B.C.L.

* * * * *

INSCRIPTIONS IN BOOKS.

(Vol. vii., p. 127.)

The following were lines much used when I was at school, and I believe
are still so now:

"This book is mine
By right divine;
And if it go astray,
I'll call you kind
My desk to find
And put it safe away."

Another inscription of a menacing kind was,--

"This book is one thing,
My fist is another;
Touch this one thing,
You'll sure feel the other."

A friend was telling me of one of these morsels, which, considering the
circumstances, might be said to have been "insult added to injury;" for
happening one day in church to have a book alight on his head from the
gallery above, on opening it to discover its owner, he found the
following positive sentence:

"This book doant blong to you,
So puttem doon."

RUSSELL GOLE.

The following salutary advice to book-borrowers might suitably take its
position in the collection already alluded to in "N. & Q.":

"Neither blemish this book, or the leaves double down,
Nor lend it to each idle friend in the town;
Return it when read; or if lost, please supply
Another as good, to the mind and the eye.
With right and with reason you need but be friends,
And each book in my study your pleasure attends."

O. P.

Birmingham.

Is not this curious warning worthy of preservation in your columns? It
is copied from a black-letter label pasted to the inside of an old book
cover:

"Steal not this booke, my honest friende,
For fear ye gallows be ye ende;
For if you doe, the Lord will say,
'Where is that booke you stole away?'"

J. C.

To the collection of inscriptions in books commenced by
BALLIOLENSIS, allow me to add the following:

"Hic liber est meus,
Testis et est Deus;
Si quis me quaerit,
Hic nomen erit."

In French books I have seen more than once,--

"Ne me prend pas;
On te pendra."

An on the fly-leaf of a Bible,--

"Could we with ink the ocean fill,
Were ev'ry stalk on earth a quill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
And ev'ry man a scribe by trade,
To tell the love of God alone
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretch'd from sky to sky."

GEORGE S. MASTER.

Welsh-Hampton, Salop.

I beg to subjoin a few I have met with. S