The book presents a vast and varied collection of literary curiosities, oddities, and historical fragments, compiled to entertain and instruct the reader through sheer diversity. It explores the playful side of writing, gathering together ingenious examples of artificial verse forms like acrostics, palindromes, centos, and macaronic poetry where several languages mingle.
The compiler delves into the history and structure of the English language, examining its dictionary growth, eccentric etymologies, and the curious power of monosyllables. Special attention is given to Biblical calculations, ancient translations, parallel passages between sacred texts and Shakespeare, and the hidden wit found within scripture.
Moving through ecclesiastical anecdotes, Puritan peculiarities, and elaborate puns, the volume showcases the strange lengths to which human ingenuity has stretched language. It includes elaborate anagrams, chronograms, and emblematic poetry shaped into crosses and wineglasses, demonstrating how writers of the past amused themselves with formal constraints.
The work further compiles familiar quotations from obscure sources, ancient churchyard literature, tavern sign-board inscriptions, and famous literary blunders or hoaxes. It preserves curious customs, flashes of repartee, epigrams, impetuose verse, and Moslem wisdom, alongside excerpts from Persian poetry.
Closing with a rich miscellany of historical memoranda, personal sketches of famous literati, and strange phenomena of life and death, the collection functions as a cabinet of paper curiosities. It is designed not to be read straight through as a systematic treatise, but to be opened at random for a running banquet of literary odds and ends.
