First... and last?

'Some Mungril Italian Poet' - or; How To Write A Pasticcio

Pick out about an hundred Italian Airs from several Authors, good, or bad, it signifies nothing. Among these, make use of fifty five, or fifty six, of such as please your Fancy best, and Marshall ’em in the manner you think most convenient. When this is done, you must employ a Poet to write some English Words, the Airs of which are to be adapted to the Italian Musick. In the next place you must agree with some Composer to provide the Recitative … When this is done, you must make a Bargain with some Mungril Italian Poet to Translate the Part of the English that is to be Perform’d in Italian; and then deliver it into the Hands of some Amanuensis, that understands Musick better than your self, to Transcribe the Score, and the Parts. 

- via Alexandra Coghlan, in The Spectator

John Jeremiah Sullivan

on winning a Windham Campbell prize:

InDefinition - 77

obv-servation, n. shit wot didn't need saying

On my Samsung Galaxy tablet

Which has been misbehaving again...

Surely not...?!

The heirs of Bomber Harris are not squeamish about the far end of a bomb site...

- Simon Jenkins, in The Spectator

On India (as it happens)

I returned from this journey embarrassed by my own ignorance, at how ill read I was.

- Ryszard Kapuściński, Travels with Herodotus

Smyth's Sayings

When life gives you lemons, make a sour face.

#LAD

11-year-old boy dresses as Christian Grey for World Book Day.

I was entirely on this kid's side... until I read the mother's rationalisation of it.

Found in books - 8

In A Handelian's Notebook, by William C Smith:

If. Only.

HUGE SAVINGS VOUCHER*

--
* £2 off with this voucher. Not valid first day or with any other offer.

This Week's Literary Hero

Robert Herrick.

Books I've actually finished lately: 70

The privilege of being subtle is the distinction between the fortunate and the unfortunate.

- John Berger

Books I've actually finished lately: 69

All his life, Dave had been bald.
Barely a hair anywhere on his person at all.
(Bar the bristles in his brows... and one under his nose)
But apart from those,
Dave was as smooth as a bowling ball.
(Hence the wig.)

- Stephen Collins