The secret doctrine in Israel

"THE rumour of a great literature which had subsisted from time immemorial in Jewry may not have been heard of first through a signal piece of good fortune which befell Picus de Mirandula when he purchased, from an unknown Israelite, certain strange codices in manuscript, but nothing which came into his hand and proved to be a treasure o the past was likely to lie unnoticed on his own part, while this artist of the schools was a trumpet of fame for anything announced by his voice during the brilliant, too few years that he carried the quest of learning and the proof of his attainments from place to place in Europe."