The Florilegium
Apes debemus imitari — “We ought to imitate the bees.” Seneca, Epistles LXXXIV
Florilegium — Latin, flos (a flower) + legere (to gather): a gathering of flowers. It is what the old readers called a book of passages culled from many others.
Seneca told his friend to imitate the bees: range widely, take only what makes honey, and work it into something that is your own. That is the whole method. You read more than you can hold, you keep the lines that struck you, and years later the keeping is worth more than the reading was.
This is the hive. Not a pile of clippings — a hive.
Keep a Passage
Attribution is a courtesy to your future self. Book and line is a glory.
Propria
One’s own: maxims of your own coining, set down beside the gathered flowers. Nothing is kept on the day it was coined, so that a night stands between the pleasure of writing a line and the judgment of keeping it. A maxim is never overwritten; a new wording is a new record that points back to the old.
The Gathering
Gathering…