Let me just tell You how my Time is
Past in a Country-Life.——Imprimis,
As soon as Phoebus' Rays inspect us,
First, Sir, I read; and then I Breakfast;
So on, 'till foresaid God does set,
I sometimes Study, sometimes Eat.
Thus, of your Heroes and brave Boys,
With whom old Homer makes such Noise,
The greatest Actions I can find,
Are, that They did their Work, and din'd.
"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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Monday, October 11, 2010
How My Time Is Passed
Matthew Prior, from Epistle to Fleetwood Shephard, Esq.: