I having now som experience of liffe led at home and abrode, and knowing what I can do most fitlie, and how I wold live most gladlie, do wel perceyve their is no soch quietnesse in England, nor pleasur in strange contres, as even in S. Jons Colledg to kepe company with the Bible, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, and Tullie.
"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).
Pages
▼
Sunday, January 17, 2016
How I Would Live Most Gladly
Roger Ascham (1515-1568), letter to William Cecil, in Henry Ellis, ed., Original Letters of Eminent Literary Men (London: Camden Society, 1843), p. 14: