About the same date as Reilly's book-plate is a very graceful German one, executed for Michael Lilienthal (figured on [p. 165]). It shows us a group of growing lilies, around which bees are hovering or tasting their sweetness, and below—
'Use the book, but let no one misuse it;
The bee does not stain the lilies, but only touches them.'
From this graceful book-plate and the pleasantry of its inscription, we turn to a heavy declamatory sentence, devised, circa 1730, by the librarian of the Benedictine monastery of Wessenbrun, in Bavaria, for the books in his charge to speak when a theft had been actually committed or was in contemplation: 'I am the rightful possession of the Cloister of Wessenbrun. Ho there! Restore me to my master, so right demands!'
Sherlock Willis, whose book-plate—a decided 'Chippendale'—is dated in 1756, flies to Scripture for his aid against immoral borrowers, and places on his book-plate the familiar quotation from the 37th Psalm: 'The ungodly borroweth, and payeth not again.' Various other English book-plates bear the same quotation, or some other taken from the Bible. On that in use at the Parochial Library of Tadcaster, which shows us St. John in the isle of Patmos receiving from the angel the book which he was to eat, we read: 'Accipe librum et devora illum' (Rev. x. 9); advice which it was not, we may presume, intended that the borrower should follow literally.
There is something very businesslike and to the point about the inscription on the book-plate of Charles Ferdinand Hommeau, which is dated six years after that of Sherlock Willis. The inscription reads in translation: 'If you do not return the loan within fourteen days, or do not keep it carefully, on another occasion [when you ask to borrow it or some other book] I shall say I have not got it.' So M. Hommeau will not mind telling a lie to protect his library; and what is more, does not mind telling the world of his intention to do so. Truly he was an honest liar.
David Garrick (whose book-plate is figured opposite) selected as an appropriate quotation for his book-plate the following, taken from the fourth volume of Menagiana:—'La première chose qu'on doit faire quand on a emprunté un livre, c'est de le lire afin de pouvoir le rendre plutôt.' Very good advice, no doubt; but I wonder if 'Davy' was careful enough to confine his loans to those who would follow it? This reminds me of a very nicely put passage of Lord De Tabley's, à propos of the subject of book-borrowing in general:—
'Now this batch of mottoes raises the point, whether valuable books should be lent to persons who treat volumes like coal scuttles; who perpetrate such atrocities as moistening their thumbs to turn a page over; who hold a fine binding before a roaring fire? who, horribile dictu, read at breakfast, and use, as a book-marker, the butter-knife. Ought Garrick to have lent the cream of his Shakespeare quartos to slovenly and mole-eyed Samuel Johnson? We think emphatically not! Many full-grown folks have no more idea of handling a book than has a school-boy.'
So far the 'caveats' on book-plates have been either original compositions or quotations, specially selected by the owner; but, as time went on, people did not trouble to compose their own verses or inscriptions, or to hunt up appropriate quotations. The same lines or words appear fastened beneath, or printed upon, the book-plates of many different persons; in the latter case the book-plate is generally little more than a name ticket. Here is one, composed early in this century, which could be bought of C. Talbot, at 174 Tooley Street, and on it the purchaser could write his name before affixing it in his volumes:—