A cornucopia of elegant excerpts, a collectanea of passages, a florilegium of ideas, a gallimaufry of aperçus, musing flowers of yore, an anthologia of verse (a Parnassus), an omnium gatherum of etymologies and origins, all singled out carefully by hand.
Charles Louis de Secondat, Montesquieu, Persian Letters, tr. John Davidson (London & New York, undated), Letter CX., p. 246:
It seems, my dear * * *, that the ablest men grow stupid when they get together; and that, where you have the greatest number of wise men, there you have the least wisdom. . . .
A dearest would approve of this, but only with more subtlety.
Thomas Carlyle, The Life of Friedrich Schiller (vol. 5 of the Library Edition of Carlyle’s Collected Works, London: Chapman and Hall), 51-5...
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