The Comedy, of course, was very dull to one who could not understand it. I was told that it contained some wit, and more obscenity; but the only comprehensible joke to me, was "Ah!" said in a loud voice by one man, and "Oh!" replied, equally loud by another, to the great amusement of the audience.
"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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Sunday, March 30, 2014
Spanish Humor
Robert Southey (1774-1843), Letters Written During a Short Residence in Spain and Portugal (Bristol: Bulgin and Rosser, 1797), pp. 10-11: