The lesson one can learn from Firbank is that of inconsequence. There is the vein which he tapped and which has not yet been fully exploited. - Cyril Connolly

Part III: La Clé des Chants (p. 98)

The Mandarin style at its best yields the richest and most complete expression of the English language. It is the diction of Donne, Browne, Addison, Johnson, Gibbon, de Quincey, Landor, Carlyle and Ruskin as opposed to that of Bunyan, Dryden, Locke, Defoe, Cowper, Cobbett, Hazlitt, Southey and Newman. It is characterized by long sentences with many dependent clauses, by the use of the subjunctive and conditional, by exclamations and interjections, quotations, allusions, metaphors, long images, Latin terminology, subtlety and conceits. Its cardinal assumption is that neither the writer nor the reader is in a hurry, that both are possessed of a classical education and a private income. It is Ciceronian English.

Never will I make that extra effort to live according to reality which alone makes good writing possible: hence the manic-depressiveness of my style, — which is either bright, cruel and superficial; or pessimistic; moth-eaten with self-pity