Laudator Temporis Acti

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), "An Important Discovery," Kipling's India: Uncollected Sketches 1884–88, ed. Thomas Pinney (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986), pp. 255-257 (at 255):

'The Poligs of the Oern Vent in dugard to the Brounincinl Coutrick is the colic of the unscrifulouse Gawler.' So ran the printed slip technically known as a 'rough proof'. The Aryan had surpassed himself; but, as he read, light filled the mind of the Reader. He had written — 'The policy of the Government in regard to the Provincial Contract is the policy of the unscrupulous lawyer', and, behold, with a mere turn of his wrist, the Aryan had glorified, and enriched with the wealth of an exuberant Orientalism that simple sentence, till it stood forth a gem, or rather a collection of gems! 'The Poligs of the Oern Vent' — George Meredith might have woven those words into the Shaving of Shagpat, and so made that dazzling piece of broidery yet more gorgeous. 'Brounincinl Coutrick' would suit admirably the manager of a travelling-circus. Conceive the effect, on white and red posters of: — 'To-night! To-night!! To-night!!! The Brounincinl Coutrick!' The words would draw thousands — millions. 'Unscrifulouse Gawler' again would furnish an absolutely unique and startling title for a semi-humourous, semi-grotesque, wholly-horrible story, of the American school, let us say. Think for a moment what fashion of ghoulo-demoniacal, triple-Quilpian, Jekyll-and-Hydeous character, the 'unscrifulouse Gawler' would be. Out of the incult wantonings of a Punjabi Mahommedan with a box of type, had been born the suggestions of three Brilliant Notions, did any man care to use them, exactly as ideas for patterns are conveyed to the designer by the chance-ruled twists of the Kaleidescope.

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