CHAPTER IX
INSCRIPTIONS ON BOOK-PLATES IN CONDEMNATION OF BOOK-STEALING OR BOOK-SPOILING, AND IN PRAISE OF STUDY
I propose now to speak about the inscriptions on book-plates, and I will divide them as follows:—(1) Sentiments in condemnation of book-stealing or book-spoiling; (2) sentiments in praise of books or of study; and (3) personal particulars of the owner of the book-plate, which last class shall receive attention in a separate chapter. In all three cases illustrations may be appropriately drawn both from English and foreign examples.
Let me begin by calling the reader's attention to the fact, which I commented upon in my first chapter, that in nearly all inscriptions on book-plates it is the volume in which the book-plate is placed, and not the book-plate itself, that is spokesman. Take the inscription on one of the earliest examples: 'Liber Bilibaldi Pirckheimer, Sibi et amicis.' Bilibald Pirckheimer's book for himself and his friends! Here is an amiable intention; but the plan did not work, and we do not find the sentiment often repeated. In the good jurist's day printed books were not numerous, and they were costly. Then might a man be reasonably regarded as a dog in the manger, who shut the door of his bookcase against those anxious to benefit by the work of the printing-press; then mankind at large had not demonstrated the fact that general morality does not extend to returning borrowed books. Hence, I say, it was that on this early book-plate we have the expression 'Sibi et amicis.'
School-boys—and I dare say, if one could only learn the truth in such matters, school-girls too—have a habit of inscribing their school-books with verses, denouncing in decidedly forcible language the school-fellow who steals—i.e. borrows and forgets to return—any particular volume, and at the end of these verses is depicted a gallows from which hangs the lifeless body of the thief. When did school-boys first thus protect their possessions? Few school-books survive for use by many successive generations, so we have no means of answering the question satisfactorily; but in a book—not a school-book—published in 1540, there are written (so a correspondent of Notes and Queries informs us), in writing more than three centuries old, these lines below the owner's signature:—
'My Master's name above you se,
Take heede therefore you steale not mee;
For if you doe, without delay
Your necke ... for me shall pay.
Looke doune below and you shal see
The picture of the gallowstree;
Take heede therefore of thys in time,
Lest on this tree you highly clime.'
[Drawing of the gallows.]
So the school-boy's doggerel is at least founded on an ancient model, which we have quoted, though not actually appearing on a book-plate, because it was clearly intended to do duty as one.
Of exactly the same date is a very pompous declaration, on a German book-plate, of a donor's intention that certain volumes given by him should remain for ever in the library to which they are presented. The owner of the book-plate was John Faber, Bishop of Vienna, who died in 1541, and who, in the previous year, presented his books to the College of St. Nicholas in that city. Here is a translation given by Lord De Tabley, in which mark how in kingly fashion the bishop refers to himself as 'we':—