I have looked at all the books. But shall I say books? Every book I saw is a treasure ... It seemed in truth as if I were not in a library but -- as it is customary to say -- on the lap of Jupiter. There were more Greek as well as Hebrew volumes which King Matthias had bought for immense amounts of money in the interior of Greece after the fall of Constantinople and the destruction of many other Greek cities ... And more ancient and new Latin books here ... than anywhere else within my knowledge.More here.
"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, November 04, 2004
The Lap of Jupiter
The German humanist Brassicanus on the library acquired by King Matthias Corvinus (1458-1490) of Hungary: