Doing the books

The stage of life at which I desired more possessions is, thank goodness, now long past. On the whole I am content to be rather than to have—with one notable exception.

Antiquarian booksellers now send me their catalogues through the post, and last week I received two such. One was a joint production of two Parisian dealers and was itself a book of rare beauty. As soon as I opened it I realised that I had wasted my life completely and should have spent it in the singleminded pursuit of money so that I could have bought these wonderful medical books of the 15th and 16th centuries.

For example, there was Magnus Hundt’s Anthropologium de Hominis Dignitate, Natura …