Newton's, in Philadelphia, the original of
"Dream Children," an even more desirable possession; I knew that America
had provided an eager home for everything connected with Keats and
Shelley and Stevenson; but it was a surprise to find at Mr. Morgan's so
wide a range of MSS., extending from Milton to Du Maurier, and from
Bacon to "Dorian Gray"; while at Mr. Huntington's I had in my hands the
actual foolscap sheets on which Heine composed his "Florentine Nights."
I ought, you say, to have known this before. Maybe. But that ignorance
in such matters is no monopoly of mine I can prove by remarking that
many an American collector with whom I have talked was unaware that the
library of Harvard University is the possessor of all the works of
reference--mostly annotated--which were used by Thomas Carlyle in
writing his "Cromwell" and his "Frederick the Great," and they were
bequeathed by him in his will to Harvard University because of his
esteem and regard for the American people, "particularly the more silent
part of them."
My hours in these libraries, together with a glimpse of the Widener room
at Harvard and certain booksellers' shelves, gave me some idea of what
American collectors have done towards making the New World a treasury of
the Old, and I realised how more and more necessary it will be, in the
future, for all critics of art in whatever branch, and of literature in
whatever branch, and all students even of antiquity, if they intend to
be thorough, to visit America.
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