Just landed. Much to report, but the absolute highlight of the trip was visiting the exhibition of Jefferson’s entire library at the Library of Congress. Bibliomania heaven! My library is much larger, but his was better. I mean, I have some of the same titles on my shelves — Plutarch’s Lives of the Romans, for example — but I can’t say that I have both a three-volume English abridgement AND a twenty-plus-volume complete edition in the original Latin. You might think TJ’s intellectual muscle evident in the number of polyglot dictionaries and treatises on various foreign languages on his shelves, but when you notice the teach-yourself Greek book written in Spanish, not to mention the slim treatise on Arabic written in French, mind-boggling is not too great a term.
– Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
What more can be said?
“The most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever gathered at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.” — President John F. Kennedy, at a 1962 dinner for 49 Nobel laureates.