"Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell" [.]

[fiefoe]

The middle section of the book sagged a bit, but at its best, it's poetic and amusing:

• It is as if the town contains within itself something larger than itself. When going about one's business in the muddle of narrow streets one is sure to lose sight of the Cathedral, but then the town will open out and suddenly it is there, many times taller and many times larger than any other building, and one realizes that one has reached the heart of the town and that all streets and lanes have in some way led here, to a place of mysteries much deeper than any Mr Norrell knew of.
• Their post-chaise travelled through a world that seemed to contain a much higher proportion of chill grey sky and a much smaller one of solid comfortable earth than was usually the case. 
• the freemasonry of melancholy
• The gates had been made of fine Castillian wrought iron, but were now rusted to a dark, vivid red and their original form was very much decayed and shrivelled. Mr Segundus's hand came away with dusty traces upon it as if a million dried and powdered roses had been compacted and formed into the dreamlike semblance of a gate.
• This land is all too shallow/ It is painted on the sky/ And trembles like the wind-shook rain/ When the Raven King goes by
  
• ancient French and Italian fables in which fools set sail in milk-pails to fetch the moon's reflection from the bottom of a duckpond
• A skimmer is a sprinkling of words or charms (from a dialect word of Northern English, meaning to brighten or sparkle). A skimmer of supplication encourages the person summoned to aid the magician...
  An epitome is a highly condensed form of a spell inserted within another spell to strengthen or enlarge it.
  

• He asks his niece (or wife, or daughter) ten times a day what o'clock it is, for he cannot believe that time can go so slowly - and he falls out with his pocket watch for the same reason.
• Clegg challenged the blacksmith to walk across a floor of herrings... Then the blacksmith walked from one end of the room to the other till the floor was a stinking mess of pulped fish and the blacksmith was bloody from head to foot with all the falls he had taken.
• He was one of those people whose ideas are too lively to be confined in their brains and spill out into the world to the consternation of passers-by. He talked to himself and the expression of his face changed constantly.
• A Faire Wood Withering seems an angry book until one compares it with two of Watershippe's later books: A Defence of my Deeds Written while Wrongly Imprisoned by my Enemies in Newark Castle (1459/60) and Crimes of the False King (written 1461?, published 1697, Penzance).
  
• (The birds) continued singing in the most officious manner possible: There reputations will be made / The Duke commands: be not afraid! / All the army's plans are laid / Go quickly now with your brigade!
  
• Like many spells with unusual names, the Unrobed Ladies was a great deal less exciting than it sounded. The ladies of the title were only a kind of woodland flower.. required to be stripped of leavs and petals - hence the "unrobing".
  

__ But like many gentle characters, Mr Segundus was much given to changes of mind.
__ dews: a velvety, grey bloom
__ plain as pandomanium
__ Manfred

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