An entirely unwarranted snippet

I am posting this only because when I first read it it caused a little frisson of glee to run down my spine. Sometimes when reading a book or watching a film, one suddenly gets a powerful feeling that one can not believe what one has just experienced. That is, one can not accept that anyone would express what has just been expressed. Too often this feeling is occasioned by horrors, but in this case it is not.

From Chesterton's "English Literature and the Latin Tradition," as collected in Chesterton on Shakespeare:

The Latin culture lives in Britain in the uncultured people. It is not a question of English scholars who know Latin. Kamchatkan scholars know Latin; and if there are any Esquimaux scholars, of course they know Latin. They know the Latin scientific word for blubber; and possibly write Latin odes to the walrus, addressing him in the vocative as "walre."

This made my night, so there you go.