Free Lempriere's Dictionary by Lawrence Norfolk Page B

Astronomy of Comets
led naturally enough to Copernicus’
De Revolutionibus Orbium Caelestium
, thence to William Molyneux’s
Sciothericum Telescopicum
and Banfield’s
New Treatise on Astronomy
. From there the emphasis shifted to navigation with Daniel Fenning’s
New and Easy Guide to Globes
succeeding Harding’s
Essay on Tables of Latitude
, and a great number of accounts of voyages. But every so often a jarring inconsistency or organisational caprice would bring the young man up short in his search for the controlling principle behind their order. Johannes Bisselius’
Argonautica Americana
sat well with Primèler’s
Tour from Gibraltar to Tangiers
and both accorded with Chetwood’s
The Voyages, Dangerous Adventures and Miraculous Escapes of Captain Falconar
, but when the next book on the shelf was
Poems
by Maria and Henrietta Falconar, he hardly knew what to think. That the names corresponded was plain as the nose on his face, but why this should suddenly govern the arrangement he could not guess.
    Similar acts of whimsy occurred all over the library.
    Marsden’s
Account of the Island of Jamaica
, Brooks on
Weights and Measures in the East Indies
and Hanway’s
History of British Trade in the Caspian Sea
clustered harmoniously amongst other works on trade and travel. But tosuddenly happen upon Giovanni Gallini’s
Critical Observations on Dancing
in their midst confounded him utterly. He felt as though he were in the presence of a mind which, having consented to lay bare its workings before him, yet remained beyond comprehension, inscrutable and disdainful of his efforts. It struck him that the library was organised, by whatever principle, in a cycle. He could choose any volume, its companions would lead him ineluctably back to it. And round and round and round, he thought gloomily. Without A to Z, without Then and Now, he was a hapless Theseus hunting a listless Minotaur, both knowing that without beginnings or ends there can be no entrances or exits. Only pointless wanderings and rearrivals.
    Lemprière thought back to the book on globes. This room, this library is a globe, he mused. Here are all times and, just as surely, here are all places. If I reach up and take in my hand Basinius, Rudolphus Agricola or Aeneas Sylvius, as I might, who would say I am not in the France, Germany or Italy where they originated? I am not of course, but it is as likely that I
may
be. I would have to leave this Library to say that I am
not
, to be sure of that. And if I consult Vesalius’
De Fabrica Corporis Humani
, then whose body is it that I consult? And if I take down Struthius’
De Arte Sphugmica
, and I read of the action of the pulse, then whose pulse do I take? And if I listen to that pulse by the ticking of that clock, do I measure my pulse or the timepiece? He was growing confused. For if it is the clock that measures the pulse, what then measures the clock? The wisdom of the library was beginning to seep into his understanding as he tried to think of time, the ticking of the clock, as nothing but an idle clatter.
    The young, man stood rapt at these strange thoughts. He felt that he had arrived, quite by accident, in an alien and compelling landscape and that opening his eyes to look around him he had seen all and recognised nothing. He stayed stock-still, his back to the window while the silent rows of books regarded him from their shelves. He closed his eyes and imagined he heard them murmuring. A deep, low babel of accents and languages, merging, indistinct. And, he opened his eyes wide, he
did
hear them. He heard their voices! But his amazement was short-lived as the explanation for this phenomenon walked into the room in the shape of Juliette and, a second later, Mister Orbilius Quint.
    Grey-haired, stooping slightly, Quint’s movements were oddly birdlike as he advanced stiffly across the room. Juliette sat herself unceremoniously on the edge of the table.
    ‘Well, well, if my pupil hasn’t returned to aid me