The Anatomy of Scholarship

Peripatetic teachers, sophists and advocates, and lone scholars in wildernesses, private studies, prison cells, asylums, academies, monasteries, observatories, laboratories, hospitals and even naval vessels; scribes, learned judges, lettered persons and courtiers of renowned cities; calligraphers, illuminators of manuscripts, curators of scrolls and codices; translators and interpreters; governesses and tutors in private households, the hirelings of princes, senators, lords and ladies and gentlemen of quality; the parlours and taverns, and the guilds of alchemists and apothecaries, priests, astronomers, physicians and surgeons, masons and military engineers; schools and studios of artists, illustrators and engravers; printing presses and binderies, and all editors and publishers of inky periodicals, journals and newspapers, dictionaries, treatises, pamphlets, romances, novels and collections of verse; salons, coffee-houses and bookshops; libraries, galleries and museums, private and public; zoological and botanical gardens; not to mention the underground of doubters, atheists, heretics, apostates, dissenters and revolutionary vanguards; and parliaments, conservatories, theatres, gymnasia, auditoria, archives, servers, and the diverse faculties of universities. Ten times six years could not suffice to hear them.

Grant Duncan 21 April 2012