and--for it is now in the Dyce Collection at South
Kensington, with 'Mr. Charles Lamb' written on one of the fly-leaves,
and Dyce's note, 'This rare book was given to me by Mr. Moxon after
Lamb's death.'

The ranks of London book-borrowers, as those of book-thieves, have
included a number of men eminent or distinguished in some particular
way. The Duke of Lauderdale was one of these. Evelyn tells us that he
was a dangerous borrower of other men's books, as the diarist knew to
his cost. Coleridge was a wholesale book-borrower, and the manner in
which he annotated the books of his friends caused much strong and deep
lamentation at the time. These 'annotated' books have now acquired a
very distinct commercial and literary value.

The _London Chronicle_ of December 3-5, 1767, contains a curious
advertisement, headed 'Book-Missing.' It goes on, 'Whereas there is
missing out of the late Dr. Chandler's Library the _fifth Volume of
Cardinal Pool's Letters_, and it is presumed that the said volume of
Letters was borrowed by some friend of the Doctor's; it is earnestly
requested by the Widow and Executrix of the said Dr. Chandler that
whoever is in possession of the said volume would be so kind as
immediately to send it to Mr. Buckland, Bookseller, Paternoster Row,
and the favour will be gratefully acknowledged.'

When Sir Walter Scott lent a book, he put in its place a wooden block
bearing the name of the borrower and the date of the loan. Charles Lamb,
tired of lending his books, threatened to chain Wordsworth's poems to
his shelves, adding, 'For of those who borrow, some read slow; some mean
to read, but don't read; and some neither read nor mean to read, but
borrow to give you an opinion of their sagacity. I must do my
money-borrowing friends the justice to say that there is nothing of this
caprice or wantonness of alienation in them. When they borrow money they
never fail to make use of it.'

Just as the difference between the book-thief and the book-borrower is
of too slight a nature to warrant independent chapters, so the hero who
indulges in the luxury of a 'knock-out' is more or less of a thief, and
this company is, essentially, a very proper place in which to find him.
A 'knock-out,' it may be briefly explained to the uninitiated, is a
system by which two or more booksellers--or, for the matter of that, any
other tradesmen--combine to procure certain books at a lower than normal
auction value. An American paper stat