4. Again, it is argued that since foreign libraries are willing to lend to us we ought to reciprocate their liberality: we ought, it is said, to be as liberal as France or Germany are. To the end of time men will be the dupes of phrases and the slaves of words, yet it is a little strange that we, who fancy ourselves in some respects raised above the mob, should see any force in this singular perversion of language. Who does not detect the hollow and worthless nature of that 'liberality' which lends, not what is its own, but what is another's? In what possible sense, except an illusory and fallacious one, can the Bodleian Curators credit themselves with the virtue of 'liberality' when they hand over, not their own property, not anything which they collectively set great store on, not anything which it would grieve them deeply to lose, but something not their own? Such liberality seems to me to be as cheap as it is worthless; as easy as it is unreal. But, it will be objected, that the University empowers them so to lend, and that it would be 'illiberal' in them to accept loans from others and refuse themselves to lend. As to the powers given by the University, I have already said something; the rest of the plea may be sufficiently answered by a single line from Hamlet-- "Neither a borrower nor a lender be." Sound, wholesome advice to all, whether taken as Polonius intended it, or as I now use it. It would be mean and shabby to borrow if you refuse to lend, for it would be conniving at a vice which you decline to commit. Would it not be more rational to argue that all lending out of Bodleian books being bad, we therefore decline to benefit (if benefit it be) by a practice which we disapprove of in principle? To argue simply, as I have heard some do, that because foreign libraries are willing to lend us books, _therefore_ we ought to be willing to lend them books, is, as an argument, about as valid as it would be to say, 'My friend X has signified his willingness to lend me his banjo, and therefore I am bound to lend him my Erard's piano, if he asks for it': not every one would see the force of such reasoning. If the lending of books from such a library as the Bodleian be, as I maintain it is, bad in principle, it can never become right because other libraries are willing to be loose in their practice.