I preferred this study infinitely to that of the Asiatic languages, for which I never felt any taste, as I dislike bombast, hyperbole and exaggeration; and though an ardent admirer of the Muses, I never could find pleasure in what Voltaire terms "le bon style oriental, ou l'on fait danser les montagnes et les collines," and I prefer the amatory effusions of Ovid to those of the great King Solomon himself.

He was always pre-eminently an Englishman of his own day with a scholar's rather than a poet's temper, hating extravagance, hating bombast and cant, and only limited because in ruling out these things he ruled out much else that was essential to the spirit of the time.

The delight Hermia had taken in her new acquaintancesFabiani's bombast, Luigi's grace, and the Signora's motherly perquisiteshad lost some of its spontaneity since she had seen the expression on the face of the child Stella, when she had gone through her act of dŽcarcasse.