Laudator Temporis Acti

Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, chapter 6 (tr. James E. Woods):

When, in fact, there was nothing to that fawning poet laureate and flunky of the Julians, that oh-so-urbane inkslinger and rhetorical show-off without a spark of creativity, whose soul, if he had one, was secondhand at best, who was not a poet at all, but a Frenchman togged out in a full Augustan wig of flowing curls.

Was es denn weiter auf sich gehabt habe mit diesem höfischen Laureatus und Speichellecker des julischen Hauses, diesem Weltstadtliteraten und Prunkrhetor ohne einen Funken von Produktivität, dessen Seele, wenn er eine gehabt habe, jedenfalls aus zweiter Hand gewesen, und der überhaupt kein Dichter, sondern ein Franzose in augusteischer Allongeperücke gewesen sei!

The same (tr. H.T. Lowe-Porter):

But what was there to this courtly laureate and lickspittle of the Julian house, this urban littérateur and eulogist, who was without a spark of creative genius, whose soul, if he had one, was second-hand, and who was certainly no poet, but a Frenchman in an Augustean full-bottomed wig!

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