Literary References
Because of their use as a party piece, Prince Rupert’s Drops became widely known in the late seventeenth century — far more than today. It can be seen that educated people (or those in “society”) were expected to be familiar with them, from their use in the literature of the day. Samuel Butler used them as a metaphor in his poem Hudibras in 1663, and Pepys refers to them in his diary.
The drops were immortalized in a verse of the Ballad of Gresham College (1663):
- And that which makes their Fame ring louder,
- With much adoe they shew'd the King
- To make glasse Buttons turn to powder,
- If off the their tayles you doe but wring.
- How this was donne by soe small Force
- Did cost the Colledg a Month's discourse.
Peter Carey devotes a chapter to the drops in his 1988 novel, Oscar and Lucinda.
Read more about this topic: Prince Rupert's Drop
Famous quotes containing the word literary:
“I went to a literary gathering once.... The place was filled with people who looked as if they had been scraped up out of drains. The ladies ran to draped plush dresses—for Art; to wreaths of silken flowerets in the hair—for Femininity; and, somewhere between the two adornments, to chain-drive pince-nez—for Astigmatism. The gentlemen were small and somewhat in need of dusting.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)