'On the sweet summer winds its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted where the siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea maids rise to sun their streaming hair.' FOOTNOTES: [11] _American Book-Plates._ By Charles Dexter Allen. Bell and Son, 1895. [12] The same remark applies to other book-plates bearing colonial addresses, such as that of 'Isaac Royall, Esq., of Antigua.' [13] It may be remarked as curious that William Penn does not, on his book-plate, impale the arms of Hannah Callowhill, to whom he was married in 1695. CHAPTER IX INSCRIPTIONS ON BOOK-PLATES IN CONDEMNATION OF BOOK-STEALING OR BOOK-SPOILING, AND IN PRAISE OF STUDY I PROPOSE now to speak about the inscriptions on book-plates, and I will divide them as follows:--(1) Sentiments in condemnation of book-stealing or book-spoiling; (2) sentiments in praise of books or of study; and (3) personal particulars of the owner of the book-plate, which last class shall receive attention in a separate chapter. In all three cases illustrations may be appropriately drawn both from English and foreign examples. Let me begin by calling the reader's attention to the fact, which I commented upon in my first chapter, that in nearly all inscriptions on book-plates it is the volume in which the book-plate is placed, and not the book-plate itself, that is spokesman. Take the inscription on one of the earliest examples: 'Liber Bilibaldi Pirckheimer, Sibi et amicis.' Bilibald Pirckheimer's book for himself and his friends! Here is an amiable intention; but the plan did not work, and we do not find the sentiment often repeated. In the good jurist's day printed books were not numerous, and they were costly. Then might a man be reasonably regarded as a dog in the manger, who shut the door of his bookcase against those anxious to benefit by the work of the printing-press; then mankind at large had not demonstrated the fact that general morality does not extend to returning borrowed books. Hence, I say, it was that on this early book-plate we have the expression 'Sibi et amicis.' School-boys--and I dare say, if one could only learn the truth in such matters, school-girls too--have a habit of inscribing their school-books with verses, denouncing in decidedly forcible language the school-fellow who steals--_i.e._ borrows and forgets to return--any particular volume, and at the end of these verses is depicted a gallows from which hangs the lifeless body of the thief. When did school-boys first thus protect their possessions? Few school-books survive for use by many successive generations, so we have no means of answering the question satisfactorily; but in a book--not a school-book--published in 1540, there are written (so a correspondent of _Notes and Queries_ informs us), in writing more than three centuries old, these lines below the owner's signature:--