The “gripple niggards” might have pleaded feebly in their own behalf that they could not all afford to spend, like Heber, a hundred thousand pounds in the purchase of books; and that an occasional reluctance to part with some hard-earned, hard-won volume might be pardonable in one who could not hope to replace it.  Lamb’s books were the shabbiest in Christendom; yet how keen was his pang when Charles Kemble carried off the letters of “that princely woman, the thrice noble Margaret Newcastle,” an “illustrious folio” which he well knew Kemble would never read.  How bitterly he bewailed his rashness in extolling the beauties of Sir Thomas Browne’s “Urn Burial” to a guest who was so moved by this eloquence that he promptly borrowed the volume.  “But so,” sighed Lamb, “have I known a foolish lover to praise his mistress in the presence of a rival more qualified to carry her off than himself.”

Johnson cherished a dim conviction that because he read, and Garrick did not, the proper place for Garrick’s books was on his—­Johnson’s—­bookshelves; a point which could never be settled between the two friends, and which came near to wrecking their friendship.  Garrick loved books with the chilly yet imperative love of the collector.  Johnson loved them as he loved his soul.  Garrick took pride in their sumptuousness, in their immaculate, virginal splendour.  Johnson gathered them to his heart with scant regard for outward magnificence, for the glories of calf and vellum.  Garrick bought books.  Johnson borrowed them.  Each considered that he had a prior right to the objects of his legitimate affection.  We, looking back with softened hearts, are fain to think that we should have held our volumes doubly dear if they had lain for a time by Johnson’s humble hearth, if he had pored over them at three o’clock in the morning, and had left sundry tokens—­grease-spots and spatterings of snuff—­upon many a spotless page.  But it is hardly fair to censure Garrick for not dilating with these emotions.

Johnson’s habit of flinging the volumes which displeased him into remote and dusty corners of the room was ill calculated to inspire confidence, and his powers of procrastination were never more marked than in the matter of restoring borrowed books.  We know from Cradock’s “Memoirs” how that gentleman, having induced Lord Harborough to lend him a superb volume of manuscripts, containing the poems of James the First, proceeded to re-lend this priceless treasure to Johnson.  When it was not returned—­as of course it was not—­he wrote an urgent letter, and heard to his dismay that Johnson was not only unable to find the book, but that he could not remember having ever received it.  The despairing Cradock applied to all his friends for help; and George Steevens, who had a useful habit of looking about him, suggested that a sealed packet, which he had several times observed lying under Johnson’s ponderous inkstand, might possibly contain the lost manuscript.  Even with this ray of hope for guidance, it never seemed to occur to any one to storm Johnson’s fortress, and rescue the imprisoned volume; but after the Doctor’s death, two years later, Cradock made a formal application to the executors; and Lord Harborough’s property was discovered under the inkstand, unopened, unread, and consequently, as by a happy miracle, uninjured.