Good lines: rich neologisms and defamatory epithets

 

    "I haven't read the Urquhart translation [of Rabelais]," said Maria. "I stick to the French."

    "But what you are missing! A great monument of scholarship and seventeenth-century English! And what rich neologisms! Slabberdegullion druggels, lubbardly louts, blockish grutnols, doddipol joltheads, lobdotterels, codshead loobies, ninny-hammer flycatchers, and other such like defamatory epithets! How on earth do we get along without them?"

    How indeed?

From The Rebel Angels, part one of The Cornish Trilogy by Robertson Davies.

Comments

[Dark Puss]

I don't think I read that version when I read Rabelais in translation. Is it readily available?

[Cornflower]

I couldn't tell you, DP.