Articles Available Online

When you misplace something in the library here, it stays lost for a very long time The eighteenth-century catalogue that alerted me to the book’s existence was brought up from the vaults by mistake It had a similar order number to another, more exhaustive version written by the same antiquarian twenty years later, after he had acquired more of Simon Cypriano’s library for the university at auction Since the catalogue was in front of me, I thought I might have a look at this early attempt to document the university’s ever-expanding collection of occult medieval manuscripts I expected to find only a shorter list of the same books, but perhaps the antiquarian had been more clear-sighted in his youth and included better descriptions Two thin pages were stuck together, although the numeration skipped over them, concealing this at first I looked around at all the diligent indifferent heads lowered over mahogany lecterns, like buoys bobbing in the sea Very slowly, so as not to attract the attention of those oafs they call librarians, I pried the leaves apart with a fingernail At first I feared that I was simply destroying an irregularly made page for nothing, and then, as I saw there was more writing, thrilled that my suspicion had been correct The hand was cramped and spidery, but from what I could make out, the two hidden pages described an unknown book by the Great Magus Cypriano, which the antiquarian had tucked away in Lord Kenelm’s library on the other side of Oxford He provided details of the binding, but also warned that this book should be handled very carefully, perhaps not at all What a superstitious idiot, to be living in the Enlightenment but still behaving like the men he studied! I hoped this might be the lost book that Cypriano was rumoured to have written before his disappearance If I were to find it, it would be the making of my career – or at least, salvation from early and permanent obscurity   But now the catalogue pages were unstuck, for anyone to see What if Professor Kelly