Word: pompeianism
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...life, stretched like a talking wire to bring the wisdom of antiquity into communion with the present, can at last yield us no better news than the true accent of a Greek verse, or the translation of some filthy nothing scrawled on the walls of a brothel by some Pompeian idler. And it is certainly true that the material of thought reacts upon thought itself. Shakespeare himself would have been commonplace had he been paddocked in a thinly shaven vocabulary, and Phidias, had he worked in wax, only a more inspired Mrs. Jarley. A man is known, says the proverb...
...that all others are safe. In consequence, arsenical green papers have become unsaleable, and great care is taken to have them safe. A brilliant red dye has, however, been discovered, which is made from coal tar by the use of arsenic, and this enters into the composition of Pompeian red and various browns, where its use would be least suspected. Arsenic is also used to brighten other colors, and as an antiseptic in the size. Since the arsenic gets into the paper in such various ways, it is impossible to tell anything about a paper by mere inspection...