"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).
When have I not feared dangers graver than the real? Love is a thing ever filled with fear.Id. 1.71-72:
quando ego non timui graviora pericula veris?
res est solliciti plena timoris amor.
But now, what I am to fear I know not—yet none the less I fear all things, distraught, and wide is the field lies open for my cares.
quid timeam, ignoro—timeo tamen omnia demens,
et patet in curas area lata meas.