For my part, I know no greater delight than to receive letters; but the replying to them is a grievous tax upon my negligent nature. I sometimes think one of the greatest blessings we shall enjoy in heaven, will be to receive letters by every post and never be obliged to reply to them.This (in abbreviated form) is no. 138 in Ian Jackson's anthology The Imperfect Correspondent in Historical Perspective, Vol. II (Berkeley, 2006).
"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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Saturday, April 18, 2015
My Failure to Answer Emails
Washington Irving, letter to Mlle. Bollviller (May 28, 1828):