In Mattimeo, Chapter 29, the rescuers' party encounters Sir Harry, an owl who speaks in poetry for much of his dialogue. For one example, this is how he introduces himself: "Why, pray, do you suppose? I'm master of poetry and prose, No equal have I in field or wood, No creature a smidgeon, a fra...

I would like to know what "he’s looking between Charlie and Jules" means in the following sentences: ‘So Charlie boy,’ Johnno says, ‘tell us. How did you two first meet?’ I think at first he means Charlie and I. Then I realise he’s looking between Charlie and Jules. Right. ‘A millions years ago ...

I’ve noticed a topos in a few epic poems I’ve read where a long list of characters is given, each receiving practically a paragraph of description. In The Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes, Jason’s crew members are introduced like this. In Book 7 of the Aeneid of Virgil, the soldiers going to w...

I would like to know what "A millions years ago" means in the following sentences: ‘So Charlie boy,’ Johnno says, ‘tell us. How did you two first meet?’ I think at first he means Charlie and I. Then I realise he’s looking between Charlie and Jules. Right. ‘A millions years ago . . .’ Jules says....

I would like to know what "It was my summer job" means in the following sentences: ‘So Charlie boy,’ Johnno says, ‘tell us. How did you two first meet?’ I think at first he means Charlie and I. Then I realise he’s looking between Charlie and Jules. Right. ‘A millions years ago . . .’ Jules says....

I would like to know what "Jules flicks him with champagne from her glass. ‘Oi!’" means in the following sentences: ‘And he seemed so grown-up,’ Jules says, heedless of the interruption. She touches Charlie’s arm, proprietary. ‘When you’re sixteen, eighteen seems so much older. I was shy.’ ‘That...

I would like to know what "that public schoolboy polish" means in the following sentences: ‘Yup,’ Will says. ‘We were at school together.’ I’m surprised. The other men have that public schoolboy polish, while Johnno seems rougher – no cut-glass accent. ‘Trevellyan’s,’ Femi says. ‘It was like tha...

I noticed a similar phrase recurring twice in the conversation between Effi's parents in Chapter V of Theodor Fontane's Effi Briest, which I'm reading online: Miss Hulda had clinked her glass too hard against Lieutenant Nienkerk's. "Of course, half asleep and always has been, and lying under the...

I'm translating a novel by John Galsworthy, A Stoic, written at the beginning of the XX century (full text on Project Gutenberg), and I've come across a sentence I’m finding quite tricky to understand: The crowded street had all that prosperous air of catching or missing something which characte...

When Theodor Fontane travelled to London in September 1855, the three volumes of his copy of William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair were confiscated by customs. As far as I can tell, Vanity Fair was not censored or prohibited in England; for example, there is nothing in the Wikipedia article a...