When Harrison Ainsworth was a youth and living at Manchester, he contracted an enthusiastic admiration for Elia, to whom he sent some curious books on loan. One of these was a black-letter volume entitled 'Syrinx or a sevenfold History, handled with a variety of pleasant and profitable both comical and tragical Arguments,' etc., by W. Warner, 1597. Lamb replied, December 9, 1823: 'I do not mean to keep the book, for I suspect you are forming a curious collection, and I do not pretend to anything of the kind. I have not a black-letter book among mine, old Chaucer excepted, and am not bibliomanist enough to like black-letter. It is painful to read; therefore I must insist on returning it, at opportunity, not from contumacy and reluctance to be obliged, but because it must suit you better than me.' The copy of Warner's 'Syrinx' Ainsworth had borrowed from Dr. Hibbert-Wade, and therefore it was not the future novelist's book to give. Ignoring, however, his expressed determination to return it, Elia lent the book to another friend, who shortly after went to New York, and may have taken the Warner with him, much to Dr. Hibbert-Wade's annoyance, of which he did not, it is said, fail to let Harrison Ainsworth know. It appears, however, to have returned again--indeed, it is probable that the book never left England--for it is now in the Dyce Collection at South Kensington, with 'Mr. Charles Lamb' written on one of the fly-leaves, and Dyce's note, 'This rare book was given to me by Mr. Moxon after Lamb's death.' The ranks of London book-borrowers, as those of book-thieves, have included a number of men eminent or distinguished in some particular way. The Duke of Lauderdale was one of these. Evelyn tells us that he was a dangerous borrower of other men's books, as the diarist knew to his cost. Coleridge was a wholesale book-borrower, and the manner in which he annotated the books of his friends caused much strong and deep lamentation at the time. These 'annotated' books have now acquired a very distinct commercial and literary value. The _London Chronicle_ of December 3-5, 1767, contains a curious advertisement, headed 'Book-Missing.' It goes on, 'Whereas there is missing out of the late Dr. Chandler's Library the _fifth Volume of Cardinal Pool's Letters_, and it is presumed that the said volume of Letters was borrowed by some friend of the Doctor's; it is earnestly requested by the Widow and Executrix of the said Dr. Chandler that whoever is in possession of the said volume would be so kind as immediately to send it to Mr. Buckland, Bookseller, Paternoster Row, and the favour will be gratefully acknowledged.'