which may be construed: 'Armed on one side with the cross [the cross on the shield], and on the other with the pair of scales, I fight for my king and for my God. These two things I indeed learn from my books,' libris; but libris may also be translated 'balances,' and herein is the pun!
Taking them chronologically, our next examples are on English book-plates; one is dated 1730, and the other evidently belongs to the same period. On the first, the Rev. John Lloyd writes: 'Animus si æquus, quod petis hic est'; and on the other, Thomas Robinson, a Fellow of Merton, quotes from Cicero: 'Delectant domi non impediunt foris.' Perhaps 'Herbert Jacob, Esq. of St. Stephen's, in Kent,' had a generally troublesome wife, who did not penetrate the sacred region of his library; however it may have been, he placed on his book-plate, circa 1740: 'Otium cum libris,' a sentiment expressed in a great variety of ways on later book-plates.
Some ten years later than the last example is the book-plate of a German cleric, Gottfried Balthazar Scharff, Archdeacon of Schweidnitz, a town in Prussian Silesia, on which his books are praised in some not ungraceful verses; in these the owner asks divine help in understanding aright the teaching of his volumes.
On the Flemish book-plate of Lewis Bosch (spoken of elsewhere in this volume, [p. 218]), we read beneath the representation of the prelate's library, in which he is shown hard at work among his books: 'A hunt in such a forest never wearies.' The allusion to a forest of books recalls the motto on the much later English book-plate of Mary Berry. On this is depicted a wild strawberry plant, its fruit half hidden by leaves, and below is written, 'Inter folia fructus.' Probably Miss Berry, besides alluding to the fruit of knowledge which she found amongst the leaves of her books, intended a mild play upon the strawberry and her own family name.
Besides these, a host of further mottoes in praise of books or about books are to be met with. Some recommend the collection of as large a library as possible; others point out that the mind is distracted by a multitude of books; some advocate the careful handling of a volume, even at the expense of not getting so well acquainted with its contents; whilst others tell us that well-thumbed books are monuments of the owner's industry and constant study. Nor are the consoling powers of books forgotten. On a very pretty rustic vignette, executed by Bonner after Bewick, 'W. B. Chorley of Liverpool' has the words: 'My books, the silent friends of joy and woe.'
CHAPTER X
PERSONAL PARTICULARS ON BOOK-PLATES