When an Englishman talks French like an Englishman the reason often enough is that he would die rather than subject his mouth to the undignified contortions that are necessary if any Gallic illusion is to be set up.
"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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Thursday, July 03, 2014
Speaking French
E.V. Lucas (1868-1938), "On Being a Foreigner," Giving and Receiving: Essays and Fantasies (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1922), pp. 127-138 (at 128):