My Bookplate

In The Island of Lost Maps, Miles Harvey supplies the following delicious quote, which evidently is inscribed somewhere in the library of a monastery in Barcelona:

For him that steals, or borrows and returns not, a book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease to his agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw at his entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not. And when at last he goes to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him forever.

I’ve used this passage for my personalized bookplates.

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