EARLY LOUISVILLE LIBRARIES
represented, along with Swift’s GULLlVhh’S TRAV— n
E ELS and the works of Richardson, Smollett, ,
Sterne, Fielding, and Goldsmith. ?
But all this is mainly in the realm of spec- ’
ulation. In their passage through later library
ventures, and with the disintegrating effects
of time, all the five hundred volumes have long
since disappeared: books that would be collec-
tors’ items now as well as books to which only
a sentimental interest would attach. According
to one chronicler, a few survived to the years
of the Polytechnic Society of the last two dec-
ades of the nineteenth century. The library
seemsto have perished,as so many of the towns-
people did, in the virulent fever epidemic of
lB22. That catastrophe nearlydepopulatedLouis-
ville; culture had to yield to more pressing
problems after the epidemic passed.
But Dr. Butler was not so easily defeated.
The Louisville City Directory of l832 mentions,
as "the only Society formed professedly for
literary improvement," the Louisville Lyceum,
instituted the year before with Dr: Butler, N.
B. Buford, and George» Keats, brother of the
English poet, as curators. The Lyceum main-
tained quarters on Main Street between Fifth
~ and Sixth Streets, holding meetings every Sat-
urday night. "Its objects," the Directory goes
on to say, "are simply to promote popular im-
provement, bythe diffusion of useful knowledge;
_ its means of executing these objects are lst
Written Essays; 2nd Oral Addresses; 3rd Discus?
V sions. A small library has been commenced by
the donations of some gentlemen."(l5)
Although Dr. Butler continued to reside in
Louisville until 1845, his name does not appear
11
a I