There is no satisfaction in lending a book; for it is rarely that
borrowers, while they deface your volumes, gather honey for new
stores, as De Quincey did, and Coleridge, and even Dr. Johnson, who
"greased and dogs-eared such volumes as were confided to his tender
mercies, with the same indifference wherewith he singed his own
wigs." But there is a race of mortals more annoying to a
conscientious man than borrowers. These are the spontaneous
lenders, who insist that you shall borrow their tomes. For my own
part, when I am oppressed with the charity of such, I lock their
books up in a drawer, and behold them not again till the day of
their return. There is no security against borrowers, unless a man
like Guibert de Pixerecourt steadfastly refuses to lend. The device
of Pixerecourt was un livre est un ami qui ne change jamais. But he
knew that our books change when they have been borrowed, like our
friends when they have been married; when "a lady borrows them," as
the fairy queen says in the ballad of "Tamlane."


"But had I kenn'd, Tamlane," she says,
"A lady wad borrowed thee,
I wad ta'en out thy twa gray een,
Put in twa een o' tree!

"Had I but kenn'd, Tamlane," she says,
"Before ye came frae hame,
I wad ta'en out your heart o' flesh,
Put in a heart o' stane!"