I am grown so hard to please, that I am offended with every unexpected Face I meet where I visit, and the least Tediousness or Impertinence gives me a Shortness of Breath, and a Pain in my Stomack. Among all the Diversions you mention among you, I desire to know whether a Man may be allowed to sitt alone among his Books, as long as he pleases.
"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, August 31, 2019
Hard to Please
Jonathan Swift, letter to Charles Ford (March 8, 1709):