When I got your letter I turned right to Forbush ("Birds of Massachusetts and Other New England States," 3 volumes). This is the set of books my wife once gave fifty bucks for. Most of the females I know, they get fifty dollars together it don't go to no set of bird books.
"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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Saturday, October 21, 2006
Far Above Rubies
E.B. White, Letter to John McNulty (August 21, 1949):