ny of the generous sum advanced by that nobleman after the
defalcation of Moore's deputy in Bermuda. Dr. Johnson paid back ten
pounds after a lapse of twenty years,--a pleasant shock to the
lender,--and on his death-bed (having fewer sins than most of us to
recall) begged Sir Joshua Reynolds to forgive him a trifling loan.
It was the too honest return of a pair of borrowed sheets (unwashed)
which first chilled Pope's friendship for Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.
That excellent gossip, Miss Letitia Matilda Hawkins, who stands
responsible for this anecdote, lamented all her life that her father,
Sir John Hawkins, could never remember which of the friends borrowed
and which lent the offending sheets; but it is a point easily settled
in our minds. Pope was probably the last man in Christendom to have
been guilty of such a misdemeanour, and Lady Mary was certainly the
last woman in Christendom to have been affronted by it. Like Dr.
Johnson, she had "no passion for clean linen."

Coleridge, though he went through life leaning his inert weight on
other men's shoulders, did remember in some mysterious fashion to
return the books he borrowed, enriched often, as Lamb proudly records,
with marginal notes which tripled their value. His conduct in this
regard was all the more praiseworthy inasmuch as the cobweb statutes
which define books as personal property have never met with literal
acceptance. Lamb's theory that books belong with the highest
propriety to those who understand them best (a theory often advanced
in defence of depredations which Lamb would have scorned to commit),
was popular before the lamentable invention of printing. The library
of Lucullus was, we are told, "open to all," and it would be
interesting to know how many precious manuscripts remained
ultimately in the great patrician's villa.

Richard Heber, that most princely of collectors, so well understood
the perils of his position that he met them bravely by buying three
copies of every book,--one for show, one for use, and one for the
service of his friends. The position of the show-book seems rather
melancholy, but perhaps, in time, it replaced the borrowed volume.
Heber's generosity has been nobly praised by Scott, who contrasts
the hard-heartedness of other bibliophiles, those "gripple
niggards" who preferred holding on to their treasures, with his
friend's careless liberality.

"Thy volumes, open as thy heart,
Delight, amusement, science, art,