If you wish to measure according to rules
something which does not agree with your rules,
forget your own ways,
and first seek its rules!
Wollt ihr nach Regeln messen,
was nicht nach euren Regeln Lauf,
der eignen Spur vergessen,
sucht davon erst die Regeln auf!
"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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Thursday, May 20, 2021
Rules
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Act I (tr. Peter Branscombe):