quote

[truepenny]

I'm employing the time-honored method of trying to find a title: trawling Bartlett's and the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations and Bartleby. Haven't found what I need yet, but I did just find this:

Studying the mass of his manuscript was something like excavating the site of ancient Troy. One came upon evidences of entire civilizations buried and forgotten at different levels.
--Edward Aswell, on editing Thomas Wolfe's posthumous papers