practice of
jeering, he would probably touch his nose with his extended palm and
say, "Don't you wish you may get it?" True, the world at large has
gained a brilliant essay on Euripides or Plato--but what is that to the
rightful owner of the lost sheep?

The learned world may very fairly be divided into those who return the
books borrowed by them, and those who do not. Papaverius belonged
decidedly to the latter order. A friend addicted to the marvellous
boasts that, under the pressure of a call by a public library to replace
a mutilated book with a new copy, which would have cost L30, he
recovered a volume from Papaverius, through the agency of a person
specially bribed and authorised to take any necessary measures,
insolence and violence excepted--but the power of extraction that must
have been employed in such a process excites very painful reflections.
Some legend, too, there is of a book creditor having forced his way into
the Cacus den, and there seen a sort of rubble-work inner wall of
volumes, with their edges outwards, while others, bound and unbound, the
plebeian sheepskin and the aristocratic russian, were squeezed into
certain tubs drawn from the washing establishment of a confiding
landlady. In other instances the book has been recognised at large,
greatly enhanced in value by a profuse edging of manuscript notes from a
gifted pen--a phenomenon calculated to bring into practical use the
speculations of the civilians about pictures painted on other people's
panels.[27] What became of all his waifs and strays, it might be well
not to inquire too curiously. If he ran short of legitimate _tabula
rasa_ to write on, do you think he would hesitate to tear out the most
convenient leaves of any broad-margined book, whether belonging to
himself or another? Nay, it is said he once gave in copy written on the
edges of a tall octavo Somnium Scipionis; and as he did not obliterate
the original matter, the printer was rather puzzled, and made a funny
jumble between the letterpress Latin and the manuscript English. All
these things were the types of an intellectual vitality which despised
and thrust aside all that was gross or material in that wherewith it
came in contact. Surely never did the austerities of monk or anchorite
so entirely cast all these away as his peculiar nature removed them from
him. It may be questioned if he ever knew what it was "to eat a good
dinner," or could even comprehend the nature of such a fe