The Lemon-squeezers of society—people who act on you as a wet blanket, who see a cloud in the sunshine, the nails of the coffin in the ribbons of the bride, predictors of evil, extinguishers of hope; who, where there are two sides, see only the worst—people whose very look curdles the milk, and sets your teeth on edge.
"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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Saturday, September 27, 2014
The Lemon-Squeezers of Society
Sydney Smith (1771-1845), quoted in A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith. By His Daughter Lady Holland. With a Selection of His Letters, Edited by Mrs. Austin, Vol. I (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1855), p. 382: