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The human species, acc to the best theory I form of is posed of two distinct races, the men who borrow, and the men who lend. To these twinal diversities may be reduced all those imperti classifications of Gothid Celtic tribes, white men, black men, red men. All the dwellers upoh, "Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites," flock hither, and do naturally fall in with one or other of these primary distins. The infinite superiority of the former, which I choose to designate as the great race, is disible in their figure, port, and a certain instinctive snty. The latter are born degraded. "He shall serve his brethren." There is something in the air of one of this cast, lean and suspicious; trasting with the open, trusting, generous manners of the other.Observe who have been the greatest borrowers of all ages -- Alcibiades, Falstaff, Sir Richard Steele -- our late inparable Brinsley what a family likeness in all four! What a careless, evement hath your borrower! what rosy gills! what a beautiful relian Provideh he ma, -- taking no more thought than lilies! What pt for money, -- ating it (yours and mine especially) er than dross What a liberal founding of those pedantic distins of meum and tuum! or rather, what a noble simplification of language (beyond Tooke), resolving these supposed opposites into one clear, intelligible pronoun adjective! What near approaches doth he make to the primitive unity, to the extent of one half of the principle at least! --
He is the true taxer who "calleth all the world up to be taxed;" and the distance is as vast between him and one of us, as subsisted betwixt the Augustan Majesty and the poorest obolary Jeaid it tribute-pitta Jerusalem! -- His exas, too, have such a cheerful, voluntary air! So far removed from your sour parochial or state-gatherers, -- those ink-horn varlets, who carry their want of wele in their faces! He eth to you with a smile, and troubleth you with no receipt; fining himself to season. Every day is his dlemas, or his Feast of Holy Michael. He applieth the leormentum of a pleasant look to your purse,which to that gentle warmth expands her silken leaves, as naturally as the cloak of the traveller, for which sun and wind tended! He is the true Propontic whiever ebbeth! The sea which taketh handsomely at each mans hand. In vain the vi<q></q>ctim, whom he delighteth to honour, struggles with destiny; he is i. Lend therefore cheerfully, O man ordaio lend -- that thou lose not in the end, with thy worldly penny, the reversion promised. bi preposterously in thine own person the penalties of Lazarus and of Dives! -- but, when thou seest the proper authority ing, meet it smilingly, as it were half-way. e, a handsome sacrifice! See how light he makes of it! Strain not courtesies with a noble enemy.
Refles like the foing were forced upon my mind by the death of my old friend, Ralph Bigod, Esq., who departed this life on Wednesday evening; dying, as he had lived, without much trouble. He boasted himself a desdant from mighty aors of that name, who heretofore held ducal dignities in this realm. In his as aiments he belied not the stock to which he pretended. Early in life he found himself ied with ample revenues; which, with that noble disiedness which I have noticed as i in men of the great race, he took almost immediate measures eo dissipate and bring to nothing: for there is somethiing in the idea of a king holding a private purse; and the thoughts of Bigod were all regal. Thus furnished, by the very act of disfurnishment; getting rid of the cumbersome luggage of riches, more apt (as one sings)
To sla virtue, and abate her edge,
Than pro. her to do aught may merit praise,
he set forth, like some Alexander, upon his great enterprise, "borrowing and to borrow!"
In his periegesis, or triumphant progress throughout this island, it has been calculated that he laid a tythe part of the inhabitants under tribution. I reject this estimate as greatly exaggerated: -- but having had the honour of apanying my friend, divers times, in his perambulations about this vast city, I own I was greatly struck at first with the prodigious number of faces we met, who claimed a sort of respectful acquaintah us. He was one day so obliging as to explain the phenomenon.
It seems, these were his tributaries; feeders of his exchequer; gentlemen, his good friends (as he was leased to express himself), to whom he had occasionally been beholden for a loan. Their multitudes did no way discert him. He rather took a pride in numbering them; and, with us, seemed pleased to be "stocked with so fair a herd."
With such sources, it was a wonder how he trived to keep his treasury always empty. He did it by force of an aphorism, which he had often in his mouth, that "money kept lohan three days stinks." So he made use of it while it was fresh. A good part he drank away (for he was an excellent toss-pot), some he gave away, the rest he threw away, literally tossing and hurling it violently from him -- as boys do burrs, or as if it had been iious, -- into ponds, or ditches, or deep holes, -- inscrutable cavities of the earth ; -- or he would bury it (where he would never seek it again) by a rivers side under some hank, which (he would facetiously observe) paid no i -- but out away from him it must go peremptorily, as Hagars offspring into the wilderness, while it was sweet. He never missed it. The streams were perennial which fed his fisc. When new supplies became necessary, the first person that had the felicity to fall in with him, friend or stranger, was sure to tribute to the deficy. Fod had an undeniable way with him. He had a cheerful, opeerior, a quick, jovial eye, a bald forehead, just touched with grey (a fides). He anticipated no excuse, and found none. And, waiving for a while my theory as to the great race, I would put it to the most untheorising reader, who may at times have disposable in his pocket, whether it is not mnant to the kindliness of his nature to refuse such<big></big> a one as I am describing, than to say no to a poor petitionary rogue (your bastard borrower), who, by his mumping visnomy, tells you, that he expeothier; and, therefore, whose preceived notions and expectations you do iy so much less sho the refusal.
