At luncheon, Miss A., the Scotch governess, asked me if I liked buns. I replied that I liked them if they were made with sultana raisins and not currants. She blushed, and explained that she meant the poet "Buns." This, it seems, is the patriotic manner of pronouncing Burns.
"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).
Pages
▼
Monday, November 07, 2011
Do You Like Buns?
[H.C. Beeching], Pages from a Private Diary (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1898), p. 12: