Now there is another thing book writers do in their Prefaces, which is to introduce a mass of nincompoops of whom no one ever heard, and to say "my thanks are due to such and such" all in a litany, as though any one cared a farthing for the rats!
"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, 2024
Acknowledgements
Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), The Path to Rome (1902; rpt. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1916), p. x: