You may judge of my taste from my having inserted, in the beginning of my book, the names of the authors that I have consulted. For I consider it to be courteous and to indicate an ingenuous modesty, to acknowledge the sources whence we have derived assistance, and not to act as most of those have done whom I have examined. For I must inform you, that in comparing various authors with each other, I have discovered, that some of the most grave and of the latest writers have transcribed, word for word, from former works, without making any acknowledgement; not avowedly rivalling them, in the manner of Virgil, or with the candour of Cicero, who, in his treatise “De Republica[59],” professes to coincide in opinion with Plato, and in his Essay on Consolation for his Daughter, says that he follows Crantor, and, in his Offices[60], Panæcius; volumes, which, as you well know, ought not merely to be always in our hands, but to be learned by heart. For it is indeed the mark of a perverted mind and a bad disposition, to prefer being caught in a theft to returning what we have borrowed, especially when we have acquired capital, by usurious interest[61]. The Greeks were wonderfully happy in their titles. One work they called Κηρίον, which means that it was as sweet as a honeycomb; another Κέρας Ἀμαλθείας, or Cornu copiæ, so that you might expect to get even a draught of pigeon’s milk from it[62]. Then they have their Flowers, their Muses, Magazines, Manuals, Gardens, Pictures, and Sketches[63], all of them titles for which a man might be tempted even to forfeit his bail. But when you enter upon the works, O ye Gods and Goddesses! how full of emptiness! Our duller countrymen have merely their Antiquities, or their Examples, or their Arts. I think one of the most humorous of them has his Nocturnal Studies[64], a term employed by Bibaculus; a name which he richly deserved[65]. Varro, indeed, is not much behind him, when he calls one of his satires A Trick and a Half, and another Turning the Tables[66]. Diodorus was the first among the Greeks who laid aside this trifling manner and named his history The Library[67]. Apion, the grammarian, indeed—he whom Tiberius Cæsar called the Trumpeter of the World, but would rather seem to be the Bell of the Town-crier[68],—supposed that every one to whom he inscribed any work would thence acquire immortality. I do not regret not having given my work a more fanciful title.