"May I a small house and a large garden have;/ And a few friends, and many books, both true,/ Both wise, and both delightful too!"
These attractive lines from Abraham Cowley's poem The Wish provide the epigraph to "The Fountain of Genius", the fascinating and informative catalogue issued by Marsh's Library in St Patrick's Close, Dublin to mark the alluring exhibition of poems, plays and prose running there until the end of April.
The title of the catalogue is explained in its introduction. Having taken us through the trove of literary treasures on offer in the exhibition, the compilers ask: "Who would have thought that so much imagination, so much creativity, is to be found in the dry-as-dust shelves of this ancient library?"
Charles Maturin wrote many of his novels in Marsh's Library; Tom Moore worked there on his Odes of Anacreon, which made him famous; James Joyce was a visitor before he went on to literary greatness. And Jonathan Swift, dean of the cathedral opposite, was most likely an habitué. He is said to have remarked about his Tale of a Tub: "Good God, what a genius I had when I wrote that book." The library could very well have been a fountain of genius for all these great figures.
Archbishop Narcissus Marsh, who had the library built in 1701 and endowed it with his considerable collection of books, was chiefly interested in Greek and Roman literature, but few of the books in the current display belonged to the archbishop.
However, pride of place in the drama section of the exhibition does go to one of Marsh's possessions: a beautiful manuscript, dating from around 1400, of a morality play, Visit to the Sepulchre. Ireland's earliest, fully extant work of drama, it deals with the visit by the three Marys to the tomb of Christ on Easter morning. This liturgical play is an important example of medieval drama and is of Dublin origin.
The drama section of the exhibition ranges from ancient to modern times. Two display cases in particular deserve special mention. One, entitled "The Scandalous Profession", features material on theatrical controversies in England and France in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The English Puritans abominated the stage and during Cromwell's rule theatres were closed. After this period of Puritan intolerance, there was the inevitable reaction: many plays of the Restoration period were licentious and profane and caused offence. But some of the assaults on these plays went far beyond the justifiable. In France, the 17th-century Huguenot pastor in La Rochelle, Philippe Vincent, railed against dancing, and denounced theatres as "the churches of the devil, meeting places of lewdness, and schools of turpitude where adultery and immoral practices were taught".
The other most interesting display case in the drama section of the exhibition has the title "From Smock Alley to the Abbey". Audience unrest in Irish theatres is by no means a 20th-century Abbey phenomenon: from time to time in the 17th and 18th centuries, Smock Alley was notorious for the unruly and riotous behaviour of the audience. Famous Irish dramatists featured in the display are Arthur Murphy, James Kenney, Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Charles Maturin.
The poetry section also ranges over a wide timescale and features very varied items. Among these are a 1520 edition of Dante's Divina Commedia and a 1602 edition of the complete works of Geoffrey Chaucer. There is also a beautiful facsimile of the first edition of Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village. Goldsmith lived much of his childhood in Lissoy (the "Sweet Auburn" of the poem) and the catalogue tells us that, although he spent most of his life in England, he never forgot his native land: "If I go to the opera, I sit and sigh for the Lissoy fireside. Or if I climb Hampstead Hill, I confess it is fine, but then I had rather be placed on the little mount before Lissoy Gate, and there take in, to me, the most pleasing horizon of nature."
Tom Moore found the books in Marsh's so engrossing that he would have himself locked in so that he could go on reading after hours (he was friendly with the son of the deputy keeper of the library). His poem on an Eastern theme, Lalla Rookh (featured in the exhibition), brought him enormous success but he was prescient when comparing its future popularity with his Irish Melodies (also featured): "I am strongly inclined to think that, in a race into future times (if anything of mine could pretend to such a run), those little ponies, the Melodies, will beat the mare, Lalla Rookh, hollow."
James Joyce, in Stephen Hero and later in Ulysses, refers to Marsh's Library. He left tangible evidence of his presence by twice signing the visitors' book in October 1902. (The signatures cannot be displayed because they are in danger of being faded by overlong exposure to light but photographs of them are included.) The relevant passage in Ulysses is: "Houses of decay, mine, his and all. You told the Clongowes gentry you had an uncle a judge and an uncle a general in the army. Come out of them, Stephen. Beauty is not there. Nor in the stagnant bay of Marsh's Library where you read the fading prophecies of Joachim Abbas."
Those strange "fading prophecies" of the 12th-century Benedictine monk are also featured in the Joyce section of the exhibition. Joachim's rather unspecific prophecies concerned various Renaissance popes.
The bays of Archbishop Marsh's wonderful library are far from stagnant and, as this fine exhibition compiled by Muriel McCarthy, Caroline Sherwood-Smith and Sue Hemmens shows, beauty does indeed reside there.