Laudator Temporis Acti

R.A. Stewart Macalister (1870-1950), The Secret Languages of Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1937), pp. 78-79:

The style of Hisperica Famina bears a certain resemblance to some of the parodies of Euphues: there is certainly more of Sir Piercie Shafton in it than of Lyly himself, who when all is said and done is a writer of considerable charm, if taken in judiciously small doses. A closer though a more modern analogy is, however, available. These days of ours have seen the rise of a school of writers, whom the reader can readily name for himself, for they have earned their full share of advertisement. I have no title to speak critically or otherwise of them: I have to read so many books on subjects that I can understand, that I have no time to spare over books that I cannot understand, especially as I have no consuming ambition to succeed in doing so. My knowledge of these works is therefore limited to the chance extracts from them which I have come across from time to time in the periodical press. If I may generalize from these fragmentary data, their language is fundamentally English: but the sense, if any, is placed beyond the reach of ordinary persons by anarchic neologisms of idiom, accidence, and vocabulary; by artificial deformations of words, and violent wrestings of their orthodox meanings; by an occasional admixture of French (sometimes of Stratford-atte-Bow, or of an unknown variety even more remote from the Parisian standard); and by interspersed combinations of letters, not always pronounceable, and to me, at least, unintelligible. I am quite ready to admit the possibility that these writers may have grounds for self-congratulation, hidden from my undiscerning eyes. Critics tell me so, and in matters so far outside my competence I must believe what I am told. But originality is not to be reckoned among these assets.¹ Every one of the vagaries above enumerated was anticipated twelve or thirteen hundred years ago by the authors of Hisperica Famina: the only novelty which has been introduced into the modern antitype is an occasional affectation of moral irresponsibility.

¹ Even the ingenious mechanical device of enhancing literary effect by printing personal and geographical names with a lower-case initial instead of the orthodox capital is not original: I did it myself, in a dame-school, at the age of eight, and got 'kept in' in consequence; had I been born about fifty years later, I might have been rewarded with a whole holiday. Perhaps.

Hat tip: Ian Jackson.