The Latin Works of Giordano Bruno

...was being discussed for attaining The sentence likely began on the previous page with a word like "mirabili" (wonderful/remarkable). remarkable things. By seeking out older instructions through long-term practice, they used to drive away more fortunate talents from their pursuit and study with too much persistence; for minds, the more subtle and prompt they are, the less they endure and (to put the matter more clearly) the more impatient they are; for some of these, it is advised to touch on everything rather than to grasp one single thing.

PHILOTHIMVS. — What pleases me about this author is that he does not make himself one of that herd who, gathering the opinions of others from here and there into one place, enroll themselves among the authors laboring for posterity at the expense of others to achieve immortality. For the most part, they set themselves up as teachers of those things of which they have no understanding or logic at all. They often cannot help but—after they have somehow fitted the lion’s skin A reference to Aesop’s fable of the donkey in the lion’s skin, used to describe someone pretending to be more important or learned than they truly are. from the inventions of others onto themselves—burst out more frequently into their own true voice. This happens when they ejaculate something from their own spineless Mars original: "delumbi Marte." A metaphor for weak, unmanly, or effortless work, as Mars was the god of strength and war. (because it is easy to add to things already invented) or vomit from the poverty of their stupid sense. Those, those are the battering rams of infancy, the engines of error, the cannons of ineptitude, and the thunder, lightning, flashes, and great storms of ignorance.

LOGIFER. — Do you not feel the same about our poem-pickers poem-pickers: carminilegis, those who "harvest" lines from existing poems to stitch together new ones and versifiers original: "versificatoribus." A derogatory term for someone who writes mechanical verse without true poetic inspiration. who sell themselves to us as poets by using the inventions, half-lines, and verses of others as their own?

PHILOTHIMVS. — Dismiss the poets. For just as we know according to the locations... The text cuts off here. The mention of "locations" (locis) likely refers to the "Method of Loci," the classic mnemonic technique of placing mental images in specific architectural locations.