Book-plates / [William John Hardy].

  • Hardy, William John, 1857-1919.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Book-plates / [William John Hardy]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Reilly himself and not his book that speaks. It is a mild and decidedly gentlemanly way of expressing ownership, free from threats for not returning the volume; indeed, hardly contemplating the possibility of so dishonest an act. About the same date as Reilly’s book-plate is a very graceful French (?) one, executed for Michael Lilienthal (figured opposite p. 124). 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 right- f ul possessor 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 the book from the angel, which he (St.