ncreased
and readers were many, then familiarity bred contempt; books were packed
in out-of-the-way places and neglected, and the oft-quoted, though
seldom seen, bookworm became an acknowledged tenant of the library, and
the mortal enemy of the bibliophile.

Anathemas have been hurled against this pest in nearly every European
language, old and new, and classical scholars of bye-gone centuries have
thrown their spondees and dactyls at him. Pierre Petit, in 1683, devoted
a long Latin poem to his dis-praise, and Parnell's charming Ode is well
known. Hear the poet lament:--

"Pene tu mihi passerem Catulli,
Pene tu mihi Lesbiam abstulisti."

and then--

"Quid dicam innumeros bene eruditos
Quorum tu monumenta tu labores
Isti pessimo ventre devorasti?"

while Petit, who was evidently moved by strong personal feelings against
the "invisum pecus," as he calls him, addresses his little enemy as
"Bestia audax" and "Pestis chartarum."

But, as a portrait commonly precedes a biography, the curious reader
may wish to be told what this "Bestia audax," who so greatly ruffles
the tempers of our eclectics, is like. Here, at starting, is a serious
chameleon-like difficulty, for the bookworm offers to us, if we are
guided by their words, as many varieties of size and shape as there are
beholders.

Sylvester, in his "Laws of Verse," with more words than wit, described
him as "a microscopic creature wriggling on the learned page, which,
when discovered, stiffens out into the resemblance of a streak of dirt."

The earliest notice is in "Micrographia," by R. Hooke, folio, London,
1665. This work, which was printed at the expense of the Royal Society
of London, is an account of innumerable things examined by the author
under the microscope, and is most interesting for the frequent accuracy
of the author's observations, and most amusing for his equally frequent
blunders.

In his account of the bookworm, his remarks, which are rather long
and very minute, are absurdly blundering. He calls it "a small white
Silver-shining Worm or Moth, which I found much conversant among books
and papers, and is supposed to be that which corrodes and eats holes
thro' the leaves and covers. Its head appears bigg and blunt, and its
body tapers from it towards the tail, smaller and smaller, being
shap'd almost like a carret.... It has two long horns before, which are
streight, and tapering towards the top, curiously ring'd or knobb'd and
brisl