Saturday, March 07, 2009

 

An Illusion

Samuel Butler, Characters and Passages from Note-Books, ed. A.R. Waller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908), p. 277:
The way to be esteemd Learned, is but only to have a Library, and to be able to Turn to the Indices, upon any Occasion of showing great Reading.
That was in the 17th century. In the 21st, the way to be esteemed learned, is to resort to Google Book Search. Thus one may gain the reputation of wide reading, without the substance. Experto credite.



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