Thursday, April 26, 2012

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