laudator temporis acti [Lat.]; medievalist, Pre-Raphaelite; antiquary, antiquarian; archmologist &c; Oldbuck, Dryasdust. ancestry &c (paternity) 166.

prescription, custom, use, usage, immemorial usage, practice; prevalence, observance; conventionalism, conventionality; mode, fashion, vogue; etiquette &c (gentility) 852; order of the day, cry; conformity &c 82; consuetude, dustoor^. one's old way, old school, veteris vestigia flammae [Lat.]; laudator temporis acti

[person who is discontented] malcontent, grumbler, growler, croaker, dissident, dissenter, laudator temporis acti

laudator temporis acti &c (discontent) 832

Flatterer N. flatterer, adulator; eulogist, euphemist; optimist, encomiast, laudator [Lat.], whitewasher.

laudator temporis acti [Lat.]

But, in the midst of this, I remember we all grew silent on hearing the old cynical amateur, L. S, that laudator temporis acti, stumping along with his wooden leg; he entered the room with his usual scowl, and, as he advanced, he continued to growl and stutter the whole way"Not an original idea in the whole piecemere plagiarism,base plagiarism from hints that I threw out!

The finest performances of our own age he snarled at cynically; and at length this querulous humor grew upon him so much, and he became so notorious as a laudator tentporis acti, that few people cared to seek his society.

Two more egregious self-laudators are not to be found in the range of English literature: Spenser loses no opportunity of puffing "Colin Clout"; and Harvey was openly charged by Thomas Nash with having forged commendatory epistles and sonnets in his own praise, under the name of Thorius etc.

He is "laudator temporis acti"a

He is a dear old man of some seventy-eight summers, though somewhat of the laudator temporis acti school; but what good-nature and sense of humour there is in the good, honest face!

When or where this laudator temporis acti closed his wanderings, the author never heard with certainty; but most probably, as Burns says "he died a cadger-powny's death

Recte is dicitur laudare sese, cui nemo alius contigit laudator.

In Rome this particular kind of bore went by the name of laudator temporis acti; and, if we have no such concise Anglo-Saxon phrase for the type, we still have the type no less ubiquitously with us.

I am, dear Mr. Punch, Yours faithfully, NOSTRI TEMPORIS LAUDATOR.