'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

Big up the British

Satire is what we, the British, have always done better than anybody. From Chaucer, Swift and Alexander Pope to Chris Morris (The Day Today, Brass Eye, Four Lions), savage and comic lampoons of the age’s ignorance, delusions and cruelties have been as much a part of what this nation is as poetry, cathedrals and binge drinking.

- Bryan Appleyard, 'On Satire'