"Come, come. Modesty is all very well, but don't overdo it."
"—folio."
"Oh!"
"—Of three thousand odd pages, printed (blunt type) in double columns, and here and there in triple."
"O—oh!"
"—with marginalia by other hands, and footnotes running sometimes to twenty thousand words, and, including above six thousand quotations from the best poets—every one, in short, which has given me pleasure of a certain quality, whether gentle or acute, at one time or another in my life."
"!!!"
"—The whole profusely, not to say extravagantly, adorned with woodcuts in the text, not to mention fifty or sixty full-page illustrations in copper."
"By eminent artists?"
"Some of them by eminent artists, for the reason only that I number such among my friends; the rest by amateurs and members of my household who would help, out of mere affection, in raising this monument."