“I lent my umbrella,” said my friend, “to my cousin, Maria.  I was compelled to lend it to her because she could not, or would not, leave my house in the rain without it.  I had need of that umbrella, and I tried to make it as plain as the amenities of language permitted that I expected to have it returned.  Maria said superciliously that she hated to see other people’s umbrellas littering the house, which gave me a gleam of hope.  Two months later I found my property in the hands of her ten-year-old son, who was being marshalled with his brothers and sisters to dancing-school.  In the first joyful flash of recognition I cried, ’Oswald, that is my umbrella you are carrying!’ whereupon Maria said still more superciliously than before, ‘Oh, yes, don’t you remember?’ (as if reproaching me for my forgetfulness)—­’you gave it to me that Saturday I lunched with you, and it rained so heavily.  The boys carry it to school.  Where there are children, you can’t have too many old umbrellas at hand.  They lose them so fast.’  She spoke,” continued my friend impressively, “as if she were harbouring my umbrella from pure kindness, and because she did not like to wound my feelings by sending it back to me.  She made a virtue of giving it shelter.”

This is the arrogance which places the borrower, as Charles Lamb discovered long ago, among the great ones of the earth, among those whom their brethren serve.  Lamb loved to contrast the “instinctive sovereignty,” the frank and open bearing of the man who borrows with the “lean and suspicious” aspect of the man who lends.  He stood lost in admiration before the great borrowers of the world,—­Alcibiades, Falstaff, Steele, and Sheridan; an incomparable quartette, to which might be added the shining names of William Godwin and Leigh Hunt.  All the characteristic qualities of the class were united, indeed, in Leigh Hunt, as in no other single representative.  Sheridan was an unrivalled companion,—­could talk seven hours without making even Byron yawn.  Steele was the most lovable of spendthrifts.  Lending to these men was but a form of investment.  They paid in a coinage of their own.  But Leigh Hunt combined in the happiest manner a readiness to extract favours with a confirmed habit of never acknowledging the smallest obligation for them.  He is a perfect example of the condescending borrower, of the man who permits his friends, as a pleasure to themselves, to relieve his necessities, and who knows nothing of gratitude or loyalty.

It would be interesting to calculate the amount of money which Hunt’s friends and acquaintances contributed to his support in life.  Shelley gave him at one time fourteen hundred pounds, an amount which the poet could ill spare; and, when he had no more to give, wrote in misery of spirit to Byron, begging a loan for his friend, and promising to repay it, as he feels tolerably sure that Hunt never will.  Byron, generous at first, wearied after a time of his position in Hunt’s commissariat (it was like