"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).
Pages
▼
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
A Sinister Temptation
Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part II, Prologue (tr. Walter Starkie):
I know only too well what the temptations of the Devil are, and that one of his most sinister is to give a man the notion that he is able to write and print a book by which he will gain as much fame as money.