People of far greater importance than Don Abbondio have more than once found themselves in situations so unpleasant, and have been so uncertain what to do next, that they have found the best expedient was to take to their beds with a fever.
"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, February 03, 2005
The Best Expedient
Alessandro Manzoni, I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed), chap. 2 (tr. Archibald Colquhoun):