epistolography; XIV. Poetry; XV. Philology; XVI. Miscellanies (promiscue omnes quotquot superioribus non possint inseri); XVII. German books (libros Teutonicos). Trefler's treatise was already numbered amongst books of great rarity almost two hundred years ago. Both Zoller and Albert, (in common with Jöcher and Ziegelbauer) appear never to have seen the book itself, but describe it on the authority of an elaborate notice by Struve, in the Jena periodical Bibliotheca antiqua, for January, 1706.

In 1587, Christofle de Savigny published, under the title of "Tableau accomplis de tous les arts libéraux contenans une générale et sommaire partition des dits arts, amassez et reduicts par ordre, etc.," a scheme which is substantially but a modification of Gesner's. The number of classes is sixteen, which are thus arranged:1. Grammar; 2. Rhetoric; 3. Dialectics; 4. Arithmetic; 5. Geometry; 6. Optics; 7. Music; 8. Cosmography; 9. Astrology; 10. Geography; 11. Physics; 12. Medicine; 13. Ethics; 14. Jurisprudence; 15. History; 16. Theology. Each class has its divisions and subdivisions, worked out with much elaboration, and, in a second edition of the work, published in 1619; two additional classes are introduced, namely, 17. Poetry; and 18. Chronology.

If literary history did not present us with so many instances of the eagerness with which petty attacks are made upon great names, as if in the hope of nibbling off, as it were, some fragment of that fame which cannot be openly contested, we might feel surprise that any writer should have adduced this scheme of Savigny's as being "certainly an anticipation and probably a source" of the famous "Encyclopædical tree" of our illustrious Bacon, to which, in truth, it bears scarcely any resemblance. Strange as it may seem, however, this has actually been done, and that by the eminent bibliographer Brunet, in the introduction (already quoted) to the "Manuel du libraire." It would have been much more to the purpose to have pointed out the very obvious similarity which exists between the classification of Savigny and that of Gesner, which had preceded it by forty years.

BOOK III.

Chapter II. Classificatory Systems.

That well-known survey of all human knowledge by Bacon's scheme. which Bacon at the same time recorded the discoveries that had been already effected, and traced the courses which yet remained to be explored by the enterprise of many succeeding ages, was first given to the world in 1605. Human learning he regards as issuing from the three fountains of Memory, of Imagination, and of Reason; HISTORY being the emanation of the first; POESY of the second; PHILOSOPHY of the third; and

1 Brunet's words are: "C'est un système figuré de toutes nos connaissances, antérieur de près de vingt ans, remarquons-le bien, à l'Arbre Encyclopédique de Bacon, dont il a pu être le modèle." M. Albert quietly overlooks Bacon altogether.

BOOK III.

Chapter II.

there can be, he adds, "no other, nor no more; for Classificatory History and Experience we take for one and the same, as we do Philosophy and Science."

Systems.

To quote the whole of the "Partitio universalis doctrinæ humanæ," can scarcely be needed for the purpose in view. But a brief recital of its main divisions may be useful. They run thus:

Here we have an intellectual chart which, as Dugald Stewart has said, (in the preface to the preliminary dissertations of the Encyclopædia Britannica,) "is, with all its imperfections, the only one of which modern philosophy has yet to boast." This remark is still substantially true. Bacon's scheme is admirable for comprehensiveness, for lucid arrangement, and for a terminology, at once striking and precise, which the memory can easily and firmly grasp. But it is far better adapted to the purposes of the Historian of Learning and of the Sciences than to those of the Librarian. It is fitter for the classification of ideas than

1 F. Baconi Partitio universalis doctrinæ humanæ, etc. (De Dign. et Aug. Scientiarum, lib. 2.) Works, by Montagu, viii, 87, ad finem, 8vo. 1828.