This I had guessed at, but never before
had known.
The English traveller lighting upon so many of the essentially English
riches as are conserved in American libraries, and particularly when he
has not a meagre share of national pride, cannot but pause to wonder how
it came about--and comes about--that so much that ought to be in its own
country has been permitted to stray.
In England collectors and connoisseurs are by no means rare. What, then,
were they doing to let all these letters of Keats and Shelley, Burns and
Byron, Lamb and Johnson--to name for the moment nothing else--find their
resting-place in America? The dollar is very powerful, I know, but
should it have been as pre-eminently powerful as this? Need it have
defeated so much patriotism?
Pictures come into a different category, for every artist painted more
than one picture. I have experienced no shade of resentment towards
their new owners in looking at the superb collections of old and new
foreign masters in the American public and private galleries; for so
long as there are enough examples of the masters to go round, every
nation should have a share. With MSS., however, it is different.
Facsimiles, such as the Boston Bibliographical Society's edition of
Lamb's letters, would serve for the rest of the world, and the originals
should be in their author's native land. But that is a counsel of
perfection.
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