"Punnest thou?" said the friar. "A heinous anti-Christian offence. Why anti-Christian? Because anti-Catholic. Why anti-Catholic? Because anti-Roman. Why anti-Roman? Because Carthaginian. Is not pun from Punic? punica fides: the very quint-essential quiddity of bad faith: double-visaged: double-tongued. He that will make a pun will----I say no more. Fie on it."
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Tuesday, April 20, 2010
A Heinous Anti-Christian Offence
Thomas Love Peacock, Maid Marian, chapter XI: