Waterbury evening Democrat., 1908-02-18
THE BOOK BORROWER.
How Collectors Have cireumvented a
 Wicked Type.

How Collectors Have Circumvented a
 Wicked Type.
 The book borrower is the sworn foe of the book collector, and many stories are told of the plans adopted by the latter to defend his treasures from the assaults of the borrower. Especially is the collector opposed to the unfeeling wretch who borrows one volume out of series and forgets to return it. | This was one of Coleridge's weakness es and was so pronounced that Lamb described him as "a maker of odd vol umes." The late J. Whitefoord Mac Kenzie, we'll known collector, once told the present writer that when any one asked him for the loan of single volume out of set he always replied that he would rather lend him the whole ten, fifteen or twenty volumes of the series than have them left as odd volumes on his hands. William Roberts, the renowned bibliophile, tells in ''The Book Hunter In London" that the bookplate of a certain French col lector bore this text from the parable of the ten virgins: "Go rather to them that sell and buy for yourselves" Sir" said a man of wit to an ac- quaintance who lamented the difficulty which he found in persuading his friends to return the volumes that he had lent them-"sir, your acquaintances find, I suppose, that it is much more easy to retain the books themselves than what is contained in them"
 An ingenious plan to limit book bor- rowing is told by J. Ashby Sterry. In all the books of a certain cunning book collector he had the price written in plain figures. When any one asked him for the loan of book he invaria- bly, replied, "Yes, with pleasure" and. looking in the volume, further added, q see the price of this work is f2 ITS. Cd" (or whatever it might happen to bel. You may take it at this figure. which will, of course, be refunded when the volume is returned" Sir Wal ter Scotts plan was ingenious. When he lent book from his library he put in it's place a wooden block bearing the name of the borrower and the date of the loan. Many were the anathemas leveled by collectors against those who would borrow or steal their volumes. Sometimes these were macaronic rhymes written by students-as, for ex- ample, the following, which was in- scribed upon a Latin book used in Alb. erdeen university: Si quisquis furetur
 This little Libellum
 Per Phoebem, per Jovem vi
 I'll kill him. I'll fell him; S..S
 In ventrem ills &SsSE5e-.
 I'll stick my scalpellum
 And teach him to steal
 My little Libellum.
 In the library of a famous Glasgow collector there was recently the copy of Scott's "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border" which belonged at one time to William Motherwell and in which the poet had inscribed the following verse: William Motherwell says the work is his. Who shall gainsay him? He that dares do it
 May the meikle deil fay him.
 Even more violent denunciations were written against the book stealer in the sixteenth century. when books were more precious than now. Yet even the modern poet finds it needful to anathematize politely:
 To the lost books my fancy clings;
 Ger them my memory grovels.
 I swear in spirit when I see
 The gaps among the novels.
 The Thackeray I loved and lost''
 mourn with sorrow tender.
 Whoever has 1t also has
 The curses of the lender.
 The lady Bessie Craigmyle) who wrote these lines expresses her grati- tude for the fact that mo one bor- rows poets," though that is not the opinion of Charles Sayle, who thus threatens the possible thief of ''The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche:" Cursed be he who robs me of this book, With all his race. Let 1t be desolate And brought allow if so be it was great. For that he wickedly. impiously took That was another's. Let great serpents
 look At him a-sleeping. with dull eyes of hate. And let him. waking, be compelled of fate To cast his corse within the nearest
 brook. This is as comprehensive a curse as that which overlook the fated Jack daw of Rheims"-and as ineffectual.- Dundee Ad-e-ti-e"