The Music of the Language

“Like Shakespeare, or many of the greatest writers, [P. G.] Wodehouse is violently cavalier with English grammar. The dictionary will tell you that ‘window’ is a noun, ‘small’ is an adjective, ‘Fred’ is a proper noun. Shakespeare’s Cleopatra sees herself ‘window’d in great Rome’; Hardy has a figure which ‘smalls into the distance’; a character in Wodehouse can ‘out-Fred the nimblest Astaire’. Try to do that in German. ” Philip HensherThe Music of the LanguageSpectator)

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