“The gaping monotony of this jargon,” says Leigh Hunt, “full of the vowel a , is admirably suited to the mouth of the vast half-stupid speaker. It is like a babble of the gigantic infancy of the world.” ↩

Nimrod, the “mighty hunter before the Lord,” who built the tower of Babel, which, according to the Italian popular tradition, was so high that whoever mounted to the top of it could hear the angels sing.

Cory, Ancient Fragments , 51, gives this extract from the “Sibylline Oracles”:⁠—