The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is
composed of two distinct races, _the men who borrow_, and _the men
who lend_. To these two original diversities may be reduced all those
impertinent classifications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men,
black men, red men. All the dwellers upon earth, "Parthians, and
Medes, and Elamites," flock hither, and do naturally fall in with
one or other of these primary distinctions. The infinite superiority
of the former, which I choose to designate as the _great race_,
is discernible in their figure, port, and a certain instinctive
sovereignty. The latter are born degraded. "He shall serve his
brethren." There is something in the air of one of this cast, lean and
suspicious; contrasting 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 incomparable
Brinsley--what a family likeness in all four!
What a careless, even deportment hath your borrower! what rosy gills!
what a beautiful reliance on Providence doth he manifest,--taking
no more thought than lilies! What contempt for money,--accounting
it (yours and mine especially) no better than dross! What a liberal
confounding of those pedantic distinctions 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
_community_,--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 Jew that paid
it tribute-pittance at Jerusalem!--His exactions, 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
welcome in their faces! He cometh to you with a smile, and troubleth
you with no receipt; confining himself to no set season. Every day is
his Candlemas, or his Feast of Holy Michael. He applieth the _lene
tormentum_ 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 contended! He is the true Propontic
which never ebbeth! The sea which taketh handsomely at each man's
hand. In vain the victim, whom he delighteth to honour, struggles with
destiny; he is in the net. Lend therefore cheerfully, O man ordained
to lend--that thou lose not in the end, with thy worldly penny, the
reversion promised. Combine not preposterously in thine own person the
penalties of Lazarus and of Dives!--but, when thou seest the proper
authority coming, meet it smilingly, as it were half-way. Come,
a handsome sacrifice! See how light _he_ makes of it! Strain not
courtesies with a noble enemy.
Reflections like the foregoing 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 descendant from mighty ancestors of that name, who
heretofore held ducal dignities in this realm. In his actions and
sentiments he belied not the stock to which he pretended. Early in
life he found himself invested with ample revenues; which, with that
noble disinterestedness which I have noticed as inherent in men of the
_great race_, he took almost immediate measures entirely to dissipate
and bring to nothing: for there is something revolting 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 slacken virtue, and abate her edge,
Than prompt 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
contribution. I reject this estimate as greatly exaggerated:--but
having had the honour of accompanying 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 acquaintance with 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 pleased to
express himself), to whom he had occasionally been beholden for a
loan. Their multitudes did no way disconcert him. He rather took
a pride in numbering them; and, with Comus, seemed pleased to be
"stocked with so fair a herd."
With such sources, it was a wonder how he contrived to keep his
treasury always empty. He did it by force of an aphorism, which he had
often in his mouth, that "money kept longer than 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 infectious,--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 river's
side under some bank, which (he would facetiously observe) paid no
interest--but out away from him it must go peremptorily, as Hagar's
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 stranger, was sure to contribute to the
deficiency. For Bigod had an _undeniable_ way with him. He had a
cheerful, open exterior, a quick jovial eye, a bald forehead, just
touched with grey (_cana 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 coin in his pocket, whether it is not more repugnant to the
kindliness of his nature to refuse such 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 expects nothing better;
and, therefore, whose preconceived notions and expectations you do in
reality so much less shock in the refusal.
When I think of this man; his fiery glow of heart; his swell of
feeling; how magnificent, how _ideal_ he was; how great at the
midnight hour; and when I compare with him the companions with whom I
have associated since, I grudge the saving of a few idle ducats, and
think that I am fallen into the society of _lenders_, and _little
men_.
To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased in leather covers
than closed in iron coffers, there is a class of alienators more
formidable than that which I have touched upon; I mean your _borrowers
of books_--those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry
of shelves, and creators of odd volumes. There is Comberbatch,
matchless in his depredations!
That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a great eye-tooth
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 posture, guardant of
nothing) once held the tallest of my folios, _Opera Bonaventuræ_,
choice and 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_ Comberbatch
abstracted upon the faith of a theory he holds, which is more easy, I
confess, for me to suffer by than to refute, namely, that "the title
to property in a book (my Bonaventure, for instance), is in exact
ratio to the claimant's powers of understanding and appreciating the
same." Should he go on acting 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 commodious 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 indeed the 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, Dodsley's dramas want their fourth
volume, where Vittoria Corombona is! The remainder nine are as
distasteful as Priam's refuse sons, when the Fates _borrowed_ Hector.
Here stood the Anatomy of Melancholy, in sober state.--There loitered
the Complete Angler; quiet as in life, by some stream side.--In yonder
nook, John Buncle, a widower-volume, with "eyes closed," I mourns his
ravished mate.
One justice I must do my friend, that if he sometimes, like the sea,
sweeps away a treasure, at another time, sea-like, he throws up as
rich an equivalent to match it. I have a small under-collection of
this nature (my friend's gathering's in his various calls), picked
up, he has forgotten 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 welcome as the true Hebrews. There they
stand in conjunction; 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
ungentlemanly 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 one hearty meal on your viands, if he can give
no account of the platter after it. But what moved thee, wayward,
spiteful K., to be so importunate to carry off with thee, in spite of
tears and adjurations to thee to forbear, the Letters of that princely
woman, the thrice noble Margaret Newcastle?--knowing at the time,
and knowing that I knew also, thou most assuredly wouldst never turn
over one leaf of the illustrious folio:--what but the mere spirit
of contradiction, and childish love of getting the better of thy
friend?--Then, worst cut of all! to transport it with thee to the
Gallican land--
Unworthy land to harbour such a sweetness,
A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt,
Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex's wonder!
--hadst thou not thy play-books, and books of jests and fancies,
about thee, to keep thee merry, even as thou keepest all companies
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 bear
away, in kindly token of remembering us, than the works of Fulke
Greville, Lord Brook--of which no Frenchman, nor woman of France,
Italy, or England, was ever by nature constituted to comprehend a
tittle! _Was there not Zimmerman on Solitude?_
Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate collection, 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 precious MSS. of his--(in _matter_ oftentimes, and almost in
_quantity_ not unfrequently, vying with the originals)--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 counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy
library, against S.T.C.