When I think of this man; his fiery glow of heart: his swell of feeling: how magnifit, how ideal he was; how great at the midnight hour; and when I pare with him the panions with whom I have associated since, I grudge the saving of a few idle ducats, and think that I am fallen into the soci<q>..</q>ety of lenders, and little men.
To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased iher covers than closed in iron coffers, there is a class of alienators more formidable than that which I have touched upon: I mean our borrowers of books--those mutilators of colles, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes. There is berbatch, matchless in his depredations! That foul gap itom shelf fag you, like a great eyetooth knocked out -- (you are now with me in my little back study in Bloomsbury, reader!)--with the huge Switzer-like tomes on each side (like the Guildhall giants, in their reformed puardant of nothing) once held the tallest of my folios, Opera Bourae, choid massy divinity, to which its two supporters (school divinity also, but of a lesser calibre,-- Bellarmine, and Holy Thomas), showed but as dwarfs, -- itself an Ascapart! -- that berbatch abstracted upon the faith of a theory he holds, which is more easy, I fess, for me to suffer by than to refute, namely, that "the title to property in a book (my Boure, for instance), is i ratio to the claimants powers of uanding and appreciating the same." Should he go on ag upon this theory, which of our shelves is safe?
The slight vacuum in the left-hand case -- two shelves from the ceiling -- scarcely distinguishable but by the quick eye of a loser -- was whilom the odious resting-place of Brown on Urn Burial. C. will hardly allege that he knows more about that treatise than I do, who introduced it to him, and was ihe first (of the moderns) to discover its beauties -- but so have I known a foolish lover to praise his mistress in the presence of a rival more qualified to carry her off than himself -- Just below, Dodsleys dramas want their fourth volume, where Vittoria bona is! The remainder nine are as distasteful as Priams refuse sons, whees borrowed Hector. Here stood the Anatomy of Melancholy, in sober state.There loitered the plete Angler; quiet as in life, by some stream side. -- In yonde<u>藏书网</u>r nook, John Buncle, a widower-volume, with "eyes closed," mourns his ravished mate.
One justice I must do my friend, that if he sometimes, like the sea, sweeps away a treasure, at aime, sea-like, he throws up as ri equivalent to match it. I have a small under-colle of this nature (my friends gatherings in his various calls), picked up, he has fotten at what odd places, and deposited with as little memory as mine. I take in these orphans, the twice-deserted. These proselytes of the gate are wele as the true Hebrews. There they stand in jun; natives, and naturalised. The latter seem as little disposed to inquire out their true lineage as I am. -- I charge no warehouse-room for these deodands, nor shall ever put myself to the ulemanly trouble of advertising a sale of them to pay expenses.
To lose a volume to C. carries some sense and meaning in it. You are sure that he will make oy meal on your viands, if he give no at of the platter after it. But what moved thee, wayward, spiteful K., to be so importuo carry off with thee, in spite of tears and adjurations to thee to forbear, the Letters of that princely woman, the thrioble Margaret Newcastle? -- knowing at the time, and knowing that I knew also, thou most assuredly wouldst urn over one leaf of the illustrious folio -- what but the mere spirit of tradi, and childish love of getting the better of thy friend? -- Then, worst cut of all! to transport it with thee to the Galli land --
Unworthy land to harbour such a sweetness,
A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt,
Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sexs wonder!--
hadst thou not thy play-books, and books of jests and fancies, about thee, to keep thee merry, even as thou keepest all panies with thy quips and mirthful tales? -- Child of the Green-room, it was unkindly done of thee. Thy wife, too, that part-French, better-part Englishwoman! -- that she could fix upon no other treatise to hear away, in kindly token of remembering us, than the works of Fulke Greville, Lord Brook -- of whio Fren, nor woman of Fraaly, land, was ever by nature stituted to prehend a tittle! Was there not Zimmerman on Solitude?
Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate colle, be shy of showing it; or if thy heart overfloweth to lend them, lend thy books; but let it be to such a one as S. T. C. -- he will return them (generally anticipating the time appointed) with usury: enriched with annotations, tripling their value. I have had experience. Many are these preSS. of his -- (in matter oftentimes, and almost in quantity not unfrequently, vying with the inals) -- in no very clerkly hand -- legible in my Daniel: in old Burton; in Sir Thomas Browne; and those abstruser cogitations of the Greville, now, alas! wandering in Pagan lands. ---- I sel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy library, against S. T. C.
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