"There are delightful libraries, more aromatic than stores of
spicery; there are luxuriant parks of all manner of volumes; there are
Academic meads shaken by the tramp of scholars; there are lounges of
Athens; walks of the Peripatetics; peaks of Parnassus; and porches of
the Stoics. There is seen the surveyor of all arts and sciences
Aristotle, to whom belongs all that is most excellent in doctrine, so
far as relates to this passing sublunary world; there Ptolemy measures
epicycles and eccentric apogees and the nodes of the planets by figures
and numbers...."
Richard De Bury, Philobiblon, Thomas' ed. 200
