Very many years ago we became convinced--Judge Methuen and I did--that
there was nothing new in the world. I think it was while we were in
London and while we were deep in the many fads of bibliomania that we
arrived at this important conclusion.
We had been pursuing with enthusiasm the exciting delights of
extra-illustration, a practice sometimes known as Grangerism; the
friends of the practice call it by the former name, the enemies by the
latter. We were engaged at extra-illustrating Boswell's life of
Johnson, and had already got together somewhat more than eleven
thousand prints when we ran against a snag, an obstacle we never could
surmount. We agreed that our work would be incomplete, and therefore
vain, unless we secured a picture of the book with which the great
lexicographer knocked down Osborne, the bookseller at Gray's Inn Gate.
Unhappily we were wholly in the dark as to what the title of that book
was, and, although we ransacked the British Museum and even appealed to
the learned Frognall Dibdin, we could not get a clew to the identity of
the volume. To be wholly frank with you, I will say that both the
Judge and I had wearied of the occupation; moreover, it involved great
expense, since we were content with nothing but India proofs (those
before letters preferred). So we were glad of this excuse for
abandoning the practice.
While we were contemplating a graceful retreat the Judge happened to
discover in the "Natural History" of Pliny a passage which proved to
our satisfaction that, so far from being a new or a modern thing, the
extra-illustration of books was of exceptional antiquity. It seems
that Atticus, the friend of Cicero, wrote a book on the subject of
portraits and portrait-painting, in the course of which treatise he
mentions that Marcus Varro "conceived the very liberal idea of
inserting, by some means or another, in his numerous volumes, the
portraits of several hundred individuals, as he could not bear the idea
that all traces of their features should be lost or that the lapse of
centuries should get the better of mankind."
"Thus," says Pliny, "was he the inventor of a benefit to his fellow-men
that might have been envied by the gods themselves; for not only did he
confer immortality upon the originals of these portraits, but he
transmitted these portraits to all parts of the earth, so that
everywhere it might be possible for them to be present, and for each to
occupy his niche."
Now, Pliny is not the only one who has contributed to the
immortalization of Marcus Varro. I have had among my papers for thirty
years the verses which Judge Methuen dashed off (for poets invariably
dash off their poetry), and they are such pleasant verses that I don't
mind letting the world see them.