Om symmetri i bokhyllorna

Nicol Graham of Gartmore and Two Friends Seated in a Library 

Gawen Hamilton 

To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased in leather covers than closed in iron coffers, there is a class of alienators more formidable than that which I have touched upon: I mean our borrowers of books — those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes. There is Comberbatch, matchless in his depredations! That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a great eyetooth knocked out — (you are now with me in my little back study in Bloomsbury, reader!) —with the huge Switzer-like tomes on each side (like the Guildhall giants, in their reformed posture, guardant of nothing) once held the tallest of my folios, Opera Bonaventurae, choice and massy divinity, to which its two supporters (school divinity also, but of a lesser calibre, — Bellarmine, and Holy Thomas), showed but as dwarfs, — itself an Ascapart! — that Comberbatch abstracted upon the faith of a theory he holds, which is more easy, I confess, for me to suffer by than to refute, namely, that "the title to property in a book (my Bonaventure, for instance), is in exact ratio to the claimant's powers of understanding and appreciating the same." Should he go on acting upon this theory, which of our shelves is safe? 
                                                             ur essän "The Two Races Of Men"
                                                   av Charles Lamb

Vem Nicol var, har jag inte lyckats lista ut, jag vet bara att han levde mellan 1695 och 1775 — men nog ser det ut som om han har lånat ut några av sina dyrgripar.