Because with purchased books thy library is crammed, dost think thyself a learned man and scholarly, Philomusus? After this sort thou wilt lay up strings, keys, and lyres, and, having purchased all, to-morrow thou wilt be a musician.Ouch.
Emptis quod libris tibi bibliotheca referta est,
doctum et grammaticum te, Philomuse, putas?
hoc genere et chordas et plectra et barbita condes:
omnia mercatus cras citharoedus eris.
"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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Sunday, October 04, 2009
On a Book Collector
Ausonius, Epigrams 7 (tr. Hugh G. Evelyn White):