In the mean time I spend all my mornings in the Bodleian: and the evenings in trying, for the hundredth time, to get a real working knowledge of the German language, since in my present occupation I find my ignorance of it up against me at every turn. For example, the only history of mediaeval Latin literature is in German. The authoritative edition of an old French poem I shall have to read is in German. And so on. But I am making progress.The "history of mediaeval Latin literature" is probably Max Manitius, Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters (München: Beck, 1911).
"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).
Pages
▼
Sunday, July 26, 2026
For the Hundredth Time
C.S. Lewis, letter to his father (March 31, 1928):