I am under larger obligations to you than you may yourselves fully realise. I consider the right of Roman citizenship to be a small privilege compared with that which you have conferred upon me in including my name in the list of your authors. This is to give me rank with the consuls and senators of Rome; I am made an associate of the Ciceros and the Sallusts. What glory comes to me when I can say ‘I am a citizen of the Republic of Immortals; I have been received into the circle of the demi-gods.’ In the literary palace of Leyden we have in fact all been made sojourners under the same roof. Thanks to your efforts, I find myself at one moment opposite Pliny, at the next by the side of Seneca, or a little later placed with Tacitus and Livy; and although I may myself occupy but an inconsiderable place, I have at least the satisfaction of making part of a great company, a company of which Homer himself is the patriarch.... For them, as for myself, the repute has been extended by the skill and judgment of the typographical artist. For some architects reputation has come through the construction of pyramids and colossi, while others have gained no less fame through the art put into rings and seals.... The excellence of work depends not upon its extent but upon its appropriateness and perfection. I am therefore well pleased for my part that in place of putting me into folio, you have printed my productions in these exquisite little volumes.... I subscribe myself Your obliged servant, BALZAC.”[141] The letter is worth quoting if only to indicate the different point of view of the author of the seventeenth century and of him of the nineteenth. The letters written, prior to the Convention of Berne, by the Parisian authors of the present time concerning the books which the publishers of the Low Countries had done them the honour of reprinting, are expressed in a very different manner. In 1663, Daniel Elzevir had consented (this is the phrase used in the correspondence) to reprint a collection of the poetry of Ménage. The poet was so well pleased to have secured the imprint of the great publisher of Europe, that he took pains to insert in the volume an introduction in Latin verse to express his gratification. The lines begin somewhat as follows: “Ye gods and goddesses what do I behold! My verse presented in the type of the Elzevirs. Oh type graceful and exquisite! Oh volume charming and artistic! * * * * *