It is an ordinary thing in these days to see a base impudent ass, illiterate, unworthy, insufficient, to be preferred before his betters, because he can put himself forward, because he looks big, can bustle in the world, hath a fair outside, can temporize, collogue, insinuate, or hath good store of friends or money; whereas a more discreet, modest, and better deserving man shall lie hid or have a repulse. 'Twas so of old, and ever will be...
"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 17, 2010
An Ordinary Thing
Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part. 2, Sec. 3, Mem. 7: