SCHEME OF THE JENA REPERTORIUM. 789 BOOK III. Chapter II. Systems. Jena Repertorium. Turning from France to Germany, we find, in the Encyclopædical index, published in 1793, of the Jena Classificatory Repertorium, a Scheme for the classification of books, which is almost without parallel for the number and Scheme of the minuteness of its subdivisions. They amount to no less than 1200, and are grouped into sixteen principal classes, namely: I. Literature, generally; II. Philology; III. Theology; IV. Jurisprudence; V. Medicine; VI. Philosophy; VII. Pedagogy; VIII. Politics; IX. Military Art; X. Natural Sciences; XI. Mechanical Arts, Technology, and Commerce; XII. Mathematics; XIII. Geography and History; XIV. Fine Arts; XV. Literary History; XVI. Miscellaneous Works. The class Philosophy embraces Ethics, Methaphysics, Logic, and their history. That of Fine Arts comprises-in addition to the Arts of Design, including Landscape Gardening,Music, Calligraphy, Oratory, Poetry, and Declamation. There can be little doubt that a system in which subdivision is carried to so great a length, would to most readers prove a labyrinth without a clue. nis and of Olenin. Two years later, Denis, the learned Librarian of the Schemes of DeImperial Library at Vienna, published a second edition of his work, once of some celebrity-Einleitung in die Bücherkunde, in which he proposes a system of classification based upon the words of Solomon:- Wisdom hath builded her house: she hath hewn out her seven pillars. These pillars are Theology, Jurisprudence, Phi This index is, of course, like the work to which it relates, in GerAchard has translated its headings or titles at length in his Cours de bibliographie, ii, where they occupy fifty-six pages. man. BOOK III. Chapter II. Systems. losophy, Medicine, Mathematics, History, and Philosophy; Classificatory and he so arranges their several sections as to establish a fantastic sort of connection between his classes or "pillars." In 1808, M. Alexis Olenin, one of the Librarians of the Imperial Library at St. Petersburgh, published an Essai sur un nouvel ordre bibliographique, in which he says that "having examined and compared the most accredited systems, he is led to begin his own by separating the Sciences from the Arts ... And to add to these two classes thus severed, a third class under the name of Philology," which latter class is to consist of three main sections:-1. Linguistics; 2. Polygraphy; 3. Criticism. The sub-divisions of all the classes in this scheme are carried out with great minuteness, and amount, in the whole, to upwards of 500.1 Girault's Almost contemporaneous with the appearance of this system at St. Petersburgh, was the publication of another bibliographical novelty at Paris, also the production of a Librarian, M. Girault, of Auxonne, but of one who, like so many of his predecessors, was far more intent on displaying his philosophical acumen in dealing with the vexed questions of metaphysics, than on simplifying the storing and the handling of his books. He sets out in the usual strain:-"I have reflected that, first of all, it is natural that we should seek to know the globe on which we dwell, the position we occupy on it, the events that have taken place there, the laws by which it is governed," and so on; and then proposes This Scheme is printed in full in the Appendix to the Report of the Select Committee on the British Museum, of 1836, 463-474. GIRAULT'S AND COLERIDGE'S SCHEMES. 791 BOOK III. Chapter II. Systems. these six fundamental divisions:-I. Preliminary Instruction; II. Cosmography; III. History; IV. Legis- Classificatory lation; V. Natural History; VI. Sciences and Arts. Cosmography has two sections: Geography and Hydrography.. Natural History has eight: Astronomy, Physics, Zoology, Botany, Fossils, Chemistry, Curative Art, Industry, which latter section includes Manufactures, Trade, and Commerce. If any further proof be needed how easily a plentiful crop of practical absurdities may be grown out of a supersubtle theory, it will be afforded by the statement that, although we have here a class of "Sciences and Arts," we find the Art of Printing under "Preliminary Instruction;" the Art of Swimming under "Cosmography;" and the Arts of Divination, and of Working in Metals, under "Natural History." This fine-spun system of M. Girault has long been buried with the worthy author, but I have not disinterred it without a purpose. It will be seen in the sequel, that not a little both of time and ingenuity is still misdirected with similar perversity. Scheme. From the date of Middleton's scheme until the pub- Coleridge's lication, by way of preface to the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, of Coleridge's "Essay on Method," no classificatory system of importance seems to have made its appearance in this country. Jeremy Bentham, indeed, in 1816, published a characteristic Essay on Nomenclature and Classification in the appendix to his Chrestomathia; but I doubt if he would have applied it to the arrangement of books, even had he undertaken to draw up a plan, not of a Code, but of a Catalogue, for the BOOK III. Chapter II. Systems. Emperor of China, or the King of Oude. Idioscopic Classificatory Ontology, Poioscopic Somatics, Nooscopic Pneumatology, and Polioscopic Ethics, would scarcely have been recommended even by Bentham, as the running titles of a book-list, or the letterings of a book-case. Of Coleridge's plan (if his it may be called, after his sharp protest against the revision the Essay underwent in hands editorial,)' it may also be said that it was not directly or mainly intended for the classification of books. There is evidence, however, that he had its applicability to that use to some degree in view, and catalogues are extant to which it has been avowedly a model. Its fundamental construction may with reasonable brevity, be thus indicated: Class I.-PURE SCIENCES: 1. Formal-(i.) Grammar; 2. Real-(i.) Law; (ii.) 6. Experimental Philosophy. 7. Fine Arts. 8. Useful Arts. 9. Natural History. 10. Medicine. Morals; (iii.) Theology. Class III.-HISTORY: Class II.-MIXED AND AP PLIED SCIENCES: 1. Mechanics. 2. Hydrostatics. 3. Pneumatics. 4. Optics. 5. Astronomy. 1. National History. 2. Biography. 3. Geography, Voyages, and Travels. 4. Chronology. Class IV.-LITERATURE AND PHILOLOGY.2 “So bedeviled," he says, "that I am ashamed to own it." Essay on Method (Ency. Met.), Introd., i, 44, etc. 1. Its BOOK III. Chapter II. Systems. This Scheme has, unquestionably, great merit. nomenclature is plain and familiar. 2. Its main divi- Classificatory sions are, for the most part, well defined. What is chiefly needed to adapt it to the practical classification of books would involve more of addition than of suppression. But, on the whole, I cannot but think it inferior, for Library purposes, to the scheme embodied in Mr. Hartwell Horne's “Outlines for the Classification of a Library," which were submitted to the Trustees of the British Museum, almost at the same period. Mr. Horne's system is based on that of the "Paris booksellers," considerably modified, however, both with a view to the special requirements of the Library for which it was proposed, and to the results of the proposer's personal experience as well in the preparation of part of the Catalogue of the Harleian MSS.-as in the cataloguing of the fine Library of Queen's College, Cambridge. Four out of the five principal classes of the Paris Scheme, Mr. Horne leaves intact, namely:-THEOLOGY, JURISPRUDENCE, LITERATURE, and HISTORY, but he reverses the order of the two last-named classes. The class "SCIENCES AND ARTS" he breaks up into two classes, the first of which he calls PHILOSOPHY, and the second ARTS and TRADES." In the sub-divisions of the others he also introduces several modifications. He takes out the section History of Religions from the class "HISTORY," and transfers it to "THEOLOGY;" dealing similarly with Literary History, which he transfers to "LITERATURE." The scheme, indeed, on several ac |