ABSTRACT
As mentioned in the Introduction, this chapter begins with a chorus of voices, attuning to engaging with the past and its multiple reverberations:
Extracts
(Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian)
It will be seen that this painstaking burrower and grub-worm of a poor devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the long Vaticans and streetstalls of the earth, picking at whatever random allusions to [history] he could always find in any book whatsoever, sacred or profane. Therefore you must not, in every case at least, take the higgledy-piggledy [ . . . ] statements in these extracts, for veritable gospel [ . . . ] Far from it. As touching the ancient authors generally are [ . . . ] these extracts are solely valuable or entertaining, as affording a bird’s eye view of what has been promiscuously said, thought, fancied, and sung [ . . . ].
