At this point, let us quite forget the bookcases and libraries that nowadays preserve our studies, and be transported to other times and another world, where many of the inventions which we think necessary for the good life were unknown to both wise men and fools.
Hic prorsus obliti scrinia nostra et bibliothecas, quibus nunc studiorum immortalitas constat, transvolemus hinc in alia tempora et in alium orbem rerum, ubi tot inventa, quae nobis videntur ad beate vivendum necessaria esse, a sapientibus omnibus et stultis ignorabantur.
"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, June 09, 2021
Other Times and Another World
Friedrich August Wolf (1759-1824), Prolegomena to Homer, Chapter XXII (tr. Anthony Grafton):