[O]f all those acquirements, that are called accomplishments, there is none that, were I now a young person, would excite my ambition so much as the acquisition of languages. It not only makes a person useful on a thousand occasions, but enlarges their minds, and goes a great way towards curing them of narrow and disgraceful prejudices.
"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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Wednesday, December 30, 2015
The Acquisition of Languages
Charlotte Smith (1749-1806), Rural Walks: In Dialogues. Intended for the Use of Young Persons (Philadelphia: Thomas Stephens, 1795), p. 77 (Mrs. Woodfield speaking):