My father was growing weary of modern civilization with all its problems and was inclined to dwell more and more upon the thought of ancient Rome, which had always taken first place in his imagination...
"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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Friday, December 22, 2023
Growing Weary of Modern Civilization
Selections Autobiographical and Imaginative from the Works of George Gissing, with Biographical and Critical Notes by His Son (London: Jonathan Cape, 1929), pp. 244-245: