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“... Dare you but write, you are Minerva’s bird,The owl at which these bats and crows must wonder,They’ll criticise upon the smallest word:This wanteth number, case, that tense and gender.If​ you think you know what the 17th-century poet Anne Southwell means by referring to Minerva’s owl, you are probably wrong. Southwell is alluding to Ovid’s story of a jealous crow, who worries that the owl has usurped his position as Minerva’s favourite ...”

“... Jonathan Swift​ was a fan of puns. He found there was no better way to pass a long coach journey than to engage in wordplay in the company of friends. He reported one such exchange in a letter to Thomas Walls in 1708: ‘A Gentleman was mightily afraid of a cat: I told him it was a Sign he was Pus-ilanimous, and Lady Berkeley talking to her Cat, My Lord said she was very impertinent, but … I thought her Ladyship spoke very much to the poor-pus ...”

“... Character beliefs build on vapour, congeal into something solid and can then dissolve once more. Katie Ebner-Landy’s The Character Sketch as Philosophy is pitched between intellectual history and philosophy. It tells the story of the reception and dissemination of Theophrastus’ character sketches, but also does much more than that. ...”