
“First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me.”
As quoted by Philibert de Gramont (1701), in Memoirs of the Court of Charles the Second (1846) by Anthony Hamilton, edited by Sir Walter Scott.
Context: Mrs. Lane and I took our journey towards Bristol, resolving to lie at a place called Long Marson, in the vale of Esham.
But we had not gone two hours on our way but the mare I rode on cast a shoe; so we were forced to ride to get another shoe at a scattering village, whose name begins with something like Long—. And as I was holding my horse's foot, I asked the smith what news? He told me that there was no news that he knew of, since the good news of the beating of the rogues the Scots. I asked him whether there was none of the English taken that joined with the Scots? He answered, that he did not hear that that rogue Charles Stewart was taken; but some of the others, he said, were taken, but not Charles Stewart. I told him, that if that rogue were taken he deserved to be hanged, more than all the rest, for bringing in the Scots. Upon which he said, that I spoke like an honest man, and so we parted.
“First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me.”
'The Stray Cupid', tr. R. Polwhele, lines 3–8; spoken by Venus.
Compare: "It fortuned, fair Venus having lost / Her little son, the winged god of love, / ....." Edmund Spenser, Faerie Queene, B. III, C. 6, st. 11
The Idylliums of Moschus, Idyllium I
§ 4
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius
“Jake Holman knew he was a strange bird and he was used to going aboard new ships.”
Source: The Sand Pebbles (1962), Ch. 1
Context: Jake Holman knew he was a strange bird and he was used to going aboard new ships. By the time they realized they were in a struggle Jake Holman would already have made for himself the place he wanted on their ship and they could never dislodge him. Or wish to.
Five Years
Song lyrics, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)
From "New American Language", album of the same name.
Smartie Mine