"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, March 30, 2014
The Best Poem of the Best Poet
Dryden called Vergil's Georgics "the best poem of the best poet" (in the dedication of his translation to Lord Chesterfield). Leopardi said much the same thing in his Zibaldone (2475-2476): "nel poema piú perfetto del piú perfetto ed elegante poeta latino." I don't see Dryden mentioned in the index of the new translation of Zibaldone by Kathleen Baldwin et al. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013).