Dedication
THIS BOOK
OF SPLEEN AND GOSSIP IS INSCRIBED
TO MY FRIEND
EDWARD ZIEGLER
Epigraph
“Come! let us lay a crazy lance in rest
And tilt at windmills under a wild sky.”
—John Galsworthy.
“He is a fribble, a sonsy faddle, whose conceits veer with the breeze like a creaking weather-vane. As the sterile moon hath her librations, so must he boast of his oscillations, thinking them eternal verities. A very cockatoo in his perched-up vanity and prodigious clatter....”
Note
[From “The Velvet Cactus.” Anonymous. Printed at the Sign of the Cat and Cameo, Threadneedle Street, London. A.D. 1723. Rare.]