What's your favorite passage?
" The author urges historically minded sharpshooters to draw their beads on this narrative, and wishes them good hunting. They will find certain licenses in my Libertine - as a small example, the unseasonably warm weather when everyone knows Elizabeth's suit for jactitation took place in February 1769 - and more power to them. When they are done, let them proceed to Aesop and delete everything they find there about talking to animals.
In Short, this is a fable, written by and for the dilettente of the fabulous. It was extraordinarily easy and pleasant to write and it is hoped that it is correspondingly easy and pleasant to read.
Acknowledgement must be made to those without whom the book and the author surely never would have been known at all. First there is Mr. T. H. White, whose Age of Scandal served up Elizabeth Chudleigh, hot and crackling in her transparent gown. Mr. Theodore Sturgeon assisted nobly with the research, Mr. Jean Shepherd pushed and pushed at the author until he was, in the world of books, born; and last mentioned but first of all, the Night People whose battle-cry is Excelsior, and whose humor and forbearance are really responsible for the work."
Excelsior!
"It was a gray Irish day, a good one for drinking mulled wine and taking in the training of our newest thoroughbreds from the enclosed porch."