OLD PICTURE BOOKS
WITH OTHER ESSAYS ON
BOOKISH SUBJECTS, BY
ALFRED W. POLLARD
[Illustration]
LONDON: METHUEN AND CO
36 ESSEX STREET, W.C. 1902
To JOHN MACFARLANE,
_Librarian of the Imperial Library, Calcutta._
_My dear Macfarlane_,--
_Just as you had completed a valuable monograph on that
enterprising French publisher Antoine Vèrard, you were whirled away
to India to organise a great library at Calcutta. I have seen it
stated in the newspapers, on high authority, that your Imperial
Library is to be a second British Museum, but I am afraid that,
even when fully developed by your energy and skill, it will contain
no Vèrards. I hope, however, that when you come over on furlough
you will resume the pleasant studies we used to pursue together,
and that you may even be induced to read another paper before the
learned Society of which you were once my fellow secretary. To keep
alive your interest in old books is thus a reasonable pretext for
dedicating to you these bookish essays. My real hope is that as
they stand on your book-shelf they may remind you of the original
British Museum and of the many friends you left behind here after
your seventeen years' work amid our Bloomsbury fogs._
_Faithfully yours_,