Art review: Imprentit: 500 Years of the Scottish Printed Word

IMPRENTIT: 500 YEARS OF THE SCOTTISH PRINTED WORD
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NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND, EDINBURGH

ANNIVERSARIES of this and that are forever being dragged up as pegs on which to hang all sorts of miscellaneous events, usually with a view to making money, but there can be few in Scottish history quite so well worth commemorating as the 500th anniversary of the introduction to Scotland of the art of printing. It was in Edinburgh in 1508 that on the command of James IV, Walter Chepman and Androw Myllar set up the first printing press in Scotland. Printing had of course been around elsewhere for more than half a century. Nevertheless the initiative was very significant: King James had already decreed that his bigger landowners at least should be fully literate in Latin. Literacy was power and printing was its vehicle, but its introduction to Scotland indicated, too, that the Scots felt they had something distinctive to say.

Just half a century later, itself powered by the printed book, the Reformed Kirk determined that everybody should go to school and learn to read so that they could read their Bible. Books and book learning became almost universal, thus it was John Knox who gave the Scottish Diaspora its distinctive character. There were those who left Scotland because they were so poor they could not stay, but there were many others who, although poor, thanks to Knox carried a fortune in their heads: book learning, an education that they could put to use wherever they ended up.

So books have played a big part, perhaps even a definitive one, in Scottish history and in Scotland's role in the wider world, but writing, printing and publishing books have also been a major part of Scottish life for most of those five centuries. It is quite a story and the quincentenary is marked by this exhibition at the National Library of Scotland.

The library holds what is surely the richest collection of Scottish books anywhere and so ought to be able to mark this half-millennium in fitting style. I wish I could say that it had done so. But sadly the National Library has been bitten by the access bug, the intellectual death watch beetle that is gnawing at the mental timbers of our great public institutions, sapping their self-esteem and sense of purpose with a guilty but ill-focused feeling that to justify their existence they must be reaching out somewhere – although where exactly never seems to be quite clear. The National Library used to mount exhibitions of real quality that reflected its mission, the richness of its holdings and the skill and learning of its staff. This exhibition does none of those things.

There are wonderful books here, of course. There were printed books in Scotland before 1508 – a magnificent example is from the library of William Scheves, Archbishop of St Andrews – it has his florid signature on its opening page to prove it. Scots were in print too. The earliest known example of a Scottish author printed in his own lifetime is a philosophical work by John Liddell published in Paris in 1495.

Nevertheless, it is moving to see the only surviving example from Chepman and Millar's first year of business and also that it contains, not just contemporary poetry, but poetry in that unique Scottish poetic form called flyting. The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy is the duel between two poets fought out in the vivid language of rhetorical insult. The Scots really did have something distinctive to say. But that first book is more a collection of pamphlets.

Printed two years later, the first substantial book that survives is Bishop Elphinstone's Aberdeen Breviary. It was also distinctively and deliberately Scottish. It includes a calendar of Scottish saints and its purpose was to counter English influence in church ritual.

There was bit of a hiatus in the story of printing in the mid-century, but in 1552 the first book printed outside Edinburgh was a catechism in Scots printed in St Andrews on behalf of Archbishop John Hamilton in an attempt to counter the rising tide of reform by giving the Reformers a little of what they wanted: worship in their own language. Reform too found its voice in print – the first book printed in Stirling was a work by Knox himself. James VI was an author and was in print from an early age.

So the story goes on, or it should and there are certainly major milestones here. The first Bible printed in Scotland, the Bassandyne Bible, was printed in 1579 with compulsory subscriptions from every parish in the country. The printed edition of the National Covenant from 1639 is here and the proclamation dissolving the Scottish Parliament in 1707. A Gaelic-English vocabulary was the first secular book in Gaelic, but it was not printed till 1741. A catechism in Gaelic was printed more than century earlier.

It all gets increasingly miscellaneous as the exhibition loses its way. There are early children's books, timetables for trams and trains, pamphlets of various kinds, a section on oral tradition and a section on contemporary publishers.

The kindest judgment would be that this is too vast a subject for a single exhibition in a small and cramped space but that the NLS should nevertheless be given credit for trying, and for reminding us of this anniversary so fundamental to its own existence. But if that is true of the theme and selection, it does not explain the truly dire display.

Books are for reading. They are always problematic in an exhibition, but at least they should be displayed in a way that suggests you know what they are for. They are not Impressionist paintings, to be viewed from a distance. Preferably they should be in an uncluttered space where you can easily scan the page. Classical library display cases take this into account. However, from somewhere the NLS has got hold of display cases that look vaguely surgical. They might do for an exhibition of false teeth perhaps, if you can imagine such a thing, but could not be less suitable for books. They are glass throughout, square in plan, with tiered shelves, and the books are in a muddle, all set at different angles, some above eye level, others far beneath.

A beautiful 13th century illuminated Bible from Dunfermline Abbey, which Ruskin admired so much it has been called the Ruskin Bible ever since, is on a bottom shelf, for instance. If you kneel you can see some of it.

And then there are the enormous text panels. Occupying ten times as much space as the books, they overpower them completely and they are written in that special condescending, primary school language that curators imagine they have to use to reach the "general" public.

That is a clear sign of the mental rot of "access". Nothing reaches the public, general or otherwise, better than clarity: clarity of thought, clarity of language and clarity of presentation. This fussy tarting up is like Gustav von Aschenbach in Death in Venice putting on rouge and dyeing his hair, looking ridiculous to try to make himself attractive to Tadzio, a beautiful boy who is scarcely aware of his existence and entirely indifferent to it.

Maybe some of the Scottish public is as indifferent to the National Library, but that really doesn't matter so very much. As part of our collective memory the Library fulfils a vital function for all of us. We are all richer because it exists. It is part of who we are even if we never enter its doors. It does not need to put on rouge or dye its hair, and I dearly wish it wouldn't.

• Until 12 October