The most entertaining books are best to begin with, and none in the world, so far as entertainment is concerned, deserves the preference to Homer. Neither do I know, that there is anywhere to be found Greek of easier construction. Poetical Greek I mean; and as for prose, I should recommend Xenophon's Cyropaedia. That also is a most amusing narrative, and ten times easier to understand than the crabbed Epigrams and Scribblements of the minor poets, that are generally put into the hands of boys.
"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 04, 2010
The Most Entertaining Book
William Cowper, letter to William Unwin (October 22, 1785):