After a long and painful debate over the election of a prince, the choice fell on one whom, out of respect, I shall not mention. This had come about because of the numerous disagreements among the electors, who ended up by choosing an individual who was quite unworthy of that principality. When Umore from Bologna was asked what he thought of that election, he, without stopping to think a single moment, replied that those electors had imitated the fly, which circles hither and thither for a long time and finally settles on a heap of manure.Related post: Election Day.
S'era penato gran tempo in far elezione d'un principe, il quale per degni rispetti io non voglio nominare, e ciò era intervenuto per le molte discordie degli elettori, i quali poscia erano caduti in eleggere un suggetto poco degno di quel principato. Ed essendo dimandato l'Umore da Bologna quel che gli pareva di cotal elezione, egli, senza punto pensare, rispose che quei tali elettori avevano imitato il moscone, il quale va girando quinci e quindi per buon spazio d'ora e dopo un gran giro si posa sopra una meta.
"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, January 03, 2018
The Election
Ludovico Domenichi (1515-1564), Facetie, number 310 (tr. Charles Speroni):