chrestomathy: Aphania

"...[it] is a peculiarly literary country. There is a special statute-book for literary offences, and a Court of Letters presided over by six judges receive huge salaries for their necessary abstention from literature. Any person found guilty of borrowing from the works of other writers is sent to the treadmills for three years. Adaptions from the French are contra-band, and violations of syntax merit capital punishment without the benefit of clergy... To ensure purity of style, all adjectives are kept in the National Library, and no writer is allowed to use more than a certain number in a day, without special licence from at least three of the Judges of Lettters."

Tom Hood, Petsetilla's Posy, London, 1870

Cited in Manguel and Guadalupi The Dictionary of Imaginary Places: Aphania, London, 1987