Aphania is a peculiarly literary country. There is a special stature-book for literary offences, and a Court of Letters presided over by six judges who receive immense salaries as compensation for their necessary absence from literature. Any person found guilty of borrowing from the works of other writers is sent to the treadmill for three years... To ensure purity of style, all adjectives are kept at the National Library, and no writer is allowed to use more than a certain number per day without a special licence form at least three of the Judges of Letters. In spite of this stringency, a great number of books are published every year, and most of them books of worth.
from Tom Hood, Petsetilla's Posy, London, 1870. Cited in Alberto Manguel & Gianni Guadalupi, The Dictionary of Imaginary Places, Bloomsbury, London,1999