know that a book in several volumes loses an unfair proportion of
its usefulness, and almost all its value, when one or more of the volumes
are gone. Grote's works, or Mill's, Carlyle's, or Milman's, seem nothing
when they are incomplete. It always happens, somehow, that the very tome
you want to consult is that which has fallen among borrowers. Even
Panurge, who praised the race of borrowers so eloquently, could scarcely
have found an excuse for the borrowers of books.

"Tel est le triste sort de tout livre prete,
Souvent il est perdu, toujours il est gate."

"Often lost, always spoiled," said Charles Nodier, "such is the fate of
every book one lends." The Parisian collector, Guibert de Pixerecourt,
would lend no books at all to his dearest friends. His motto, inscribed
above the lintel of his library-door, was, "Go to them that sell, and buy
for yourselves." As Pixerecourt was the owner of many volumes which
"they that sell" cannot procure, or which could only be bought at
enormous rates, his caution (we will not say churlishness) was rather
inconvenient for men of letters. But if hard pressed and in a strait, he
would make his friend a gift of the book which was necessary to his
studies. This course had the effect of preventing people from wishing to
borrow. But many of the great collectors have been more generous than
Pixerecourt. We forget the name (not an illustrious one) of the too good-
natured man who labelled his books, "Not my own, but my friends'." "Sibi
et amicis" ("His own and his friends' property") has been the motto of
several illustrious amateurs since Grolier and Maioli stamped it on the
beautifully decorated morocco of their bindings. Other people have
invented book-plates, containing fell curses in doggrel Latin or the
vernacular on the careless or dishonest borrower:

"Aspice Pierrot pendut
Parceque librum non a rendu"

is the kind of macaronic French and Latin which schoolboys are accustomed
to write under a sketch of the borrower expiating his offences on the
gallows.

The mischief of borrowing, the persistent ill-luck which cleaves to
property thus obtained, have been proverbial since the young prophet
dropped the axe-head in the deep water, and cried, "Alas, for it is
borrowed." The old prophet, readily altering the specific gravity of the
article, enabled his disciple to regain it. But there are no prophets
now, none, at least, who can repair our follies, and re