Punch or The London charivari (3.1842)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

159

PUNCH'S LETTERS TO HIS SON.

LETTER XII.—ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF BORROWING.—HOPKINS'S

UMBRELLA.

You ask me to supply you with a list of books, that you may pur-
chase the same for your private delectation. My dear boy, receive
this, and treasure it for a truth : no wise man ever purchases a book.
Fools buy books, and wise men—-borrow them. By respecting, and
acting upon this axiom, you may obtain a very handsome library for
nothing.

Do you not perceive, too, that by merely borrowing a volume at
every possible, opportunity, you are obtaining for yourself the reputa-
tion of a reading man ; you are interesting in your studies dozens of
people who, otherwise, would care not whether you knew A, B, C,
or not ? With your shelves thronged with borrowed volumes, you
have an assurance that your hours of literary meditation frequently
engage the thoughts of, alike, intimate and casual acquaintance. To
be a good borrower of books is to get a sort of halo of learning about
you not to be obtained by laying out money upon printed wisdom.
For instance, you meet Huggins. He no sooner sees you than, pop,
you are associated with all the Caesars; he having—simple Huggins !
—lent you his Roman History bound in best historic calf. He never
beholds you but he thinks of Romulus and Remus, the Tarpeian
Rock, the Rape of the Sabines, and ten thousand other interesting
and pleasurable events. Thus, you are doing a positive good to Hug-
gins by continually refreshing his mind with the studies of his
thoughtful youth; whilst, as I say, your appearance, your memory, is
associated and embalmed by him with things that " will not die."

Consider the advantage of this. To one man you walk as Hamlet;
why ? you have upon your shelves that man's best edition of Shak-
spere. To another, you come as the archangel Michael. His illustrated
Paradise Lost glitters amongst your borrowings. To this man, by
the like magic, you are Robinson Crusoe ; to this, Telemachus. I
v.dll not multiply instances : they must suggest themselves. Be sure,
however, on stumbling upon what seems a rare and curious volume,
to lay your borrowing hands upon it. The book may be Sanscrit,
Coptic, Chinese : you may not understand a single letter of it; for
which reason, be more sternly resolved to carry it away with you.
The very act of borrowing such a mysterious volume implies that you
are in some respects a deep fellow—invests you with a certain
literary dignity in the eyes of the lending. Besides, if you know not
Sanscrit at the time you borrow,—you may before you die. You
cannot promise yourself what you shall not learn ; or, having bor-
rowed the book, what you shall not forget.

There are three things that no man but a fool lends—or having lent,
ia not in the most hopeless state of mental crassitude if he ever hope
to get back again. These three things, my son, are—books, um-
rrellas, and money ! I believe, a certain fiction of the land
assumes a remedy to the borrower ; but I know no case in which any
man, being sufficiently dastard to gibbet his reputation as plaintiff in
such a suit, ever fairly succeeded against the wholesome prejudices of
society.

In the first place, books being themselves but a combination of
borrowed things, are not to be considered as vesting even their
authors with property. The best man who writes a book, borrows
his materials from the world about him, and therefore, as the phrase
goos, cannot come into court with clean hands. Such is the opinion
of some of our wisest law-makers ; who, therefore, give to the
mechanist of a mouse-trap, a more lasting property in his invention
than if he had made an Iliad. And why ? The mouse-trap is of
wood and iron : trees, though springing from the earth, are property ;
iron, dug from the bowels of the earth, is property : you can feel it,
hammer it, weigh it : but what is called literary genius is a thing not-
ponderable, an essence (if, indeed, it be an essence) you can make
nothing of, though put into an air-pump. The mast, that falls from
beech, to fatten hogs, is property ; as the forest laws will speedily
let you know, if you send in an alien pig to feed upon it: but it has
been held, by wise, grave men in Parliament, that what falls from
human brains to feed human souls, is no property whatever. Hence,
private advantage counsels you to borrow all the books you can ;
whilst public opinion abundantly justifies you in never returning
them.

I have now to speak of umbrellas. "Would you, my son, from
what you have read of Arab hospitality—would you think of counting
out so many penny-pieces, and laying them in the hand of your Arab
host, in return for the dates and" camel's milk that, when fainting,
dying, with thirst, hunger and fatigue, he hastened to bestow upon

you ? Would you, I say, chink the copper coin in the man's ear, in
return for this kindly office, which the son of the desert thinks an
" instrumental part of his religion ?" If, with an ignorance of the
proper usages of society, you would insult that high-souled Arab by
any tender of money, then, my son—but no ! I think you incapable
of the sordidness of such an act,—then would you return a Borrowed
Umbrella !

Consider it. What is an umbrella but a tent that a man carries
about with him—in China, to guard him from the sun,—in England,
to shelter him from the rain ? Well, to return such a portable
tent to the hospitable soul who lent it,—what is it but to offer the
Arab payment for shelter ; what is it but to chaffer with magnani-
mity, to reduce its greatness to a mercenary lodging-house keeper !
Umbrellas may be " hedged about" by cobweb statutes :• I will not
swear it is not so ; there may exist laws that make such things pro-
perty ; but sure I am that the hissing contempt, the loud-mouthed
indignation of all civilized society, would sibilate and roar at the
bloodless poltroon, who should engage law on his side to obtain for
him the restitution of a—lent umbrella !

We now come to—Money. I have had, in my time, so little of it,
that I am not very well informed on monetary history. I think, how-
ever, that the first Roman coin was impressed with a sheep. A
touching and significant symbol, crying aloud to all men,—" Children,
faece one another." My son, it is true, that the sheep has vanished
from all coin : nevertheless, it is good to respect ancient symbols :
therefore, whatever the gold or silver may bear—-whatever the
potentate, whatever the arms upon the obverse, see with your ima-
ginative eye nothing but the sheep ; listen with your fancy's ear to
nought but—" fleece "—"fleece !"

I am aware, that a prejudice exists amongst the half-educated, that
borrowed money is as money obtained by nothing ; that, in fact, it is
not your own ; but is only trusted in your hands for such and such a
time. My son, beware of this prejudice : for it is the fruit of the
vilest ignorance. On the contrary, look upon all borrowed money, as
money dearly, richly earned by your ingenuity in obtaining it. Put
it to your account as the wages of your intellect, your address, your
reasoning or seductive powers. Let this truth, my son, be engraven
upon your very brain-pan. To borrow money is the very highest
employment of the human intellect : to pay it back again, is to show
yourself a traitor to the genius that has successfully worked within
you.

You may, however, wish to know how to put off your creditor—
how to dumbfound him, should the idiot be clamorous. One answer
will serve for books, umbrellas, ana money. As for books, by the
way, you may always have left them in a hackney-coach. (This fre-
quent accident of book-borrowers, doubtless, accounts for the literary
turn of most hackney-coachmen.) Still, I will supply you with one
catholic answer.

Hopkins once lent Simpson, his next-door neighbour, an umbrella.