My Small Boat

of Sir Compton Mackenzie

His clothes resembled the adjectives in a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins: chosen for their texture and colour, and often most arbitrarily joined

Hiawatha’s Departure
By the shore of Gitchie Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,
Hiawatha stood and waited.
All the air was full of freshness,
All the earth was bright and joyous,
And before him through the sunshine,
Westward toward the neighboring forest
Passed in golden swarms the Ahmo,
Passed the bees, the honey-makers,
Burning, singing in the [...]

All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare.

The supreme value of remaining silent when you have nothing to say is not a recognized academic virtue.

Behemoth
Be he moth
or be he not
He be noth
ing when I swat

The fault I find with our journalism is that it forces us to take an interest in some fresh triviality or other every day, whereas only three or four books in a lifetime give us anything that is of real importance.