degrees. The man who acts as Menage advises, in the aphorism which
Garrick used as a motto on his bookplate, the man who reads a book
instantly and promptly returns it, is the most pardonable borrower. But
how few people do this! As a rule, the last thing the borrower thinks of
is to read the book which he has secured. Or rather, that is the last
thing but one; the very last idea that enters his mind is the project of
returning the volume. It simply "lies about," and gets dusty in his
rooms. A very bad borrower is he who makes pencil marks on books.
Perhaps he is a little more excusable than the borrower who does not read
at all.

A clean margin is worth all the marginalia of Poe, though he, to do him
justice, seems chiefly to have written on volumes that were his own
property. De Quincey, according to Mr. Hill Burton, appears to have
lacked the faculty of mind which recognizes the duty of returning books.
Mr. Hill Burton draws a picture of "Papaverius" living in a sort of cave
or den, the walls of which were books, while books lay around in tubs.
Who was to find a loved and lost tome in this vast accumulation? But De
Quincey at least made good use of what he borrowed. The common borrower
does nothing of the kind. Even Professor Mommsen, when he had borrowed
manuscripts of great value in his possession, allowed his house to get
itself set on fire. Europe lamented with him, but deepest was the wail
of a certain college at Cambridge which had lent its treasures. Even
Paul Louis Courier blotted horribly a Laurentian MS. of "Daphnis and
Chloe." When Chenier lent his annotated "Malherbe," the borrower spilt a
bottle of ink over it. Thinking of these things, of these terrible,
irreparable calamities, the wonder is, not that men still lend, but that
any one has the courage to borrow. It is more dreadful far to spoil or
lose a friend's book than to have our own lost or spoiled. Stoicism
easily submits to the latter sorrow, but there is no remedy for a