Laudator Temporis Acti

In an email, Eric Thomson agreed with my interpretation of Carl Tilden Keller's bookplate as a portrayal of Don Quixote reading: "Sword, helm, shrivelled shanks and candlelight are all there." Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) wrote the following sonnet about Don Quixote reading (tr. Alastair Reid):

Readers

Of that gentleman with the sallow, dry complexion
and knightly disposition, they conjecture
that, always on the edge of an adventure,
he never actually left his library.
The precise chronicle of his campaigning
and all its tragicomical reversals
was dreamed by him and not by Cervantes
and is no more than a record of his dreaming.
Such is also my luck. I know there is something
essential and immortal that I have buried
somewhere in that library of the past
in which I read the story of that knight.
The slow leaves now recall a solemn child
who dreams vague things he does not understand.

Lectores

De aquel hidalgo de cetrina y seca
Tez y de heroico afán se conjetura
Que, en víspera perpetua de aventura,
No salió nunca de su biblioteca.
La crónica puntual que sus empeños
Narra y sus tragicómicos desplantes
Fue soñada por él, no por Cervantes,
Y no es más que una crónica de sueños.
Tal es también mi suerte. Sé que hay algo
Inmortal y esencial que he sepultado
En esa biblioteca del pasado
En que leí la historia del hidalgo.
Las lentas hojas vuelve un niño y grave
Sueña con vagas cosas que no sabe.

Gustave Doré (1832–1883),
Don Quixote Reading