Hard to get along with, a complainer, a praiser of time past / when he was a boy, a blamer and critic of the younger generation. (difficilis, querulus, laudator temporis acti / se puero, castigator censorque minorum.)
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Thursday, July 15, 2004
Laudator Temporis Acti
In the Horatian passage from which I borrowed the title for this blog, the praiser of time past is not viewed favorably: