[Footnote I-28: “That a strong passion for portraits formerly existed, is attested both by Atticus, the friend of Cicero, who wrote a work on this subject, and by M. Varro, who conceived the very liberal idea of inserting by some means or other, in his numerous volumes, the portraits of seven 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.”--Pliny’s Natural History, Book XXXV. chap. 2.--(Bohn’s Ed. vol. vi. p. 226. M. Deville is of opinion that these portraits were made in relief upon plates of metal, perhaps bronze, and coloured with minium, a red tint much esteemed by the Romans).] [Footnote I-29: See De Pauw, Recherches Philosophiques sur les Grecs, t. ii. p. 100. The subject is discussed in Meusel’s “Neue Miscellaneen von artistischen Inhalts,” part xii. p. 380-387, in an article, “Sind wirklich die Römer die Erfinder der Kupferstecherkunst?--Were the Romans truly the inventors of copper-plate engraving?”--by A. Rode. Böttiger, one of the most learned and intelligent of all German writers on the fine arts, and Fea, the editor of Winkleman’s History of Art, do not admit De Pauw’s conjecture, but decide the question in the negative.] About the year 1300 we have evidence of monumental brasses, with large figures engraved on them, being fixed on tombs in this country; and it is not unlikely that they were known both here and on the Continent at an earlier period. The best specimens known in this country are such as were in all probability executed previous to 1400. In the succeeding century the figures and ornamental work generally appear to be designed in a worse taste and more carelessly executed; and in the age of Queen Elizabeth the art, such as it was, appears to have reached the lowest point of degradation, the monumental brasses of that reign being generally the worst which are to be met with.